Slurs allegedly started almost immediately after the director's October 2025 rehire
A software engineering director has sued Honeywell, alleging his supervisor hurled ethnicity and age slurs then fired him after he complained.
The complaint, filed November 4, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, names both the Fortune 500 manufacturer and the worker's direct supervisor as defendants across 12 federal counts.
Rehired, then targeted
The worker, who is of Indian national origin and Bengali ethnicity, was rehired by Honeywell in October 2025 as a director of software engineering within Honeywell Connected Industrial. He had previously held senior software engineering leadership roles at Honeywell from 2016 to 2019, where the complaint says he had no history of performance issues and consistently received "meets expectations" or "exceeds expectations" ratings.
According to the filing, things turned almost immediately. The worker reported to a vice president and chief technology officer within the division, and the complaint alleges the supervisor began subjecting him to "severe and pervasive discriminatory behavior" based on his age and ethnicity shortly after his start date. The worker was born in 1978 and was over 40 at all relevant times.
The complaint details a string of alleged comments. According to the filing, the supervisor referred to the worker as a "buddhow" - a Hindi term for "old man" - and told him Honeywell should have hired one of the younger applicants because "[t]hey would have worked out much better than your sorry old ass." The filing also alleges the supervisor said, "This is the problem with you Bengalis—you are just lazy assholes," and openly called the worker "just an old, bald Bengali."
A PIP five days after family leave
Over the Thanksgiving holiday in November 2025, the worker's wife suffered a medical emergency requiring hospitalization and emergency surgery, the complaint says. The worker notified both his supervisor and an HR representative and was absent from December 1 to December 3, 2025. Management assured him there was no issue with taking time off, according to the filing.
Five days after his return, on December 8, 2025, the supervisor placed the worker on a performance improvement plan (PIP). The complaint alleges the PIP's descriptions of performance deficiencies were "vague and often nonsensical" and gave the worker "limited information" about what the specific concerns or improvement metrics actually were.
On December 12, the worker submitted a written response to the PIP through the HR representative, flagging what the complaint describes as "numerous facts indicating that the PIP was motivated by underlying ethnicity and age based discriminatory animus" and that the performance concerns were pretextual - meaning they were a cover for the real motive. A week later, on December 19, he filed a formal ethics complaint with Honeywell's HR department. The complaint alleges he then participated in an internal HR investigation interview on December 29 and provided additional supporting documents on January 5, 2026.
Fired a month after the ethics complaint
Honeywell terminated the worker on February 5, 2026 - approximately one month after his most recent participation in the internal investigation - citing failure to comply with the PIP. The complaint alleges the company "did not provide Dasgupta with any proof or evidence of underperformance to justify the termination." The filing asserts the supervisor was "the ultimate decision making official responsible for" the termination and had "actual knowledge" of the worker's discrimination complaints before making that decision.
The complaint further alleges Honeywell "did not take any meaningful steps to prevent or curtail" the supervisor's conduct, despite being notified through both the PIP response and the ethics complaint. The worker filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on March 11, 2026, and received his right-to-sue notice on August 11, 2026. His lawsuit brings claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, federal civil rights law, and federal age discrimination law, seeking backpay, compensatory and punitive damages, reinstatement or front pay, and legal fees.
For HR teams, the complaint raises a pointed question: what happens when the person accused of discrimination retains direct authority over the complainant's employment - including the power to fire them - while an internal investigation runs in parallel? According to the filing, the supervisor told the worker: "I don't have time to explain this to a buddhow like you. Why are you so fucking stupid?"
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any findings or rulings on the claims.
