Federal lawsuit includes allegation Amazon dismissed his complaint but then upheld a colleague's near-identical one
Amazon is facing a federal lawsuit from a former manager who alleges he was labeled a "DEI hire" and pushed out after raising discrimination concerns.
Brad Jones, who worked at Amazon for six years as a Regional Construction Manager, filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on March 3. He alleges racial discrimination, disability discrimination, and retaliation for taking medical leave and reporting discrimination.
According to the filing, Jones first met Kathryn Emtman in September 2019. During that initial encounter, Emtman allegedly questioned how Jones obtained his role and insinuated he was a "DEI hire." When Emtman became his supervisor in December 2021, the filing alleges things escalated. She repeatedly told Jones he was "not qualified," blocked his promotions, wrote unfair performance reviews, and used the term "brown bag lunch" on multiple occasions despite Amazon's own directive against the phrase due to its racist origins. Jones was, at the time, the only Black Regional Construction Manager and the highest-ranking Black employee on his team.
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Jones reported Emtman to Amazon's internal ethics team in July 2023. The filing states his concerns were dismissed, with investigators citing only "areas for improvement" in Emtman's conduct. The unresolved situation, Jones alleges, took a physical and psychological toll, leading him to take approved medical leave beginning in November 2023.
What happened next raises pointed questions about how Amazon handled overlapping concerns. While Jones was on leave, a colleague named Fritz Gutenberg filed a separate report against Emtman in July 2024, raising similar allegations, including claims that she pressured team members to provide false statements during internal investigations. Amazon substantiated Gutenberg's report, found Emtman had violated company policy, and terminated her. But when Jones refiled his own case citing overlapping evidence, the ethics team dismissed it again in October 2024, maintaining no violation had occurred.
Jones returned to work in December 2024 and, according to the filing, was met with near-total isolation. His new manager, Chris Ruest, allegedly held just one scheduled meeting with him over a 98-day stretch, denied the existence of weekly team calls that other direct reports were attending, and declined colleagues' requests to add Jones to meetings and communication channels. Jones was then reclassified from Manager III to Construction Manager III, a move the filing alleges had no legitimate business purpose and was designed to stall his career.
After Jones raised another internal concern about retaliation in March 2025, Amazon placed him on a Performance Improvement Plan, known internally as a "Pivot." The filing describes it less as a development tool and more as an exit strategy: it included a severance offer, and HR reportedly described it as "all-or-nothing." Jones was terminated on September 4, 2025.
Amazon has not yet responded, and no determination has been made on the merits. The case is Jones v. Amazon.com, Inc. et al., No. 4:26-cv-01749.
