Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—SEX—E.D. Pa.: Supervisor’s ‘mommy brain’ remark supports discharged employee’s sex discrimination claim, (May 19, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

Alleged comments by the employee’s supervisor portrayed her as less dedicated to or focused on her work and showed a lack of confidence on his part in her ability to balance her job and family.

Because a marketing manager for an e-commerce platform provider who gave birth approximately six months before she was fired in a RIF failed to tie her termination to her pregnancy, the birth of her child, or her labor, a federal court in Pennsylvania granted summary judgment against her Title VII pregnancy discrimination claim. Allowing her sex discrimination claim to advance to trial, however, the court found alleged comments by her supervisor, including that she had “mommy brain,” manifested sex-based stereotypes about working mothers (Tomiak v. Unilog Content Solutions, LLC, No. 25-1685 (E.D. Pa. May 14, 2026)).

The employee, who began working for the company in 2019 as digital marketing specialist, twice won “Star Employee of the Quarter” and received perfect or near-perfect performance reviews in 2021 and 2022. In May 2022, she learned she was pregnant, and shortly thereafter, she informed the HR manager and her supervisor and told them of her plans to take maternity leave.

Promotion. In July, she was promoted to Demand Generation Manager and was tasked with developing and executing demand generation initiatives to drive new leads and nurture existing ones, among other things. Because the marketing department was thinly staffed, the employee had to perform work beyond her job description until the company hired two additional staff members.

Maternity leave. She gave birth to her daughter in January, and while she was on maternity leave, the company decided that a reduction in force was required to address underperformance concerns and budget restraints. Accordingly, in March, 15 employees were laid off, none of whom were from the marketing department. At the same time, the company began a massive business transition.

Around that same time, the employee purportedly began to feel her supervisor held her pregnancy and maternity leave against her, including by giving her a smaller bonus while she was on leave, in part because she did not transition all her responsibilities to others before her leave, which was due in part to reasons beyond her control. When she returned from leave, her supervisor told her that, while she could download an app to watch her daughter at daycare, it was not “a good idea because she would never do any work, never get anything done.”

Mommy brain. Several weeks later, the supervisor purportedly stated at the end of a meeting attended by company executives that the employee did not make any comments during the meeting because she “is too busy looking at her watch to see if it’s time to pick the baby up. She has mommy brain.” The supervisor denied making this comment. In May, the employee received a performance review ranking that was lower than her previous years’ rankings.

RIF’d. In July, purportedly due to the company’s continued financial decline, the supervisor decided to eliminate the employee’s position because it had “less impact to the performance of the business than other roles.” That same day, the company rehired a male employee to work in the marketing department.

Pregnancy discrimination claim. Addressing first the employee’s Title VII pregnancy discrimination claim, the court noted that she was not pregnant at the time of her termination and thus she could not demonstrate membership in a protected class. And although Title VII protects women throughout the period in which they remain “affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” she did not tie her claim to being pregnant, her labor, or any related medical conditions of pregnancy or childbirth, said the court, granting summary judgment against this claim.

Sex discrimination. As to her sex discrimination claim, the court noted that because she was terminated in the context of a corporate restructuring, she had to show her responsibilities were transferred to employees outside of her protected class. And here, said the court, it was undisputed her job duties were either completely dropped or were redistributed to other employees, including a contractor. Moreover, the court found a genuine dispute about whether the male rehired into the marketing department on the same day she was terminated assumed her duties and effectively replaced her.

Pretext evidence. Though the company argued it fired the employee for a legitimate reason—it could afford to eliminate her position with less impact to the performance of the business than other roles—the employee argued that this was pretextual. Specifically, she pointed to her supervisor’s comment to his colleagues that he had doubts about whether she would return from maternity leave, because “I always would put that expectation in the back of my mind.”

In addition, he advised the employee not to download the app that would allow her to view her daughter at daycare because “she would never do any work, never get any work done.” And finally, during the meeting with other executives, he stated that the employee had “mommy brain.” When viewed in a light most favorable to the employee, said the court, these comments “manifest sex-based stereotypes about working mothers.”

Maternal wall. Specifically, the court observed, the comments portray the employee as less dedicated to or focused on her work and simultaneously betray a lack of confidence on her supervisor’s part in her ability to balance her job and family. “This bias,” the court explained, “comprises one facet of the ‘maternal wall,’ a term that broadly describes how working mothers’ professional competence is often unfairly measured using traditional conceptions of gender roles—specifically, women as caregivers.” The maternal wall, the court continued, “is rooted in a sensible recognition that all working parents—men and women—must balance competing work and family demands. But it is discriminatory insofar as it assumes that, for working mothers in particular, ‘family duties trump those of the workplace.’”

And while the company, focusing solely on the “mommy brain” comment, argued that it was an isolated or stray remark, the court pointed out that it was made shortly before the termination decision, it concerned the employee’s work generally, and it embodied sex-based stereotyping. In addition, said the court, the supervisor stated that he fired the employee based on two considerations: reducing fixed costs and assessing who would be most likely to “generate the most positive outcome for growing the business or recovering from the financial situation that [it was] in.”

As to the latter factor, the court found the evidence reasonably suggested he identified the employee, the company’s longest-tenured marketing employee at the time, as the least-impact cut because he assumed she was “insufficiently devoted to work” at a moment when the company’s financial conditions made employee devotion paramount. Moreover, on the same day he fired the employee, he hired a man into the marketing department to do work the employee claimed was part of her role. Accordingly, the court found summary judgment inappropriate on this claim.

Retaliation. Granting summary judgment against her FMLA, Title VII, and state-law retaliation claims, however, the court found she failed to establish evidence of pretext. While she noted that the company hired two marketing employees just months before her termination, and it did not include any marketing employees in the March 2023 RIF, the court pointed out that the new employees were hired in late 2022 and the company did not realize its financial difficulties until January 2023 and thus the hiring decisions predated the financial circumstances upon which it relied in terminating the employee.

As to the March RIF, the supervisor stated that he made significant cuts elsewhere in order to retain marketing employees and the increasing budget constraints after the RIF eventually prompted the employee’s termination.

The employee also argued that if cost reduction was really the company’s objective, it could have terminated the two newer employees, whose salaries exceeded hers, and not have hired the male employee on the same day she was fired. But here, said the court, the employee was improperly attempting to establish pretext by second-guessing the company’s business judgment, and she could not discredit its stated rationale by merely suggesting that different decisions might have achieved even greater savings.

One-person RIF. And while the employee next noted that she was the only employee terminated on July 14, 2023, the court pointed out that “Third Circuit caselaw indicates that one-person RIFs are a relatively common business practice that, standing alone, do not tend to establish an inference of pretext.” Nor was this inconsistent with the company’s assertion that it fired the employee in order to reduce fixed marketing costs. Finding that the employee also failed to show a retaliatory reason more likely than not caused her termination, the court granted summary judgment against her retaliation claims.

The case is No. 25-1685.

Judge: Beetlestone, W.

Attorneys: Lauren C. Bateman (Console Mattiacci Law) for Nicole Tomiak. Daniel Turinsky (DLA Piper) for Unilog Content Solutions, LLC.

Companies: Unilog Content Solutions, LLC

Cases: SexDiscrimination PregnancyDiscrimination Discrimination Retaliation Discharge PennsylvaniaNews