He says younger colleagues sat idle longer and kept their jobs — he was cut
A 61-year-old Black DevOps engineer claims Tata Consultancy Services fired him under an unwritten two-week bench rule weeks after kidney surgery.
That is the heart of a lawsuit filed on May 19, 2026 by Harvey Smith against Tata Consultancy Services Limited in the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Smith, who worked remotely from Concord, NC, alleges the company pushed him out for reasons that had less to do with workforce management and more to do with his race, age, and recent medical leave (Smith v. Tata Consultancy Services Limited, No. 1:26-cv-00458).
According to the filing, Smith was hired as a DevOps Engineer on or about May 7, 2020, and spent years rotating through client accounts including T-Mobile, Intel, Amazon Web Services, General Electric, and Boeing. He says he consistently met expectations, picked up updated AWS and Azure certifications along the way, and earned positive feedback and bonus increases.
The trouble, he says, started after his most recent assignment wrapped up.
In mid-August 2024, Smith went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with kidney stones, a condition the filing describes as Renal Calculi, requiring surgery and follow-up care. He took medical leave from August 27 through approximately September 23, 2024. During that stretch, Smith says three of the company's employees repeatedly contacted him, asking when he would return, what his...
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