She spent decades building diversity ties - then says the work quietly disappeared
A former supplier diversity manager says Harley-Davidson sidelined her as it wound down diversity work - then punished her for speaking up.
The woman, who spent more than 20 years in supplier diversity, has sued Harley-Davidson Motor Company in a Michigan federal court. Her first amended complaint, filed September 1, 2026, alleges the company dismantled her role and retaliated against her because of her race, sex and age after she questioned how it was rolling back its diversity commitments.
The dispute traces to mid-2024, according to the filing. She says she warned a vice president that the company's handling of longtime partner organizations - an approach the complaint calls “ghosting” - could hurt her professional standing. Weeks later, she says, she was told to “cease and desist” all business inclusion work, with no plan for a handoff and no reason given.
Her title was changed to a generic “Supply Chain Manager” with no clear duties, the complaint states. She alleges a senior HR leader held transition meetings with younger, non-African American DEI leaders and left her out, and that those colleagues kept their jobs. She says she was blocked from external diversity events that a younger white male co-worker was allowed to attend, and was replaced as a supplier mentor by a newer employee she describes as having no mentoring experience.
The filing also claims she was told she could keep mentoring white male entrepreneurs but not LGBTQ+ ones. In a meeting with a national minority supplier council, according to the complaint, a vice president said the company would step back because of “noise from activists” and indicated leadership had not approved the relationship. She says those remarks wrongly cast her as acting without authority on partnerships she had run for years. One conference sponsorship she managed carried a budget-approved value of $30,000 and went unpaid, the filing says.
She says she filed an internal complaint in November 2024 and sat through an investigation, but was never told the outcome. She alleges a compliance officer later pressed her to state a position on supplier policy and, when she declined, leaned on her in a way she believed was meant to get her to change her account.
Her suit brings race, color, sex, age and retaliation claims under Title VII, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act - state and federal laws that bar workplace discrimination and punishing employees for objecting to it. The complaint says the EEOC dismissed her charge and issued a right-to-sue notice on April 8, 2026. She is seeking her job back or pay in its place, lost wages, and additional damages.
For HR leaders, the filing reads as a map of where a diversity-program wind-down can turn into legal exposure. It centers on the everyday mechanics of restructuring - reassignments, title changes, event access, mentor swaps and who gets invited to transition talks - and how those choices land when the affected employee is older, a woman, and Black. It also puts a spotlight on investigation follow-through: her claim that she was kept in the dark about her own complaint, then pressured afterward, is the kind of process gap that can fuel a retaliation claim.
None of the allegations have been tested, and no court has ruled.
