Former top Goldman Sachs executives Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn can be deposed in a gender discrimination lawsuit accusing the Wall Street firm of tolerating a “Boy’s Club” atmosphere, a New York federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The ruling on the pretrial depositions came at the end of a telephone conference in the long-running case.
“What they knew is important because, as the plaintiffs point out, the buck stops there,” Manhattan Federal Court Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger said, according to Bloomberg News.
Blankfein was Goldman CEO for 12 years, and Cohn was Goldman president for 10 years.
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The 2010 lawsuit claims Goldman made biased compensation decisions and denied women opportunities they had earned, according to Bloomberg.
The four name plaintiffs alleged in the complaint that Goldman was a “boys’ club,” where women are sexualized, paid less and given less-prestigious positions.
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In 2018 Lehrburger granted the lawsuit class-action status on behalf of more than 2,000 women.
In March, he ruled that about 1,000 of the class members must bring their claims against before an arbitrator, Bloomberg reported.
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