A BLACK TRANS ULTA MANAGER REPORTED RACISM AND ANTI-TRANS REMARKS. THEN SHE WAS FIRED.
Deja Majors alleges Ulta retaliated after she reported a hostile work environment at a California store.
A discrimination complaint was supposed to make the workplace safer. According to Deja Majors’ lawsuit, it was followed by escalating discipline, a dismissive management response, and termination.
Majors, a Black transgender woman who worked as a sales manager at an Ulta Beauty store in California, has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the beauty retailer. The complaint alleges that Ulta and a former manager subjected her to a hostile work environment, retaliated against her, and ultimately fired her because of her race and gender identity.
The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court, says Majors worked without incident at Ulta’s Canoga Park location beginning in 2023 before Sylvia Bardelli was hired as general manager. After Bardelli’s arrival, the complaint alleges, Majors began receiving written warnings tied to event planning duties and credit card sign-up goals.
According to the complaint, Majors submitted an action plan within two weeks to address the concerns but received no response. In March, she was given a final warning. The next day, she filed her own written complaint alleging discrimination by Bardelli.
That sequence matters because workplace retaliation often begins after a worker names the harm. A complaint is supposed to trigger protection, review, and accountability. Majors alleges that her complaint instead became part of a pattern in which scrutiny increased and her concerns were not meaningfully addressed.
According to the lawsuit, Majors participated in a video call with a district manager after filing her complaint, but she alleges the executive was dismissive of what she reported. In early May, immediately after returning from a previously approved vacation, Majors was fired.
The complaint alleges that Bardelli made disparaging remarks about people of color and transgender people, excluded Majors from meetings attended by other sales managers, and subjected her to scrutiny that similarly situated cisgender employees did not face. Majors’ lawsuit says the timing and pattern of the discipline support her claim that race was a substantial motivating factor in the adverse actions taken against her.
The allegations have not been proven in court. Attorneys for Bardelli and Ulta did not respond to Law360’s requests for comment. But the legal complaint lays out a familiar mechanism for Black trans workers: the workplace becomes hostile, the worker reports the harm, management allegedly minimizes the concern, and the person who spoke up becomes the one facing discipline.
For Black trans workers, workplace retaliation is a worker-safety issue because discrimination can operate through both direct hostility and procedural punishment. A racist or anti-trans remark can make the workplace unsafe, but retaliation can deepen that harm by turning the act of reporting into another source of risk. The worker is forced to calculate whether naming discrimination will lead to protection or make them more vulnerable.
Majors’ lawsuit belongs in the public record because it describes that double bind. She alleges she faced a hostile work environment and then faced escalating consequences after she objected to it. The alleged pattern is not only about what was said inside a store. It is about what happened after a Black trans worker tried to use the workplace process that was supposed to address discrimination.
The complaint asserts 16 causes of action against Ulta and Bardelli, including claims tied to California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. Majors is seeking back pay, attorney’s fees, restitution for alleged unfair business practices, and other relief.
The legal claims will have to be tested in court, but the public record already shows why the case matters. Black trans workers do not need protection only from slurs, remarks, exclusion, or hostile treatment. They also need protection from retaliation when they report those conditions.
A workplace cannot claim safety while making complaint itself dangerous. When a worker says she was targeted because she is Black and transgender, the question is not only whether the company had policies on paper. The question is whether those policies protected her when she reported harm.
Majors’ lawsuit now asks whether Ulta’s policies protected her after she reported discrimination, or whether the company punished her after she spoke up. The case places that question inside a legal record about race discrimination, gender-identity discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation.
For Black trans workers, that question matters beyond one store. Workplace safety cannot only exist as policy language. It has to mean protection when the person targeted names the harm.
Workplace safety means little if Black trans workers can be punished after reporting discrimination.
Trans United documents anti-trans harm, Black trans workplace discrimination, retaliation, public safety failures, and the systems that make speaking up dangerous for the people already targeted.
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