(L to R) Andrea (Andi) Mazingo and Nilab Rahyar Tolton. Photo: Courtesy Photo

A federal judge on Thursday dealt a blow to Jones Day's efforts to fight off a $200 million gender discrimination lawsuit after he gave plaintiffs nearly everything they wanted in a discovery dispute.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of the District of Columbia, ruling from the bench, required Jones Day to provide plaintiffs with salary information about every associate nationwide from 2012 to 2018. Moss found that there would be little burden on Jones Day's part to produce the salary data.

The data Jones Day submits to the plaintiffs would be filed under seal, per a protective order Moss entered in September. However, the parties' analysis of that data could appear in future filings.

The firm argued it should only have to give plaintiffs—a group of former female associates—salary data from 580 associates who worked in its New York, Atlanta and California offices from 2016 to 2018.

"I don't think the burden is quite great. To break things down into different rounds is going to prolong the litigation," Moss said, expressing worry that not giving the plaintiffs almost everything they asked for would just extend the proceedings in the case.

The plaintiffs—Nilab Rahyar Tolton, Andrea Mazingo, Meredith Williams, Saira Draper, Jaclyn Stahl and Katrina Henderson—first filed suit against Jones Day in April 2019, accusing the firm of perpetuating a culture of gender discrimination through its compensation model and leadership structure.

Moss' ruling was almost a complete victory in this discovery battle for the plaintiffs, who sought salary data for every Jones Day associate nationwide from 2012 to present. Moss cut off the data at 2018 because none of the plaintiffs worked at the firm beyond then.

In court, Kate Mueting, a co-chair of Sanford Heisler Sharp's Title VII practice group in Washington, D.C., and one of the plaintiffs attorneys, said the wider data set was necessary in order to ensure the accuracy of any analysis using it.

In a statement after the ruling, Mueting said that the data set would prove their claims that Jones Day has been systematically discriminating against women.

"We believe this compensation data will show what plaintiffs have long believed to be true: That Jones Day's black box compensation system results in women being paid less. We look forward to receiving and reviewing the data," Mueting said.

This isn't the only gender discrimination lawsuit Jones Day has pushed back against this week. On Wednesday, Jones Day pushed against assertions by two former associates, Julia Sheketoff and Mark Savignac, that statements the firm has made to the public amounted to illegal retaliation.

Savignac and Sheketoff, a married couple, sued Jones Day last year for allegedly maintaining discriminatory parental leave policies and retaliating against Savignac when he complained about it. But after trading replies in November, the case went largely dormant, with no substantive filings be made until July 1, when the couple sought leave to file a supplemental complaint against the firm.

In that new filing, the couple accused the firm of smearing them in a press release it issued in August in reaction to their lawsuit. The release "makes a slew of negative assertions about Julia and Mark that are false, disingenuous, willfully misleading, and calculated to deceive the reader," they alleged.

In a Wednesday response, Jones Day described the couple's newest complaint as being "the apex of absurdity."

"It is not and cannot be the law that plaintiffs may seek widespread publicity for their claims against Jones Day yet the firm commits unlawful 'retaliation' when it responds to defend itself," the firm said, noting that the couple had contacted a New York Times reporter about their lawsuit before it was even filed.

Savignac and Sheketoff declined to comment.

Jones Day did not immediately respond to requests for comment about either case.

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