The suit claims what came after his HR report looked a lot like retaliation
Gap, Inc. is facing a federal lawsuit from a long-time contractor who says the company's HR department failed to act on his sexual harassment claims.
Michael Ronsini, who ran landscaping and snow removal operations at Gap's New York campus for six years through his company Two Brothers Property Maintenance, filed the suit on February 17 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. He is alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and retaliation against Gap and two of its employees — Senior Maintenance Manager Eamonn Egan and HR Business Partner Lauren Dupuis.
The case, which has not yet been decided, paints a troubling picture of what can go wrong when a harassment report reaches HR and nothing meaningful follows.
Ronsini says he worked without a single documented performance issue from 2018 until August 2023, when Egan took over as his direct supervisor. Within days, according to the suit, Egan made a sexually explicit and degrading remark about Ronsini in front of other employees. Ronsini says he immediately pushed back.
What allegedly came next is where the case gets especially relevant for HR leaders.
By December 2023, the suit claims, Egan began lodging what Ronsini describes as fabricated performance complaints — accusing him of failures in landscaping bed maintenance, improper equipment storage, and property damage. Ronsini contends these accusations contradicted five years of clean records. On December 7, Egan allegedly berated him using profane language in front of a vendor and one of his own employees.
Ronsini took his concerns to Dupuis, Gap's HR Business Partner, on December 13, 2023. According to the suit, the company did not investigate. Instead, what followed looked a lot like retaliation.
Gap allegedly imposed new daily sign-in and sign-out requirements for Ronsini's crew — something never required in five prior years of service. The company also allegedly ignored safety issues Ronsini flagged in January 2024, changed the terms of his contract to add financial pressure, and demanded snow removal procedures he considered unsafe. On February 20, 2024, Ronsini escalated his concerns to a senior director, writing that Egan had subjected him to "sexual harassment, sexual innuendos, harassment, belittling" and that he feared losing his job.
Three months later, on May 16, 2024, Gap ended the contract, citing "convenience." After that, the company allegedly threatened to declare his equipment abandoned and withheld payment for work already completed. According to the suit, Gap has paid just $63,000, leaving $324,625 outstanding.
The lawsuit raises nine causes of action, including harassment, retaliation, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment. Claims against Egan and Dupuis individually are also included.
One thread running through the case could resonate broadly across the HR profession: how organizations handle harassment complaints from contractors and other non-traditional workers who may not fit neatly into the employee box. Ronsini argues that Gap exercised enough control over his day-to-day work to make the relationship functionally indistinguishable from employment — a classification question that more HR teams are likely to face as workforce models continue to evolve.
The case is Ronsini v. Gap, Inc. et al., Case No. 7:26-cv-01347, filed in the Southern District of New York.
