A discrimination report sparked what she alleges was a chain reaction of HR failures
A JPMorgan Chase banker reported discrimination to HR — and alleges every intervention that followed only made things worse.
Latoya Davis-Denuzzo worked as a Private Client Banker in Georgia from February 2024 until her termination a year later. In a suit filed on February 26, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, she claims race and national origin discrimination and retaliation. No determination has been made on any of the claims, but the allegations read like a case study in how internal processes can unravel.
It started on March 19, 2024. Davis-Denuzzo says she saw her branch manager, Katrina Thompson, refuse to offer a credit card to a Haitian individual who had been pre-selected for one. She reported the incident to Denise Kirby in human resources. What followed, she claims, was not a course correction but a cascade. Thompson allegedly called Davis-Denuzzo and her family "a threat to the bank" and handed her a negative performance review, labeling her "uncoachable."
Davis-Denuzzo reported that retaliation to Kirby as well. By April 2024, she had been offered a transfer to a branch in Smyrna, Georgia, over an hour from her home, which she reluctantly accepted.
In July 2024, HR concluded that Thompson's conduct did in fact warrant monitoring for discrimination and retaliation. Those findings were then shared with Davis-Denuzzo's new branch manager, Marcus Capleton. His response, according to the filing, was to issue her a verbal warning for "body language" and "aggressive tone" — and to call her "uncoachable," the same word Thompson had used months earlier.
The allegations build from there. Capleton allegedly changed her schedule without proper notice, gave a counterpart better clients and more support, denied her request for training on an Estate Foundation Account, and left unresolved a scheduling platform issue that cost her commissions. Davis-Denuzzo filed complaints with Employee Relations in September and October 2024. Her case was referred to the bank's retaliation unit, which found no violation.
She told HR in October 2024 she planned to file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and did so on December 3. Capleton wrote her up on December 16. The resulting disciplinary record, she alleges, disqualified her from the bank's mentorship program and shut down any path to advancement. The bank also allegedly looked into her private LinkedIn account and told her to remove her qualifications from her profile.
Davis-Denuzzo was terminated on February 26, 2025. She further alleges that JPMorgan Chase interfered with her ability to collect unemployment benefits by scheduling hearings and failing to appear. JPMorgan Chase has not yet filed a response in the case.
For HR professionals, the story traced in these allegations carries a familiar warning. When an employee raises a concern and every internal channel she turns to leaves her worse off, the system designed to protect both the employee and the organization has stopped doing either.
