Twelve-year veteran alleges her duties vanished weeks after she told her boss she was pregnant
A long-tenured recruiting director at a major international law firm says she was fired while pregnant — six weeks after telling her boss.
Sonya Wilson spent nearly twelve years climbing the ranks at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, rising from recruiting coordinator in 2014 to Director of Firmwide Associate Recruiting by 2023. Three promotions. Pay raises. Not a single negative performance review along the way. Then, according to a lawsuit filed on April 21, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, it all unraveled in a matter of weeks.
Wilson's case (Wilson v. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, No. 3:26-cv-00490) alleges that her supervisor's attitude shifted the moment she shared news of a high-risk pregnancy in late November 2025. Wilson, who says she was the only Black female director on the firm's recruiting leadership team — and, by her account, the lowest-paid director despite managing the largest team — disclosed blood pressure concerns and a genetic mutation, and asked for flexibility around medical appointments and possible family leave.
From there, the filing says, the working relationship "nosedived immediately."
Wilson claims core pieces of her job were quietly peeled away and handed to a less-experienced subordinate who was not Black and not pregnant, including oversight of on-campus interviews and associate recruiting for the New York office. She says she was cut out of meetings she had long run and left out of personnel decisions in her own reporting line. She also points to performance criticisms that she says appeared out of nowhere, unsupported by documentation and unlike anything raised in her file before.
The complaint also points to an exchange the month before her disclosure, at an October 2025 team meeting in Houston. Wilson says her supervisor told her, in front of colleagues, "Gosh, I don't see how you have a child, I can't hear you."
For HR leaders, one detail may hit especially close to home. Wilson says she went to the firm's chief human resources officer and its HR manager in early December 2025 to share her pregnancy and, later, to raise concerns about her supervisor's change in behavior. According to the filing, a meeting was agreed to — and then never put on the calendar.
On January 12, 2026, Wilson was let go. The firm's stated reason, she says, was "position elimination." But the filing claims the job wasn't really eliminated: her duties were absorbed by the same subordinate, who was then promoted to Senior Manager of Associate Recruiting. And on the very day Wilson was terminated, she says, the firm finalized the hire of a direct report who would have reported to her.
Wilson is seeking back pay, front pay, more than $1 million in compensatory damages, $1 million in punitive damages, and additional relief under state and federal law.
The claims are allegations and have not been tested in court. Pillsbury has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled on the merits.
