A second federal lawsuit takes aim at the regulator's own people office, and HR leaders should be watching
A longtime federal HR leader claims the SEC's own human resources office hit her with suspensions, a PIP, and an accommodation denial after she filed EEO complaints.
That, in essence, is the story Dia Gonsalves is telling a federal judge in Washington. Gonsalves, an African American woman who spent 28 years in federal service and roughly a decade as a manager, sued the US Securities and Exchange Commission on May 19, 2026, alleging race and sex discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environment, and denial of a reasonable accommodation under Title VII and the Rehabilitation Act. It is her second lawsuit against the agency; an earlier one, filed in 2024, is still pending before the same court.
Gonsalves joined the SEC's Office of Human Resources in July 2016 as a Branch Chief and held that supervisory role until January 2024, when, she says, the Director of OHR reassigned her to "special projects" on the heels of an unacceptable 2023 rating she disputes. She then began reporting to the Deputy Director of OHR, who also served as the agency's Disability Program Officer overseeing reasonable accommodation requests.
What follows, according to the filing, is a year of escalating workplace squeeze. Gonsalves says she was handed an agency-wide Customer Experience project that a contracting officer's representative warned would take at least seven months and require three people, then was denied staff, contractor support, and credit hours to get it done. A Caucasian colleague tasked with a similar AskHR initiative, she says, received more than a year and dedicated help.
Her telework agreement was revoked twice in 2024, she alleges. An Extended Situational Telework request was denied after she was verbally told it would be approved. A later request for telework as a reasonable accommodation, backed by medical documentation, was turned down. Annual leave in lieu of sick leave was refused, medical notes were required for sick days, and on January 7, 2025, when OPM closed the federal government for a snowstorm, she says she was told to use annual leave anyway.
Then came the discipline. A three-day suspension in January 2025 for teleworking outside her home was followed by a seven-day suspension, proposed in January and upheld in February 2025, for failing to upload working papers to SharePoint by 9 a.m. on January 17 and 23, 2025. The first deadline, the filing notes, fell the day after she finished serving the earlier suspension. An unacceptable 2024 rating and a Performance Improvement Plan landed on April 11, 2025.
The detail likely to catch HR executives' attention sits deeper in the filing. Gonsalves says the US Office of Special Counsel found in 2025 that her supervisor had, at a previous federal employer, "afforded illegal preferences and advantages to multiple applicants" and "pressure[d] subordinates within HR to improperly select unqualified candidates." OSC required a 36-day suspension; the SEC, she says, imposed only five unpaid days. She alleges her own complaints to senior leadership, including the former Chief Operating Officer, went uninvestigated. In November 2024, she was taken from the workplace by ambulance with chest pains.
She is seeking rescission of the rating and suspensions, restored leave, and $300,000 in damages.
The case is Gonsalves v. Atkins, No. 1:26-cv-01711. The allegations have not been tested in court, the SEC has not yet filed a response, and no judge has ruled.
