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Firm failed to honor exit package after retaliating for bias complaint, former BigLaw partner alleges

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 29, 2025, 10:53 am CDT

A former salaried partner at Womble Bond Dickinson has filed a lawsuit alleging that the law firm cut her pay by half and offered her an exit package—which it didn’t honor—after she complained about a hostile work environment.

The April 25 suit filed by Wilka Toppins alleges race and gender discrimination, retaliation, misrepresentation and breach of contract.

Law360 has a story on the suit, filed in Harris County, Texas.

Toppins, who is Hispanic, said she accomplished “a great deal of origination and a large book of business” after she began work at the firm’s Houston office in November 2021, despite receiving inadequate support.

For a majority of her time at the firm, Toppins “had no associate help and no secretarial help,” the suit said. She was also subjected to a “very hostile work environment” by firm members and support staff in her corporate and securities practice group, according to the suit.

“The disparity in treatment included not providing sufficient support, attempting to take away plaintiff’s immigration clients and business, speaking to plaintiff in a derogatory and condescending manner, and failing to fulfill basic promises to her,” the suit said.

Toppins was the only Hispanic female in the entire firm at the time of her hiring, according to the suit.

After Toppins complained, the firm said it would investigate. Eventually, Toppins was told that the firm found that she was subjected to a hostile work environment, but it was not because she was a member of a protected class.

A pattern of retaliation followed, the suit said. Toppins’ pay was cut from $350,000 to $175,000, and she was told that if she did not like the new salary, the firm would be happy to “transition her off,” according to the suit.

After Toppins sought restoration of her pay, Womble Bond Dickinson offered her an exit package consisting of a 10% referral agreement, a contract position for immigration work and a severance agreement. Relying on the agreement, Toppins resigned in January 2024.

The firm then failed to honor the agreement under the exit package, the suit said.

A spokesperson for Womble Bond Dickinson did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s request for comment made in an email and a voicemail.

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A nurse at a county jail in Minnesota is facing a manslaughter charge nearly six years after an inmate under her care died in a case that’s already resulted in a $2.6 million lawsuit and a new law in the victim’s name to ensure something like that never happens again.

Michelle Rose Skroch, now 37, is facing charges of second-degree manslaughter culpable negligence and two counts of felony criminal neglect, one for “knowingly depriving” inmate Hardel Sherrell of medical care and the second for doing so for an “extended period of time.” A criminal complaint says the 27-year-old Sherrell was booked into the Beltrami County Jail on Aug. 24, 2018. While his blood pressure was high, he was otherwise in good condition in his initial health screening. He had a history of high blood pressure and a recent incident of respiratory failure, the complaint said.

More from Law&Crime: ‘The victim’s face is broken’: Patient viciously attacks nurse for no apparent reason, likely blinding her for life, cops say

Three days after arriving at the jail, Sherrell began complaining of chest pain and said his fingers on his left hand were tingly. Doctors performed an EKG and gave him ibuprofen, Tylenol and an anti-anxiety medication. Sherrell also stated he had stopped taking his blood pressure medication in January 2018.

Sherrell’s condition continued to worsen over the ensuing days and kept falling out of his bunk bed and was unable to stand up. He said he was unable to feel his legs. A nurse went to check on him on Aug. 31, 2018, and found him lying on a mat in his cell and not able to move. His mouth also was drooping and his speech was slurred.

A jail doctor opined that Sherrell may be suffering from Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder affecting the peripheral nervous system. Sherrell went to the hospital where an emergency room physician diagnosed him with “malingering and weakness” as he was able to move his legs. They sent him back to jail after an MRI found no abnormalities, the complaint said. The ER doc instructed him to return to the hospital if he had a fever, signs of stoke and/or worsening weakness.

Skroch, who worked for MEnD Correctional Care, LLC which was contracted to provide medical services at the jail, came to work on Sept. 1, 2018, and was advised about Sherrell’s condition. When she went to see him, she allegedly just stood at his cell door and “never conducted a standard, basic nursing assessment.” She told Sherrell to “get up and walk” and that “there was nothing wrong with him and he could get up and walk if he wanted to,” according to the complaint. Sherrell “pleaded” for medical attention but Skroch allegedly said she “would not bargain with him.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Jan. 17 upholding the federal law banning TikTok continues a long history of judicial deference to claims of national security. The ruling upholds a federal statute that bans a medium of communication that is used by more than 170 million people in the United States. The speech of all who generate content for it and all who receive it is restricted by this law. It is difficult to think of any law in American history that restricted so much speech for so many people.

TikTok stopped operating in the United States for a brief time after the court’s decision. Upon taking office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order delaying the TikTok ban from going into effect for 75 days. It is questionable whether he has the authority to do this under the federal statute. But if no court enjoins his order, TikTok at least has a temporary reprieve. The ultimate fate of TikTok in this United States remains uncertain.

Factual background

On April 24, 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law. The act identifies the People’s Republic of China and three other countries as foreign adversaries of the United States and prohibits the distribution or maintenance of “foreign adversary controlled applications.” The law prohibited TikTok in the United States as of Jan. 19, unless its owner, ByteDance, had sold it by then.

