Former senior investigator Brittany Gibson filed a lawsuit against USC this May alleging retaliation and disability discrimination from 2023-2025, according to court documents obtained anonymously and verified as authentic by Annenberg Media.
The lawsuit is the third of its kind to emerge this year after Cheryl Piazzola, a former employee at the Keck School of Medicine, and Sandra Parra, a former advisor at the Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, filed separate wrongful termination lawsuits. Gibson’s termination last June emerged as university-wide layoffs, which reached over 1,000 employees, began last July.
Gibson is requesting compensation for 10 charges over whistleblower retaliation, disability discrimination and failure to provide accommodation, among other related claims.
In a statement to Annenberg Media about Gibson’s lawsuit, the university said it “takes allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously. We believe the claims are without merit and we look forward to defending the university in court.”
According to court documents, Gibson, a former employee at the Office of Civil Rights Compliance from 2021-2025, was tasked with investigating a retaliation claim from a graduate student. The student had alleged that the Department of Financial Aid retaliated against her after denying her loan request based on her projected income and a complaint she filed against the associate dean of financial aid, who was involved in overseeing the student’s request.
Gibson confirmed these allegations in her findings, writing that USC’s stated reasons for refusing to originate the graduate student’s loan violated USC’s financial policy, as well as a federal regulatory code for determining loan eligibility and amount, the lawsuit stated. The code forbids certain discriminatory patterns and practices within university lending, according to the Code of Federal Regulations.
Gibson said that her supervisors asked her to remove reference to the federal code violation in her final report. After maintaining her findings, Gibson met with her supervisors again, who provided Gibson with a 90-day performance improvement plan, according to the lawsuit.
Before she could begin the plan, Gibson was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression and was placed on medical leave, the lawsuit states. After 12 weeks of recognized time off, she requested an additional 30 days of accommodation on May 19, 2025, but USC fired her on May 30, 2025.
The lawsuit states that termination happened without acknowledgement of her retaliation complaint or permission to complete her improvement plan.
In a statement to Annenberg Media, Elvin Tabah, Gibson’s attorney wrote that Gibson “cares about justice” and hopes for the Office of Civil Rights Compliance to “commit to integrity and better leadership.”
Tabah added, “[Ms. Gibson] hopes to make it transparent that in addition to causing her great personal harm, the Office of Civil Rights Compliance has taken efforts to suppress evidence of misconduct within the USC community.”
The university did not reply for comment on Tabah’s remarks.
Since her termination last June, just before university-wide layoffs began, Gibson has “continued to suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and severe emotional distress” in addition to “lost wages, lost benefits and lost future earnings,” the lawsuit stated.
Edited by Scott Hills and Katherine Contreras Hernandez.