(Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

Three female Morrison & Foerster associates in California have accused the firm of gender discrimination, alleging in a proposed $100 million class action that MoFo routinely holds back mothers and pregnant women, giving them lower pay and promotion opportunities compared to male peers.

“MoFo discriminates against women by permitting its predominantly male leadership to favor men overtly in pay, promotions, and other opportunities regardless of their qualifications and to otherwise discriminate against women, pregnant women and mothers. MoFo leadership fosters or condones a firm culture that marginalizes, demeans and undervalues women and mothers,” the complaint alleged. Sanford Heisler Sharp, the firm representing the female plaintiffs, said the lawsuit was filed Monday morning in San Francisco federal court.

The suit—which includes claims under the federal Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Family and Medical Leave Act and similar California state laws—seeks back pay and damages totaling $100 million.

Morrison & Foerster said in a statement that it rejected the women's allegations. “Morrison & Foerster has a long and proven track record of supporting and advancing our associates as they return from maternity leave,” the firm said. “We vigorously dispute this claim and are confident that the firm will be vindicated.”

The complaint said MoFo runs as a “male-dominated hierarchy” that has particularly negative impacts on women who are pregnant or returning from maternity leave. MoFo, according to the complaint, has embraced a common set of policies and procedures that “routinely holds back” women who are pregnant, have children or take maternity leave—meaning, in some cases, that associates who have taken maternity leave won't be advanced to a higher pay range along with their peers.

“At MoFo, the mommy track is a dead end,” the suit said.

The three lead plaintiffs are dubbed “Jane Doe 1,” “Jane Doe 2” and “Jane Doe 3,” and all are based in California offices at the firm, according to the complaint. MoFo has offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Palo Alto, California.

The lead plaintiffs also allege that they weren't notified in advance that they would be held back in seniority, instead discovering it only after they checked the firm's online employment portal in January and realized their salaries no longer matched others' in their associate class year.

In addition to the three lead women plaintiffs, the complaint seeks to represent a proposed class of all women that have been or will be employed by MoFo starting on June 28, 2017.

“In one California office alone, plaintiffs are aware that, since 2013, at least seven female attorneys have been held back upon their return from maternity leave,” the complaint said. “These policies disparately impact the firm's female attorneys, who represent an increasingly lower percentage of each tier of the firm as title and compensation rise.”

The firm representing the MoFo associates, Sanford Heisler, has led several recent gender discrimination actions against large law firms, including Proskauer Rose, Chadbourne & Parke, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, Sedgwick and Greenberg Traurig. The Sedgwick, Greenberg Traurig and Chadbourne cases have settled—the Chadbourne suit, for one, was resolved in March with a $3 million payout to three former partners at the firm led by Kerrie Campbell. The Ogletree and Proskauer cases remain pending.

“MoFo promotes itself as a progressive firm that champions the advancement of women, but that seems to be far from the truth,” name partner David Sanford said in a statement on Monday. “At MoFo, motherhood is a career-breaker.”

Similar to the Proskauer suit, which was moving forward with a Jane Doe plaintiff until her identity was revealed last week as Washington, D.C.-based partner Connie Bertram, the MoFo suit seeks to keep the plaintiffs' names anonymous.

Not only are the plaintiffs' names and offices not disclosed in the suit, but the complaint doesn't name the specific partners at MoFo who were allegedly involved. For instance, sections of the complaint that describe alleged discrimination against Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3 point to conversations those associates had with the same male supervising partner. That person, who's dubbed “Partner 3,” allegedly “prefers to work with male associates.”

A section of the complaint focusing on Jane Doe 1, meanwhile, refers to two other partners. One of them, referred to as “Partner 1,” allegedly told Jane Doe 1 that “parents tend not to do well” in the associate's particular department at the firm. During the associate's most recent performance review, Partner 1 and a separate partner, “Partner 2,” allegedly urged the associate to “ramp up” her billable hours in light of her return from maternity leave, but then neither partner supplied the associate with enough work to realistically meet her target for billable hours.