Allegations include demotions after each leave, stalled pay, and HR closing his complaint
Bloomberg LP is facing a federal lawsuit from a long-tenured engineer who says the company punished him for taking medical and family leave.
Jordan "JD" Hudgens, a senior software engineer who worked at Bloomberg for nearly a decade, filed suit on March 5 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (Hudgens v. Bloomberg LP, Case No. 1:26-cv-01829). The case has not yet been decided, and all claims remain allegations at this stage.
According to the filing, Hudgens took four leaves of absence between 2021 and 2025. Two were to care for his son, who has a serious and rare liver condition that required multiple hospitalizations and two attempted transplants. The remaining two were to address his own mental health. Hudgens alleges that after each leave, Bloomberg chipped away at his role, his reviews, and his pay.
The trajectory he describes will sound familiar to HR professionals who manage leave and return-to-work processes. Before his first leave, Hudgens says he was effectively leading an approximately 16-person engineering team and serving as the point person for initiatives critical to Bloomberg's platform re-architecture. When he came back, those duties had been handed to a less experienced colleague he had helped hire and train. After his second leave, he was moved into a QA-focused managerial role. After his third, he was stripped of his remaining oversight responsibilities entirely.
His compensation allegedly followed the same downward path. Hudgens says his bonuses had been climbing between 4-7% year over year before his leaves. After his first leave, the increase fell to 1%. After his second, less than one percent. After his third, nothing.
The lawsuit also puts Bloomberg's HR function squarely under scrutiny. Hudgens says he raised his concerns with the company's HR department on March 21, 2025. According to the filing, HR "administratively closed" his internal grievance and, on information and belief, took no action. When he had previously requested a flexible work arrangement to help care for his son, Hudgens alleges HR responded by offering to let him work from Georgia temporarily — but only so he could look for a new job elsewhere.
After filing a discrimination charge with the EEOC on June 5, 2025, Hudgens says the pressure only intensified. His team lead allegedly issued his first-ever verbal warning, told him he was in a "performance improvement period" without providing any documentation, and gave him a mid-year review that doubled as a written warning with a threat of termination.
Then came the final chapter. Hudgens began a medical leave on or about September 1, 2025 and submitted a request through his medical provider to work from home upon his planned return. On or about December 4, 2025, while still on leave and weeks after that accommodation request, Bloomberg let him go. His last day was December 8 — the same day he was supposed to come back.
For HR leaders, the case raises pointed questions about how organizations handle the intersection of leave administration, performance management, and accommodation requests — and what happens when those processes appear to converge on a single employee at the worst possible time.
