Former top Goldman Sachs executives Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn can be deposed in a gender discrimination lawsuit accusing the Wall Street firm of tolerating a Boy’s Club ” atmosphere, a New York federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The ruling on the pretrial depositions came at the end of a telephone conference in the long-running case.
What they knew is important because, as the plaintiffs point out, the buck stops there, ” Manhattan Federal Court Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger said, according to Bloomberg News.
Blankfein was Goldman CEO for 12 years, and Cohn was Goldman president for 10 years.
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The 2010 lawsuit claims Goldman made biased compensation decisions and denied women opportunities they had earned, according to Bloomberg.
The four name plaintiffs alleged in the complaint that Goldman was a boys’ club, ” where women are sexualized, paid less and given less-prestigious positions.
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In 2018 Lehrburger granted the lawsuit class-action status on behalf of more than 2,000 women.
In March, he ruled that about 1,000 of the class members must bring their claims against before an arbitrator, Bloomberg reported.
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