What the court flagged about CNN's HR process is a masterclass in what not to do
A federal court has ruled that CNN's firing of a breastfeeding employee who sought lactation accommodations will go to trial.
The decision, made public on February 23, 2026, by Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is a pointed reminder for HR teams of what can go wrong when accommodation requests collide with return-to-office mandates – and when the people handling complaints are also the ones making termination decisions.
Amelia J. Harris worked for CNN America and Warner Brothers Discovery for more than seven years, most recently as a Senior Business Coordinator. She gave birth in June 2020, and around the time she returned from leave that November, she learned she had high lipase – a genetic condition that causes the fats in breast milk to break down rapidly. To safely store her milk, she needed to pump, then scald and cool it within about an hour – a process requiring time, heat, and a private space. When her employer began requiring workers back in the office in 2022, Harris asked to continue working remotely and requested adequate breaks and equipment to manage her condition at the office.
What followed reads like a workplace compliance cautionary tale.
Harris says she was told during an HR meeting that if she could not return to the office, the company would treat her as having voluntarily resigned. Later that same day, an HR representative and her manager allegedly called her back, and the HR representative asked, pointedly, whether she was going to resign. Harris filed an anonymous internal complaint through the company's EthicsPoint reporting system. Within 24 hours, a company HR official was notified of the complaint and, according to the court record, identified Harris as its source from the contents alone – despite the complaint having been filed anonymously.
When the company later conducted layoffs, the same HR figure who was the subject of Harris's open complaint was involved in selecting who would be let go. Harris's supervisor rated her lower than her one comparator and she was terminated on February 4, 2023.
At trial, CNN and Warner Brothers Discovery will have to convince a jury that the termination had nothing to do with Harris's accommodation requests, leave use, or the complaints she filed. The court found the record raises enough legitimate questions about that to let a jury decide. Among those questions: Harris's supervisor had described her as "a great employee" who "raised the bar" in August 2022 – only two months before rating her as a deficient performer in the review that led to her firing.
The court also took note of how the layoff process itself was structured. Harris was compared against only one other employee for elimination. The criteria used were partly subjective. And the process was overseen by an HR official who was simultaneously the subject of an unresolved internal discrimination complaint Harris had filed. Courts, the judge observed, have long treated heavily subjective termination processes with caution – particularly when other evidence in the record supports a discrimination claim.
There were also procedural concerns. The internal investigation into Harris's complaint found it unsubstantiated. Her direct manager, who had allegedly forwarded Harris's email to the HR figure she had been told not to contact about Harris, said she could not recall ever being interviewed as part of that investigation.
On February 2, 2026, the court allowed five claims – covering disability accommodation, pregnancy-related discrimination, family leave interference, and retaliation – to proceed to jury trial. Two claims were dismissed: one because the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act did not take effect until after Harris's termination, and another involving an unpaid wages dispute that the court found Harris had failed to substantiate.
For HR professionals, the case is less about novel law and more about process. The legal standards applied – around accommodation, leave rights, and retaliation – are not new. What is instructive is the sequence of decisions documented in the record: an accommodation process that left practical gaps, an anonymous complaint that was not kept anonymous, a supervisor who contacted the subject of a complaint after being told not to, an investigation whose thoroughness is now in dispute, and a reduction-in-force process run partly by someone with an active complaint filed against her.
None of those failures required a court to rewrite employment law. They required someone, at several points, to follow standard HR practice. The case is a useful reference point for any HR team navigating accommodation requests under return-to-office pressure – and a reminder that when things go wrong, juries, not HR departments, get the final word.
