She pursued an EEO complaint. Hours later, the accusation hit
A former federal contractor says Booz Allen Hamilton denied her a temporary building transfer - then fired her over a threat she insists she never made.
Christy J. Seelie filed suit against Booz Allen Hamilton on May 5, 2026, in the US District Court for the Western District of Virginia, alleging disability discrimination, harassment, failure to accommodate, and retaliatory discharge under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Virginia Human Rights Act. She is seeking $1 million.
For HR teams, the complaint reads like a sequence chart of how an accommodation request can spiral into a retaliation claim.
Seelie was a Senior Knowledge Manager on Booz Allen's Army contract at the National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. She earned $115,000 a year plus benefits, supporting work for the Analytic Methodologist and Site Threats project. The complaint says she had been at the site, in various roles, for nearly six years.
In late January 2025, she began having trouble breathing. Throat closures. Swollen lymph nodes. Rashes. The complaint says she visited several emergency departments over three weeks and saw oncology, hematology, and laryngology specialists. In June 2025, after she was fired, she was diagnosed with systemic mastocytosis, a rare blood cancer.
On February 10, 2025, her primary care physician sent a letter asking that Seelie be allowed a "trial of work from another on-site location" - the Nicholson Building, next door to the one where she worked - to see whether her symptoms eased in a different environment. Her duties would not change.
The filing says employees on her team routinely worked in both buildings, and that Booz Allen and the Army's contract officer's representative had previously approved two other workers for the same move without a formal accommodation request. The former Knowledge Manager Seelie replaced had also been allowed to telework for three weeks, the complaint says.
Seelie alleges that Booz Allen's program manager, Richard Reynolds, forwarded her request to the Army's contract officer's representative, who refused it without giving a reason. When Seelie pressed for the email correspondence, Reynolds told her he "had to speak with Booz lawyers" before he could share it, the complaint says. There was no interactive process - the back-and-forth the ADA requires when an accommodation is on the table.
On February 21, she contacted an EEO representative at the Army site and told her direct supervisor at E&M, the subcontractor that hired her. On February 26, the same day she told her supervisor she was moving forward with an informal EEO complaint, Reynolds asked the supervisor for an update on that complaint, according to the filing.
That evening, Seelie was told someone had reported she threatened to "burn down the [NGIC] building, the contract, or the COR." She denied it and demanded an investigation, the filing says.
The next day, she was fired. Her supervisor told her Booz Allen had directed the termination, citing "personal threats to the COR, talking about DOGE, and vulgar language in the workplace," according to the complaint.
Seelie alleges Reynolds was the source of the burn-down accusation. The complaint says he retracted it the day after the firing, stating the supposed threat "was not one of physical violence."
E&M, the subcontractor, tried to place Seelie elsewhere. The complaint says the only comparable role was in Maryland, a driving commute of over two hours from her home with no telework option. She lost that job too. In September 2025, she found another role at the same Army site under a different contractor - for roughly $25,000 less a year.
The complaint alleges Booz Allen and E&M were "joint employers," a framing that, if accepted by the court, would put accommodation and anti-retaliation duties on the prime contractor. It is a reminder for HR teams that contracting structures rarely shield a company from ADA obligations when it directs hiring, supervision, or firing decisions.
The fact pattern in the filing hits several pressure points HR readers will recognize: an accommodation denied without a documented hardship analysis, no interactive process, treatment the complaint describes as inconsistent with how similar requests were handled in the past, and an adverse action that landed within days of protected EEO activity.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Booz Allen Hamilton has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled on the claims.
