Six former employees of Planned Parenthood Southeast have taken their fight to federal court in northern Georgia, saying they lost their jobs after they pushed back against leadership moves that dialed down the group’s abortion-rights focus and reshaped its workplace culture.
Courthouse News reported that the complaint was filed Monday and that the plaintiffs include former Georgia State Director Kaylah Oates-Marable, former Vice President of Communications and Marketing Jaylen Black, Hannah Davis, and Kim Luong. Attorney Artur Davis of HKM Employment Attorneys is representing the group.
The suit lands in a region where Planned Parenthood Southeast serves Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, states that tightened abortion laws after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The plaintiffs say they were punished for defending the affiliate’s core priorities at a moment when those priorities faced legal and political pressure. Planned Parenthood Southeast disputes the claims and points to an outside review that cleared the organization.
Oates-Marable and Black framed the dispute as loyalty to the mission, not disloyalty to the brand. Oates-Marable said she had wanted the work for years and now sees that ambition inverted.
"I’ve wanted to work for Planned Parenthood since I was 17 years old,"
She added a sharper line about the fallout for patients and staff who relied on the affiliate.
"Now that dream is a nightmare not just for me but for everyone who counted on PPSE when there was nowhere else to turn,"
Black put the retaliation claim in plain terms and tied it to legality and heartbreak at once.
"The simple fact is that we were fired from Planned Parenthood because we supported Planned Parenthood,"
She continued:
"It would be ironic if it wasn’t so heartbreaking and illegal,"
Artur Davis cast the plaintiffs as internal reformers who tried to hold the chapter steady.
"These six brave women tried to save Planned Parenthood Southeast,"
He also argued that donors and supporters need a full accounting and that repair requires remedies for the women who sued.
"The many champions and funders of the Planned Parenthood Community deserve to know that something went badly wrong in their chapter down south. Restoring PPSE is not possible without providing justice and remedying the damages to these women,"
The complaint, as described in the Courthouse News account, centers on former CEO Mairo Akposé. Plaintiffs claim that after the 2024 presidential election she told senior staff one goal was to rebrand the mission as less centered on abortion rights.
Oates-Marable and Black say they objected and warned her about downgrading that priority while Georgia lawmakers were debating criminalizing abortion from the onset of pregnancy. They describe those objections as a trigger for retaliation.
Former employees also say that in June 2025 they were instructed to withdraw from sexual public health campaigns aimed at the LGBTQ+ community. Black says she challenged the policy direction and later was told her position was being eliminated.
The lawsuit reaches beyond mission branding into day-to-day management. Oates-Marable says she was fired just weeks after she raised Human Resources concerns about other employees who told her they felt increasing discomfort with former Executive Director Karen Rene.
Hannah Davis and Kim Luong say Rene’s commentary on their child-bearing decisions felt intrusive. Those claims remain allegations in a live civil case. Authorities have not publicly issued findings that adopt the plaintiffs’ account as settled fact.
Black also reported Akposé for referring to a transgender employee by their birth name during a staff call. Black says her communications role was later filled with a substantially less qualified candidate and that she was ultimately dismissed while on disability leave recuperating from life-threatening injuries.
Akposé resigned in December 2025, roughly two months after an internal investigation into claims of mismanagement. Planned Parenthood Southeast board member Mitchell Robinson, who chaired a special committee overseeing the probe, later said a hired law firm “found no merit to the allegations.”
The board also announced that the national Planned Parenthood Action Fund would take a more active role leading advocacy and political work in Georgia and would hire a state director. That shift moves key political functions upward while the affiliate faces a public employment fight.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Southeast stressed care delivery and workplace standards across its three-state footprint.
"Planned Parenthood Southeast is committed to delivering affordable, compassionate reproductive care and sex education across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, including abortion care where allowable under state law. We strive to create a professional work environment where every member of our team feels valued and respected,"
The case is a federal civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, identified in court-file references as Black v. Planned Parenthood Southeast. Courthouse News described the action as alleging wrongful termination and retaliation tied to objections over leadership direction, mission rebranding, and workplace issues.
No conviction or adjudicated finding of liability appears in the available report. The plaintiffs seek justice and remedies for damages. The affiliate points to the law-firm review and denies merit in the claims. Investigators and the court will need to test the timeline of HR complaints, the content of the alleged rebranding directive, the reason given for position elimination, the later refill of Black’s role, and the circumstances of the disability-leave dismissal.
Public materials described in the report do not settle who the full set of six women are beyond the named plaintiffs, do not publish the complete findings of the outside firm, and do not state the current procedural posture past filing and the midweek statements. Absolute calendar dates for the Monday filing and Wednesday comments were not fixed in the seed report beyond those relative markers.
Planned Parenthood Southeast is an affiliate of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nonprofit that provides sexual healthcare and education in the United States and globally. Black previously worked for state and national figures, including U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, which places an experienced political communicator at the center of the retaliation narrative.
For conservatives watching institutional accountability, the suit puts a premier abortion provider’s internal discipline, message control, and treatment of dissenting staff under oath. For the plaintiffs, the case is about whether objecting to a softer abortion-rights posture and raising workplace alarms is protected activity or a career-ending offense. For the affiliate, the defense rests on process: an internal probe, an outside law firm, and a public claim of no merit.
Either way, a federal judge in northern Georgia will now control discovery and the credibility fights that follow. Donors, lawmakers, and patients in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia will watch whether the courtroom record matches the press statements.
When a powerful nonprofit polices its own mission debate with pink slips, the public is right to demand sworn answers, not polished slogans.
