Wells Fargo whistleblower wins right to sue

A whistleblower who accused Wells Fargo of conducting sham interviews with minority job candidates will now be able to sue the bank over his firing.

Wells Fargo lost a bid to place the former employee’s wrongful-termination complaint into private arbitration proceedings. That means Joe Bruno will have the chance to present in open court his claims that his firing was retaliatory and possibly present new details about the interviews.

Bruno was the first person to publicly claim in 2022 that Wells Fargo had been interviewing minority candidates for positions that had already been filled so executives could say they were making concrete efforts to diversify the bank’s workforce. His revelations led the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into whether the bank had violated civil-rights laws. Wells Fargo shareholders sued over the resulting drop in the bank’s stock price and won class-action status before reaching an $85 million settlement last month.

Wells Fargo questions whether fake interviews even took place

Wells Fargo has said that the fake interviews weren’t widespread, if they happened at all. In a February 2024 filing with regulators, it said the Justice Department had closed its investigation. Bruno, the bank claimed in a disclosure that’s visible to other banks considering hiring him, was fired for “workplace conduct inconsistent with company standards.” Bank officials claimed he had mistreated another employee.

“Mr. Bruno’s allegations are baseless,” Dana Ripley, a Wells Fargo spokesman, said in an emailed statement. “Any claims he makes must be considered in the context that he was fired after an investigation confirmed he retaliated against another employee who had complained internally about him, and that he then launched a campaign of sending highly offensive and threatening messages to other employees.”

Wells Fargo “will vigorously defend ourselves against this lawsuit’s claims,” Ripley said.

Does the dispute belong in FINRA arbitration?

The dispute with Bruno is one of the last outstanding matters tied to the alleged fake interviews. Wells Fargo’s lawyers claimed that Bruno had no right to sue, saying that in order to collect a bonus payment more quickly in 2016, he had signed an agreement stating that any disputes he had with the bank would have to be worked out in closed-door arbitration with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the industry group that polices brokers.

Bruno and his lawyer, Linda Friedman, argued that the agreement applied only to disputes that related to the bonus payment itself, and that it had expired in 2019.

“Under the Federal Arbitration Act, the dispute has to arise out of the underlying contract,” Friedman said. “It’s like if you went and bought a television set, it had an arbitration agreement, and then you happened to be working for the company, it’s just unrelated thing.”

On Thursday, a FINRA arbitration panel issued a decision in Bruno’s favor, saying “there is no valid and enforceable agreement to arbitrate.”

“While we disagree with the FINRA decision and view it as inconsistent with FINRA practice, it is important to note that the FINRA arbitration panel did not make any decisions on the substance of Mr. Bruno’s claims related to his termination,” said Ripley at Wells Fargo.

Bruno said in an interview Thursday that “the allegations of my termination are 100% false, and I’ve been arguing that from the beginning,” He added that the case also offers a chance to hold the bank accountable for engaging in “performative” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The interview practices at issue were tied to a pledge the bank made nearly a decade ago to consider minority candidates for open job positions in the wake of a racial-discrimination lawsuit brought by Black wealth-management employees.

‘Simply book keeping for us’

A New York Times report about the practices included information provided by 12 current and former employees who had participated in fake interviews, helped arrange them or been aware of them. After the initial story, an additional 10 current and former staffers shared evidence showing how the practice worked. In one email, a human resources employee asked someone considered “diverse” by the bank’s standards who had just been hired for one role to fill out an application for another role. “Simply book keeping for us,” the HR representative wrote, according to The Times.

The climate around corporate diversity, equity and inclusion has changed since Bruno first sounded the alarm at Wells Fargo. President Donald Trump has complained that DEI is little more than discrimination against white men. Friedman said the effort at Wells Fargo was intended to broaden the talent pool from which the bank could draw to fill open roles.

Bruno said he’ll rely on Friedman’s advice over whether to take the case to trial or consider a settlement should the bank offer one.

“I want to see change,” he said. “And if that means rejecting any settlement and going to a jury trial, then I’m OK with that.”