A Black Kennedy Center employee says managers timed her bathroom breaks. After she complained, she was suspended twice.

A Black former employee of the Kennedy Center has sued the institution in federal court, saying managers watched her far more closely than her white colleagues, tracked her restroom breaks and then suspended her twice within days of a confrontation.

Autumn Metcalf, who is queer, filed the complaint Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. She worked in the subscriptions office from 2022 until she resigned in December 2025. The suit accuses the Center of racial discrimination, retaliation and a hostile work environment. None of it has been tested in court, and the Center did not comment to Forbes, which first reported the filing.

Metcalf says supervisors questioned her whereabouts, accused her of spending too long away from her desk and tracked her time in the restroom, which the complaint calls a “humiliating intrusion.” She says white co-workers were not held to the same scrutiny. Managers also ordered her to take down a whiteboard she used for jokes and quotations, according to the suit.

The complaint describes a turning point on Nov. 18, when sales and ticketing director Derek Younger confronted her and suspended her without pay. When she returned two days later, she says, managers handed her a second suspension, this time for two weeks, citing attendance and timekeeping.

She also accuses Associate General Counsel Laura Hagan of dismissing her discrimination concerns and obstructing her equal employment opportunity complaint. The suit further alleges that senior manager Stephanie Atkinson made remarks about Black employees, and that in October 2025 she used a term about the assistants of then-interim leader Richard Grenell that Metcalf found homophobic. Metcalf is asking for back pay, compensation for the harm and the removal of the disciplinary records from her file.

The Kennedy Center she sued is not the one she joined. Its board voted in March to close for a two-year renovation that President Donald Trump pushed, and layoffs began the same month. Grenell, who led the Center for a little more than a year, is no longer in charge.

The Center has not yet filed a response in court.