After the Dow Jones' Wall Street Journal newsroom underwent a major restructuring in 2024, the company now faces an unsettling lawsuit.
Stephanie Armour, a former senior health reporter who worked at the Journal between 2013 and 2024, sued the news outlet for “a series of unlawful and retaliatory actions” surrounding her disability accommodations, which allowed her to work from home. She alleges that her supervisors often expressed “hostility” towards her for working remotely and gave her “unreasonable” performance benchmarks to use as grounds to terminate her employment.
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In the lawsuit, which was filed on July 9, Armour claims that she had an Americans with Disabilities Act accommodation for her anxiety and PTSD, which allowed her to work from home two days a week at the company.
After the Covid pandemic forced all of the Journal’s employees to work from home full-time, in 2022, the company began asking employees to return to working in the office. Armour claims that at that time, leadership agreed to allow her to work from home due to her disability accommodation as well as her son’s medical issues. She was working in the office one to two days a week.
She alleges that despite her supervisor describing her work as “stellar” and “amazing,” winning a Pulitzer Prize and earning a performance bonus between 2019 and 2024 (all while working remotely), her accommodations became an issue after the Journal restructured its newsroom earlier this year.
“In 2024, after a change in leadership at the WSJ, Ms. Armour’s new supervisors expressed hostility to her disability accommodations,” reads the lawsuit. “When Ms. Armour raised these concerns with her supervisors, they began a series of unlawful and retaliatory actions that discriminated against her in her employment.”
Armour claims in the lawsuit that her supervisor, Janet Adamy, began to “comment negatively” on her remote work accommodations and was told that she had to come into the office to discuss story ideas. After Armour expressed her concerns about this “unusual” requirement to the Journal’s Washington coverage chief, Damian Paletta, he allegedly told her that she was required to be in the office three days a week, and that “two days a week at home was enough flexibility for any medical condition.”
Armour complied with the requirement to return to the office three days a week, which she claims “was having a negative effect on her physical and emotional well-being.” She also alleges that the offices were “empty day-in-and-day-out.”
“Paletta’s refusal to allow Ms. Armour to work remotely was discriminatory (applying only to her), retributive and—on information and belief—intended to cause her distress and force her out of her employment with the WSJ,” reads the lawsuit.
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While complying with the office mandate, Armour applied for an additional reasonable remote work accommodation, which was approved. Armour claims that two weeks after her accommodation was approved, she was sent to a performance warning meeting where she received a formal performance warning, “which is the first step in the WSJ’s termination for cause process,” according to the lawsuit.
Armour was subject to a 30-day review period during which she was given goals that were allegedly “discriminatory/retaliatory and purposefully unattainable.” For example, one of the goals included producing one scoop a week.
“No reporter produces a scoop a week—none,” reads the lawsuit. “Further, to the best of the plaintiff’s knowledge and investigation, no other WSJ journalist is required to produce scoops, period—let alone one a week.”
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She resigned from her position on June 17 after she allegedly learned that Paletta was creating a “false justification to terminate her for cause.”
Armour, who was a union board member, claims that she was targeted after the company’s reorganization because the Journal was allegedly planning to use “trumped up performance issues” as an excuse to fire “union-protected high-wage employees with high health costs/accommodations” in an effort to save money, despite record profits.
“Others targeted to date include: a senior reporter who had just taken extended medical leave; a disabled veteran and reporter who had taken paternity leave and whose leave was mentioned in his performance improvement plan; and, a multiple award-winning reporter who had high medical costs due to a heart condition,” reads the lawsuit. “Because the WSJ self-insures, terminating such employees produces both a wage and cost savings. However, because these employees have seniority, it is difficult to terminate them except for cause.”
Ever since companies began mandating workers to return to offices as the pandemic cooled, there has been a spike in lawsuits against employers for discriminating against employees with anxiety, depression and PTSD. Between 2021 and 2022, there was a 16% increase in lawsuits of this nature, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and advocates believe many were due to employers denying exemptions to employees with mental health issues that would allow them to work from home.
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