Arab-Muslim Lawyer Files Lawsuit Against Chicago-Based Company Over Revoked Job Offer

A Lebanese-American lawyer has accused a national law firm of discrimination in a recently filed lawsuit alleging that she was fired the day before she began working at the firm’s Chicago office in late October because of her Muslim identity and Arabic.

Jinan Chehade alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court that Foley & Lardner discriminated against her because of her Arab Muslim background and political statements she made on social media and in public meetings about Israel’s bombing of Gaza.

According to the complaint, Chehade, a graduate of Georgetown Law School, was interning at Foley & Lardner in July 2022 when she was offered a full-time position to begin in the fall of 2023. So 15 hours before she was scheduled to start working, she was fired, according to the complaint.

On the Sunday before her first scheduled day of work, Foley & Lardner asked her to come to their office where, she said, they interrogated her for two hours “in a very hostile manner,” Chehade alleged in the complaint.

“As soon as we all sat down, they pulled out a package of about 15 to 20 pages with screenshots of my social media posts, about speeches I gave, about my background, my identity,” Chehade said. “When I really started to feel anxiety and panic was when I was asked about my father and where he worked – and obviously as the son of immigrants, a big law firm asking about your father… alarm bells started going off in my head,” he said. Chehade told the Tribune in an interview on Thursday.

Chehade’s father, she said, works at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview.

The company also questioned her about her associations with Students for Justice in Palestine and public comments she made about a proposed cease-fire resolution at a Chicago City Council meeting, said Chehade, who is Lebanese but has family members who live in Gaza.

“It was devastating when they turned on me and defamed me like this, when I actually respected their supposed commitment to diversity,” Chehade said.

In an emailed statement, a representative for Foley & Lardner said they believed Chehade’s complaint was “meritless.”

“We support our decision to rescind Ms. Chehade’s employment offer as a result of statements she made surrounding the horrific Hamas attacks on October 7,” said a company representative.