Her supervisor signed off on the travel twice - then it became a 'policy violation'
A 26-year Eli Lilly veteran says the company fired her after she complained of bias and asked for disability accommodations.
That is the claim in a lawsuit filed July 22, 2026 in the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. The plaintiff, described in the complaint as a Chinese American woman who worked as a senior director in the drugmaker's IT group, alleges a chain of events that began with a work trip her own supervisor had approved.
According to the filing, the director had the authority at her level to approve work travel, including her own. In March 2025 she authorized a trip to a pharmaceutical conference in Boston, where she had been invited to chair a session. Her supervisor approved the expense report before she left and the receipts after she returned, the complaint says.
The filing alleges the treatment shifted after that trip. The director was in a car accident during travel and injured her chest, an injury she says is a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She reported the accident and injuries to the company, according to the complaint. Around April 2025, the filing alleges, a senior manager two levels above her became hostile, and he and her supervisor determined the approved travel was unauthorized. Her supervisor documented a "Travel Policy Violation" in her mid-year performance check-in, the complaint says.
The worker says she raised a fairness concern in June 2025, emailing employee relations that more than eleven colleagues at her level had self-approved similar travel without any citation, and asking whether she was being singled out over her race, sex, or national origin. Around the same time, the complaint says, the company's own health-services team filed a worker's-compensation claim on her behalf that was approved, which she alleges meant the conference had been treated as work-related.
The complaint alleges the company placed her on a performance improvement plan in late June 2025, and that it then failed to follow its own established procedures for supporting and monitoring the plan. On or about July 3, 2025, according to the filing, she filed a charge with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging sex and race discrimination. She alleges she was later assigned deadlines the complaint describes as "designed to overwhelm" her, removed from a high-visibility artificial-intelligence project she says she had advanced through documented milestones and senior sponsorship, and given a year-end rating of "Not Meeting Expectations."
The complaint alleges the end came in early 2026. It says employee relations told her the travel matter had been investigated and the company's actions found appropriate, though she was never interviewed. In February 2026, the filing says, she asked to reopen her worker's-compensation benefits, reported ongoing disabilities, and requested an accommodation and leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, both supported by her physician. The company terminated her on Feb. 17, 2026, according to the complaint.
For HR professionals, the complaint touches several familiar issues. It alleges that one employee was cited for conduct her peers were not, that an approval was reversed after the fact, that the company did not follow its own procedures on a performance plan, and that adverse actions followed soon after protected activity. The worker brings claims under Title VII, the ADA, the FMLA, and Indiana's worker's-compensation retaliation doctrine.
None of these allegations have been tested, and no court has ruled.