Under the law, the president may grant a 90-day extension if there is significant progress being made toward a sale of TikTok. ByteDance has given no indication that it is interested in a sale, so it is difficult to see President Trump’s action fitting within this statutory authority.

On Dec. 6, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the federal law outlawing TikTok. The judges acknowledged the impact of the law on freedom of speech, but they accepted the government’s argument that national security concerns justified the ban.

First, the court said China, through TikTok, could gather information about those in the United States. Second, the court said China could attempt to use TikTok to influence attitudes, including about politics, in this country.

Supreme Court decision

The Supreme Court granted certiorari and scheduled oral argument for Jan. 10. A week later, the court unanimously affirmed the D.C. Circuit in a per curiam opinion.

At the outset, the court said there was the question of whether “heightened review” was appropriate when there was a regulation of nonexpressive activity (ownership of a platform) that disproportionately burdens those engaged in expressive activity (those who post on TikTok and receive information there). The court did not resolve that issue, instead declaring, “We assume without deciding that the challenged provisions fall within this category and are subject to First Amendment scrutiny.”

The court began by reciting the familiar principle that content-based regulations must meet strict scrutiny, while content neutral laws only need meet intermediate scrutiny. Under strict scrutiny, a law must be necessary to achieve a compelling purpose, while under intermediate scrutiny, a law only need be substantially related to an important purpose. A law is deemed content-based if either it restricts speech based on its topic or its viewpoint.

The court said that “As applied to petitioners, the challenged provisions are facially content neutral and are justified by a content-neutral rationale.” The court explained that the federal statute was content- neutral because it prohibited all speech over TikTok in the United States, whatever its topic and whatever its viewpoint.

The court identified the government’s purpose as preventing China, a foreign adversary, from gathering large amounts of information on Americans using the platform. And it expressly declared that this was a sufficiently important interest to meet intermediate scrutiny: “The act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adversary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This objective qualifies as an important Government interest under intermediate scrutiny.”

The court said China could gather vast amounts of information about users of TikTok that could include enabling “China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.” The court stressed that the case arose in the context of “national security and foreign policy,” and therefore concluded that “we must accord substantial deference to the predictive judgments of Congress.”

Notably, the court did not echo the D.C. Circuit’s conclusion that the TikTok ban was justified because China might use it to influence attitudes in the United States. The premise of the First Amendment is that more speech is inherently better, regardless of its source. Restricting speech because it might change minds is antithetical to the First Amendment. Even during the height of the Cold War, the United States allowed the Russian newspaper Pravda to be sold in this country.

The challengers argued that the purpose of the federal law was to prevent TikTok to be used to convey particular views. The court acknowledged that no prior cases had determined “the appropriate level of First Amendment scrutiny for an act of Congress justified on both content-neutral and content-based grounds.”

The court said it did not need to decide that issue, but then effectively did by declaring: “The record before us adequately supports the conclusion that Congress would have passed the challenged provisions based on the data collection justification alone.” This is an important clarification of First Amendment law: If a government action is justified by both content-based and content-neutral rationales, it will be treated as content-neutral so long as the court is convinced that the law would have been adopted anyway based on the content-neutral rationale.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred in part and concurred in the judgment. She agreed with the decision but said the court should have held, not just assumed, that the ban on TikTok is expressive activity. She said, “TikTok engages in expressive activity by ‘compiling and curating’ material on its platform.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the judgment. He questioned whether the law was actually content-neutral but said it was constitutional under any level of scrutiny. He wrote: “I am persuaded that the law before us seeks to serve a compelling interest: preventing a foreign country, designated by Congress and the president as an adversary of our oation, from harvesting vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”

Analysis

No one in the litigation disputes that TikTok can gain a great deal of information about users of its platform. Nor was it disputed that this information potentially could be obtained by China.

What is missing in the court’s analysis is a discussion of what information China can obtain and how that information can be used to damage national security. It is certainly true that every app allows those administering it to gather information about users. But knowing how many people are watching a dance video hardly seems a basis for endangering the country. Because the federal law is a very significant restriction on speech there must be a real, proven danger, not conjecture.

None of the briefs elaborates this, either. Nor is it the case that the court relied on secret information provided by the government to justify the law. Justice Gorsuch observed: “I am pleased that the court declines to consider the classified evidence the government has submitted to us but shielded from petitioners and their counsel.”

The court should have explained in much greater detail what information China could gain from TikTok users and how China possessing this information could harm the United States.

Ultimately then, what explains the court’s conclusion is not a proven likely harm to national security from TikTok. Rather, it is the court giving deference to the government’s claim that TikTok is a threat to national security. There have been many cases throughout American history where the court has professed such deference. But the crucial question is whether such deference is appropriate when it involves a major restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right.

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Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is an expert in constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation. He’s also the author of many books, including No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States and A Court Divided: October Term 2023 (2024).

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This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

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