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Suit alleging dad bias at Jones Day resolved after ruling on memo

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 26, 2025, 2:46 pm CST

Jones Day and two former associates have resolved a lawsuit alleging that the law firm’s family leave policy discriminates against male attorneys.

The firm and the plaintiffs, Mark Savignac and his wife, Julia Sheketoff, filed a stipulation to dismiss all claims Feb. 25, report Reuters, Law360 and Bloomberg Law.

The challenged policy granted 18 weeks of paid leave to new mothers who are primary caregivers but only 10 weeks to biological fathers in the same situation. The extra eight weeks for mothers were labeled disability leave, but the reality was that all biological mothers were given the extra paid time off, the August 2019 suit alleged.

The two lawyers say they complained about the Jones Day policies in a January 2019 email after Sheketoff left the firm to become an appellate public defender. Savignac was fired three business days later.

U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss of Washington, D.C., had allowed seven suit claims to go to trial in a September 2024 order, including sex-discrimination claims related to the family leave policy and retaliation claims related to Savignac’s firing.

In January, Moss ruled that Jones Day had to provide the plaintiffs with portions of a 1993 memo discussing the leave policy, according to Law360 and a prior Bloomberg Law story. A settlement conference in the suit happened Feb. 11.

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