Six former employees at a Florida beauty school claim their workplace had no HR department \u2014 and that, in the months that followed, layoffs cut only workers of\u00a0color.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The allegations surfaced on April 21, 2026, when the six filed separate lawsuits the same day in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida against Genesis Educational Services of Florida, Inc., which\u00a0operates\u00a0the Palm Beach Academy of Health & Beauty (PBA). See, for example, Chapman-Reese v. Genesis Educational Services of Florida, Inc., No. 9:26-cv-80446-DMM (S.D. Fla. filed Apr. 21, 2026).\u00a0\u00a0The plaintiffs \u2014 former campus director Avis Chapman-Reese, former campus registrar Gillian Williams, former director of career services Gwendolyn Tucker, former career services representative Nuwan\u00a0Liyanapatabendi, former admissions coordinator and later career services representative James Scruggs, and former administrative assistant and later assistant campus registrar Takeria Ivory \u2014 bring claims under Title VII, the Florida Civil Rights Act, and, in two of the filings, the Florida Private Whistleblower Act. Each is seeking a jury trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What the plaintiffs describe is, in many ways, an HR textbook of what not to do. According to the filings, PBA had no human resources function at all, which, they claim, meant employees who wanted to report misconduct by the chief operating officer had to take their concerns to the COO herself.\u00a0\u00a0Ivory alleges she was groped three separate times in a hallway and asked, “Is your ass real?” She claims the incident report she filed internally was brushed aside with, “Oh well, she will get over it.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six former employees at a Florida beauty school claim their workplace had no HR department \u2014 and that,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,107037],"class_list":["post-242374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-workplace-discrimination-retaliation-hr-compliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}