A Former L'oreal Exec Is Suing For Racial Discrimination

JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

A Former L’Oréal Executive Is Suing The Company For Discrimination And Other Issues

A former marketing executive at L’Oréal is now trying to expose the alleged ugly side of the beauty brand in a new lawsuit.

The employee, Amanda Johnson, is suing the cosmetics giant for discrimination along with claiming she endured a toxic work environment while employed with the company.

Johnson claims that she was fired by phone after being promoted to assistant VP of digital marketing. She also says her boss Dan Bethelmy Rada would have “all-night benders and hotel parties . . . for which Rada expected Johnson to enlist ‘recruits,’ ” the suit explains, which was filed in New York federal court.

Johnson is claiming that she witnessed a male executive watching porn during a business meeting, as well as sex-fueled parties at luxury European hotels during work trips, along with rampant racist hostility from management. The complaint also states that Johnson felt physically threatened by a fellow VP, Nicolas Krafft–she claims that she was fired after submitting an internal complaint to Rada.

A L’Oréal spokesperson refuted the claims, calling them “baseless.” They told Page Six the following: “Amanda Johnson was fired for a pattern of unprofessional conduct that surfaced during her final months at the company, including what in our view was abusive and threatening behavior toward colleagues, serious lapses in judgment, and declining performance.” The rep added, “After she was let go, Ms. Johnson raised some alarming allegations about her manager and certain co-workers through a lawyer. We took her allegations seriously and investigated them all with great care, as they had not been reported to [HR] when she was with the company.”

Johnson’s lawyers quickly fired back at this denial, saying, “L’Oréal’s public response to Ms. Johnson’s complaint shows that the company holds underrepresented minorities to a different standard in all respects. L’Oréal again has wrongfully tried to discredit and punish the victim, an African-American woman, by choosing to accept a false version of events as told by a few white employees on its payroll. L’Oréal’s so-called ‘investigation’ conducted ‘with great care’ did not even include asking Ms. Johnson for her side of the story.”