Sony Music Settles Lawsuit Claiming Columbia Discriminated Against White Job Applicants

Sony Music has settled a lawsuit filed by a former assistant to Columbia Records chief executive Ron Perry who claimed she was forced to resign after pushing back on hiring practices that allegedly discriminated against white applicants.

In a filing Tuesday (Nov. 19), attorneys for both sides told a federal judge that they had “reached a settlement in principle” to resolve the lawsuit, in which Patria Paulino claimed she was told she could “only hire Black candidates.” Sony had called those accusations “contradictory and false” and was actively seeking to have the case dismissed when the settlement was reached.

The specific terms of the agreement, including whether any money exchanged hands, were not disclosed in court filings. A spokesperson for Sony declined to comment on Wednesday (Nov. 20); an attorney for Paulino did not return a request for comment.

Paulino sued Sony and Perry in February, claiming she had been effectively terminated as retaliation because she pushed back on race-conscious hiring practices.

After being hired in late 2022, Paulino claimed that she was repeatedly told she could not hire white candidates for a vacant assistant role in Perry’s office. She says that Perry had been hit with “multiple racial discrimination complaints by former employees” and that he and the company wanted to “have more color in his office.”

Despite the directives to aim for diversity, Paulino’s lawsuit claimed she “continued to recommend qualified Caucasian applicants” for the role. At one point, when she advanced a particular white candidate, she says that another Sony employee told her in writing: “We can’t hire another white Jewish girl unfortunately.”

The lawsuit came in the wake of a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that outlawed the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education, commonly known as “affirmative action.” Though that ruling didn’t directly deal with hiring or with the state laws at issue in Paulino’s case, it has led to overall increased scrutiny of corporate practices aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion.

A week after Paulino filed her case, Sony asked the judge to toss it out of court. Far from being effectively terminated, Sony said she had instead “voluntarily resigned after receiving unfavorable performance feedback.” The label said she had filed her case simply “to harass her former employer and boss” with a “contradictory and false” lawsuit.

“She alleges … that defendants both discriminated against her because they preferred white employees but also constructively discharged her because she would not play along with their preference for non-white employees,” the label’s lawyers wrote, adding the italics themselves for emphasis. “In reality, plaintiff worked for Sony … for less than five months, performed poorly, and was a willing participant in the entirely legal hiring practices she now alleges were discriminatory.”