Suit claims waiting in hallways with a pump, scolding over leftovers, and a male colleague working almost entirely from home
A nursing mother claims General Atlantic left her waiting in hallways with her pump in hand, scolded her for eating leftovers, then fired her hours after she asked to work from home.
That is the story Carol King tells in a lawsuit filed April 17, 2026 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, King v. General Atlantic Service Company, L.P. et al, No. 1:26-cv-03149. The allegations have not been tested in court, and the investment firm has not yet responded.
King, who joined General Atlantic in January 2025 as a Senior Associate Graphic Designer on the Marketing and Communications team, was about six and a half months pregnant when she started. She gave birth to her second child on April 1, 2025, took short-term disability leave, and returned at the end of June.
What she found when she came back, the lawsuit claims, was a problem familiar to many new mothers at work — just in an unusually stark form. General Atlantic had no dedicated lactation space, according to the suit. Instead, King alleges, the firm pointed her to multipurpose "wellness rooms" on the 16th and 17th floors that one executive is said to have described as primarily shared spaces for "prayer and other wellness needs." Other staff, including men, allegedly used them for calls, meetings and heads-down work. The rooms initially lacked functional locks, had a reclining chair but no desk, and could be booked only in 30-minute slots through a system open to everyone, with no priority for nursing employees, the suit claims. King says she often stood in the hallway in pain, pump in hand, while colleagues sat past their bookings.
After an August 11, 2025 complaint to the Workplace Experience team, a sign went up on the door. But access, she says, did not improve. So King began pumping discreetly at her desk, fully clothed, using a wearable pump. In October, she alleges, human resources called her in — not to fix the problem, but to tell her that her pumping made coworkers uncomfortable. In the same stretch of days, she says, she was also scrutinized for taking catered leftovers home, using her own Tupperware, and keeping food in the fridge overnight, even though, as she tells it, colleagues openly joked about doing the same.
Then there is the comparison at the heart of the case. A male Director on her team, with the same years of experience, allegedly worked almost entirely from home and came into the office just twice during her tenure. King and eleven other women on the team, she says, came in at least four days a week. When she asked on October 30, 2025 to work through lunch and finish her day from home so she could pick up her son from school, she claims she was called into a meeting within hours — and fired.
Days later, the suit says, General Atlantic offered $10,000, the same amount as her promised performance bonus, in exchange for her signature on a non-disclosure agreement.
For HR leaders, the filing is a reminder that a pumping room is not a compliance checkbox — it is a working space that has to work.
