St. Pete woman seeks $10M in discrimination lawsuit against employer

A St. Petersburg woman who claims to have generated more than $26 million in revenue while working for a genomic diagnostics company alleges she was forced to quit her job after experiencing discrimination due to her high-risk pregnancy and disabilities, as well as interference with her protected leave. 

The high-performing sales executive, Shantal Ligon, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California against San Francisco-based Veracyte, her former employer. Ligon worked as a genomic specialist for Veracyte from November 2020 to February of this year, the lawsuit says, serving hospitals and physicians from across the Tampa Bay area, including BayCare, Tampa General Endocrinology and Sarasota Memorial Hospital. The lawsuit was filed in San Mateo County Superior Court.

Ligon, in court filings, alleges a pattern of discrimination at Veracyte due to her disabilities, retaliation and accommodation failures that intensified after she disclosed a high-risk pregnancy in 2024. 

The lawsuit claims the company’s actions violated California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. She seeks at least $10 million in damages and other relief under California law for lost wages and benefits as well as emotional and physical distress and damage to her career. 

Phone calls and an email to Veracyte Thursday seeking comment were not returned.

Five-year tenure

Veracyte is a global genomic diagnostics company that provides molecular tests to help clinicians accurately diagnose, monitor and treat various cancers without invasive procedures or surgeries. Its flagship product, Afirma, uses genomic sequencing to analyze nodules for thyroid cancer. As a genomic specialist, Ligon sold Afirma tests to physicians and hospitals throughout the Tampa Bay region and provided support to clients, the lawsuit says.

Throughout her more than five-year tenure with Veracyte, Ligon was one of the company’s most successful employees nationally, according to her 46-page complaint. She won multiple sales awards while working for the company, was recognized by its President’s Club and was even given a spot on Veracyte’s 2025 President’s Club Leaderboard for meeting or exceeding her sales goals. 

"Employers cannot celebrate an employee's success when she's making them money and then treat her as a problem when she becomes pregnant,” says Ligon’s lawyer, Los Angeles civil rights attorney V. James DeSimone, in a statement to the Business Observer. “Pregnancy is not a performance issue. Requesting accommodations is not a performance issue. Taking protected leave is not a performance issue. Yet those events were used against Ms. Ligon and she was treated as an inferior by her supervisor while Human Resources did nothing to protect her and instead, doubled down on the mistreatment."

In November 2021, about one year after joining the company, Ligon submitted a voluntary disability disclosure to her employer that stated she is diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder and rheumatoid arthritis, the complaint says. However, the lawsuit alleges that Veracyte did not offer Ligon a Disability Accommodation Request form until June 2024 — nearly four years after her hire date and just before she was scheduled to begin pregnancy leave. Veracyte failed to engage in the legally required interactive process for accommodations, the complaint says, and even though the company did eventually approve accommodations recommended by Ligon’s physician, they were never implemented. 

The lawsuit also claims that Ligon’s supervisor began a “discriminatory campaign” against her after she disclosed her pregnancy in May 2024 — keeping her on phone calls beyond normal working hours, gaslighting her, ignoring her messages and isolating her from escalating complaints to management. 

According to the complaint, Ligon’s supervisor pressured her to work at a Florida Endocrine Association event even though she was seven to eight months pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy and her physician advised against it. When she did not work at the event, her supervisor wrote in her performance review that she “suddenly had a high-risk pregnancy” despite his knowledge of her condition and, the lawsuit contends, separately confronted her about it in public at a restaurant in the Tampa International Airport. 

Formal complaints 

Ligon took leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act from Aug. 5, 2024 to Nov. 11, 2024, during which time Veracyte failed to provide any in-person coverage for Ligon’s territory despite doing so for other absent representatives, the complaint says. During that time, BayCare Hospital, one of Ligon’s largest accounts, experienced critical issues with multiple Afirma tests failing to produce clinical results. Veracyte failed to handle the problem, the lawsuit says, and Ligon had to continue communicating with customers while on protected leave. 

During this time, formal complaints to Veracyte’s HR department and requests to transfer resulted in a “flawed investigation” with no action taken, the complaint says. 

In June 2025, Veracyte placed Ligon on a Performance Improvement Plan, even though she remained ranked among the top genomic specialists nationally on the company’s 2025 President’s Club Leaderboard, the lawsuit contends. The PIP criticized Ligon for spending minimal time in the field, but neglected to acknowledge that hurricanes Helene and Milton had damaged her vehicle and disrupted her fieldwork, the complaint says. It also claimed she had “insufficient conference participation” even though she worked two industry conferences during that time on her own without assistance from colleagues, she contends in court papers. 

The lawsuit alleges Ligon was ultimately forced to resign from her position at Veracyte in February 2026 after enduring discrimination, retaliation and repeated failures to accommodate her disabilities and pregnancy-related needs. (Ligon, according to her LinkedIn profile, is now a prenatal account manager with BillionToOne, a molecular diagnostics firm. 

"Ms. Ligon was forced to choose between her health and her job at Veracyte and she had no choice but to preserve her health and life,” DeSimone says in the statement.