Raytheon on Trial in Gender Discrimination and Harassment Case

A trial is underway in Santa Barbara Superior Court in a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against Raytheon Technologies, the multinational defense contractor with offices in Goleta and Lompoc.

The plaintiff in the case is 61-year-old Caron Vranish, a former controller and finance manager at the company’s Goleta campus who says she was paid substantially less than her male counterparts ― including at least one of her subordinates ― because of her age and gender. 

After Vranish lodged formal complaints about the discrepancy, she claims, she was subjected to intense retaliation from Raytheon leadership that caused her severe emotional distress and an early retirement from a 35-year career.

Vranish is seeking $4.4 million in past and future earnings losses, as well as punitive damages, the amount of which would be decided by the jury if she prevails at trial. Raytheon has denied the allegations. Attorneys for both sides declined requests for comment.

The trial comes on the heels of a separate discrimination and harassment lawsuit filed by another Goleta employee. The fire marshal for Raytheon’s environmental services department, who is Black, had claimed a fellow employee placed a photo of a gorilla at his workstation on multiple occasions. When he notified the company’s higher-ups, he said, Raytheon recalibrated his job duties, effectively demoting him. The case settled last year for an undisclosed sum.

Bringing Vranish’s case to trial has been a lengthy and laborious process, records show. Raytheon repeatedly refused to produce information ordered by the court, prompting Judge Donna Geck to issue nearly $40,000 in sanctions against the company and its attorneys since the suit was filed in 2020. Such penalties, and in such high amounts, are exceedingly rare.

In one of her written admonishments, Geck stated, “[Raytheon] has willfully disobeyed the court’s orders to produce all documents responsive to requests for production,” adding that “such disobedience has had the effect of suppressing discoverable evidence.” Vranish’s lawyer referred to the information as “additional ‘Me Too’ evidence” involving other female employees.

Vranish’s lawsuit lays out her employment history with Raytheon, beginning with her hiring in 1985 as an entry-level financial analyst. Over the coming decades, she was promoted a number of times and was ultimately named finance manager for Raytheon Vision Systems (RVS) in 2017.

RVS manufactures “advanced payloads for unpiloted vehicles” and is an industry leader in infrared imaging technology and “compact electronic warfare systems,” Raytheon says on its website.

Vranish’s job duties included running a finance department of 30 people and overseeing a business portfolio of more than $500 million in bookings and $300 million in annual revenue. She was the first woman to hold the position and the only woman on RVS’s leadership team at the time.

But soon after her promotion, the lawsuit states, Vranish discovered she was being paid less than 11 of her finance manager colleagues, all of whom were men. They had the same job responsibilities and reported to the same CFO. Moreover, the complaint says, Vranish found out she was earning $40,000 less than one of her male subordinates.

“Plaintiff spoke out,” the lawsuit says, “voicing her concerns in the precise, formal manner required by Raytheon corporate policy. Because Plaintiff did that, three different upper-level managers subjected Plaintiff to systematic hostility and retaliation,” including “rude, aggressive, and condescending” comments, public and private shaming, and direct threats to her job.

Vranish claimed this fit into a pattern of women’s mistreatment at Raytheon. She described overhearing two male managers refer to one of her female colleagues as “a raging bitch.” She also recalled an incident between her and a male employee who had “become volatile (jumped up and raised his voice) during a work discussion.” Vranish said she was privately warned by coworkers to “be careful” how she interacted with the male employee because he was “well-connected” with Raytheon leadership and “had been known to treat strong women disrespectfully and use his influence to have disfavored employees removed from their roles.”

“As discovery and over 20 depositions have revealed,” the complaint continues, “Raytheon ― at the VP, Ethics, and HR level ― routinely dismissed or ignored Plaintiff’s legitimate concerns; deliberately made her job more difficult; and routinely violated its own documented policies, procedures, and protocols, and Code of Conduct.” 

And the company did so, it claims, “without even an attempt to explain or justify these actions, either while Plaintiff desperately clung to what was left of her lifetime pursuit of a career at a prestigious American company, or during the course of this lawsuit.”

Many of Vranish’s grievances center on her interactions with an RVS general manager named Michael Norman. Hired in 2020, Norman quickly created a “hostile work environment,” the suit alleges, with “abusive and intimidating behaviors.”

Employees speculated among themselves in emails published during the discovery process that Norman was “brought in to clean house” by forcing older staff members into early retirement and making office conditions intolerable for many others. 

By their estimation, up to 20 percent of RVS’s 800-person workforce has left Raytheon under Norman, including nearly 30 team leaders. Such high turnover in so short a time caused delays and created issues with clients, they said, primarily the U.S. military. And given the national-security implications of their work, they worried his actions were directly “threatening the mission.”

Employees filed numerous complaints that either went uninvestigated or were derailed by Norman, who regularly “lied about personnel matters,” the suit claims.

“I have even considered asking for a demotion in order to limit my exposure to Michael and the toxicity and corrosive environment that has been created by him,” one employee wrote to Raytheon’s Human Resources Department in 2021. “It is inexcusable that this behavior has been allowed to continue and is anathema to Raytheon core values, our code of conduct and, frankly, the law.”

After Norman publicly reprimanded another worker in 2022, their colleague wrote to HR: “I am not wired to watch somebody so defenseless be psychologically mauled like that, in public, by someone behaving in such an arrogant manner.” 

Raytheon has since promoted Norman to vice president of its Space, Imaging, and Microelectronics division. He remains based in Goleta.

The trial continues Tuesday, February 13.