- Kelly Stonelake, who worked for Meta for 15 years, filed a lawsuit on Feb. 3 against the company, alleging sex discrimination and retaliation
- “When I escalated these problems, I became the problem – a pattern that widens the wealth gap and silences women everywhere,” Stonelake said in a statement
A former Meta employee has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging a “toxic pattern of silencing women,” legal action which followed recent comments made by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerbergabout a need for more “masculine energy” in the “corporate world.”
According to a 31-page complaint filed in Washington state’s King County Superior Court on Monday, Feb. 3, and obtained by PEOPLE, Kelly Stonelake is suing the company on claims of sex discrimination and retaliation.
“For 15 years, I was trusted to lead Meta’s most strategic and exciting work,” said Stonelake, who held a number of job titles throughout her tenure with the company, in a press statement shared with PEOPLE on Monday, Feb. 10.
“Two years ago, when I was asked to lead the launch of Horizon, Meta’s ambitious virtual reality platform – I was thrilled,” she continued. “What I soon discovered was horrifying: a product where users with Black avatars faced racial slurs within seconds, and children exposed to sexual harassment and bullying were inadequately protected.”
“When I escalated these problems, I became the problem – a pattern that widens the wealth gap and silences women everywhere,” she continued. “The truth doesn’t matter to [Meta founder] Mark Zuckerberg, but it matters to me.”
Stonelake added, “My position of privilege means I have both the resources and responsibility to speak up. But the discrimination and hostile work environment I experienced happens at every level, in every industry.”
Kelly Stonelake.
Courtesy of Breskin Johnson & Townsend PLLC
According to the complaint, Stonelake — who began working at Meta (then Facebook) in 2009 — alleged that she began witnessing and experiencing “rampant and unmanaged discrimination” and harassment almost immediately.
Then in 2011, she claimed her manager sexually assaulted her during a business trip and allegedly told her on a separate occasion that she would not get promoted “unless she had sex with him,” according to the complaint. She went on to claim that she eventually reported his alleged harassment, but that “no action was taken.”
Speaking with British newspaper The Times, Stonelake said that at the start of her career, she was willing to chalk these incidents up to the “mistakes and errors of those individuals.”
But, according to the complaint, as Stonelake rose through the ranks at the company, she faced “persistent discrimination” and accused the company of repeatedly dismissing her concerns.
For instance, in 2020, the complaint stated that Stonelake “questioned her boss’s ‘Blue Lives Matter’ profile picture following George Floyd’s murder due to the negative impact she feared it would have on their large and diverse team.” In response, she claimed her boss “met her with immediate hostility and retaliation and blocked her from an earned promotion.”
Then in 2022, while she was heading Meta’s Horizon virtual reality platform expansion, Stonelake allegedly identified product stability and safety issues that put children “at risk of immediate exposure to hate speech, sexual harassment, and bullying,” according to the suit. But when she backed a female colleague’s request to put a pause on the rollout, she was allegedly ordered by Meta’s Horizon Leadership Team to “silence” her colleague.
Stonelake further alleged that when she refused, she was excluded from weekly leadership meetings.
Additionally, in January 2023, the complaint stated that Stonelake was told she would be denied a promotion because documenting her achievements “would expose failures by male leaders whose support she needed.”
The growing pressures of meeting Meta’s goals coupled with feelings of marginalization prompted Stionelake to seek emergency medical leave the following month “due to feelings of depression and the sudden, strong desire to end her life.”
Stonelake was later notified in September 2023 that she would be laid off and her last day at the company took place the following February.
“Kelly Stonelake’s experience is not an anomaly—it is an example of how Meta treats women who stand up for integrity and compliance,” attorney Cindy Heidelberg, of the firm Breskin Johnson & Townsend PLLC, who is representing Stonelake, added in a statement to PEOPLE. “Meta’s pattern of retaliation against women who expose problems is not just unethical—it’s illegal. This case seeks to bring accountability and protect other women from facing the same retaliation.”
The lawsuit was filed in the wake of comments Zuckerberg made during a podcast interview with Joe Rogan in January. As reported by Fortune, Zuckerberg said that companies are lacking “masculine energy” and instead have embraced “feminine energy” too much.
“It’s one thing to say we want to be welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and it’s another to basically say masculinity is bad,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “We swung culturally to that part of the spectrum—masculinity is toxic, we have to get rid of it.”
On Zuckerberg’s recent comments, Stonelake, told the outlet: “If you have a rampant problem of women not feeling safe doing their jobs at all and your solution is to call for more masculinity, it’s irresponsible, it’s reckless, and it will hurt people.”
Meta has also scaled back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) amid a “shifting legal and policy landscape,” BBC News reported. Additionally, the social media conglomerate revised its community standards to specifically allow its users to characterize gay and transgender identities as “mental illness.”
In the weeks before President Donald Trump took office, the company also announced it would away from its third-party fact-checking program, which Zuckerberg — who was present at Trump’s inauguration — called a move to “get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
