Autumn Metcalf says her managers at the Kennedy Center timed her trips to the restroom and logged her arrival to the minute. She says they did not do the same to her white colleagues. Metcalf, a Black woman who worked in the center’s subscriptions office, is now suing the institution for racial discrimination, retaliation and a hostile work environment.
The complaint, filed Oct. 27 in federal court in Washington, D.C., describes a pattern that Black workers will recognize: scrutiny that lands on one employee and not on the others at the next desk. Metcalf, who identifies as queer, worked at the center from 2022 until she resigned in December 2025. Her six counts are brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It began, the suit says, with a dry-erase board in her cubicle where she wrote jokes and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin. In July 2025 a second-level supervisor, Stephanie Atkinson, allegedly ordered it taken down and threatened her with “insubordination.” At a union meeting on July 30, the center’s associate general counsel, Laura Hagan, allegedly called the board “threatening” toward Atkinson. Two weeks earlier, her union, IATSE Local 868, had written to Atkinson about concerns over “racial discrimination in the office.”
Then came the clock. The suit says managers began logging her breaks and arrival times, and that in November 2025 Atkinson and another supervisor started documenting how long she spent in the restroom, which the complaint calls “a humiliating intrusion.” On Oct. 9, 2025, Atkinson allegedly stood at Metcalf’s cubicle and lamented “another Black woman gone.”
On Nov. 18, according to the suit, the director of sales, Derek Younger, called her “loud” and “disrespectful,” stood less than a foot away and blocked her exit, then sent her home without pay. Two days later she received a “Final Warning” and a 14-day unpaid suspension for “attendance/timekeeping issues.” She resigned Dec. 4, citing an “unbearable hostile work environment.”
Metcalf says she had nowhere to take it. The Smithsonian Institution told her in December that it “does not process or accept discrimination complaints from Kennedy Center employees.” She filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April. Mediation failed in June, and on July 29 the agency issued a right-to-sue notice saying it lacked jurisdiction over the center. A courtroom was the only door left.
The Kennedy Center has not publicly responded, and none of this has been tested in court. She is asking for back pay, compensatory damages, removal of the disciplinary records and legal fees.
The allegations land at an institution already under fire for how it treats Black art and Black staff since President Trump took over its board. A workplace that treats a King quote as a threat and a Black employee’s bathroom breaks as a disciplinary matter should have to answer for it under oath. The court should let Metcalf make her case, and the Kennedy Center should open its personnel files.
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