Cleared engineer points to a tight termination timeline and a shifting reason for his firing
A former AT&T Technical Services engineer with a Top Secret clearance says the company fired him for flagging slurs and suspected fraud.
Benjamin Balfour, a former Lead Network Design Engineer, filed a First Amended Complaint on May 6, 2026, in the Eastern District of Virginia, accusing AT&T Technical Services Company of wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation, and hostile work environment.
Balfour, who identifies in the complaint as white and Christian, joined AT&T Technical Services in February 2022 and worked on a team supporting the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia. He was fired effective August 28, 2024.
According to the complaint, his trouble began after he transferred to the Tier II team in late 2022. He alleges that four colleagues regularly made remarks about how "racist and oppressive white people are," along with slurs targeting Christianity. Balfour says he asked them to stop more than a dozen times. The comments, the filing alleges, escalated.
In June 2023, he raised the issue with HR. Balfour alleges the HR representative who handled the matter, Aeri Kim, called him after her investigation and said, "its just workplace culture and you need to learn to get along," or words to that effect. The harassment continued, he says.
A second dispute followed in 2024. From March to August, Balfour says he raised concerns with his...
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