A long-serving Wells Fargo auditor with multiple sclerosis has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the bank violated disability and family leave laws when it revoked a four-year remote-work accommodation and subjected her to retaliation. Syreeta Lane, a lead audit manager who joined the bank in January 2008, brought the action on May 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
Lane was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in December 2014 and informed the bank the following year. Her physician later certified that a shared office environment posed a serious risk to her compromised immune system. According to the complaint, Lane's audit responsibilities were conducted entirely remotely throughout her tenure, with clients spread across the country and all meetings held by phone, email, or video conference.
For four consecutive years, Wells Fargo approved Lane's full-time remote work and intermittent leave without objection. That changed in June 2024, when she submitted an annual renewal request with a physician's certification that full-time remote work was medically necessary through July 2025. The bank's accommodations team delayed processing the request for roughly two months, the complaint alleges. After Lane escalated, a representative told her the renewal would be approved pending sign-off from her direct supervisor, Senior Audit Manager Dennis Aquino.
That approval never materialized. Instead, the bank presented Lane with a gradual return-to-office schedule: full remote through October 2024, one day in the office in November, two in December, and three days per week starting January 2025. The intermittent leave component was not addressed. When Lane asked what had changed, the representative stated that Aquino was not approving full-time accommodation, according to the filing.
The lawsuit contends that Wells Fargo failed to engage in the interactive process required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. No individualized assessment was conducted, no dialogue with Lane occurred, and no follow-up with her doctor was made. The complaint further alleges, on information and belief, that the bank performed no undue hardship analysis, despite having approved the same arrangement for four years.
Retaliation claims are central to the case. Lane alleges that Aquino gave her a "Needs Improvement" rating for 2023 based on a single audit, disregarding positive feedback from all other supervisors she worked with that year. Key sections of the evaluation were allegedly copied nearly verbatim from her prior supervisor's review and from another auditor's engagement feedback. The complaint also states that Aquino repeatedly told Lane in one-on-one meetings that she was "not doing [her] job" and that he was "going to fire" her, without specifying any deficiency or identifying the "leadership" that had complained.
On August 9, 2024, days after Lane disputed the return-to-office schedule by email, Aquino placed her on a formal corrective action and told her she "should leave the company" unless she demonstrated Auditor-in-Charge performance on two specific audits. The scheduling team had already assigned her to a staff role on both, making the standard impossible to meet, the filing says.
Lane's MS deteriorated, and she went on short-term disability on August 27, 2024. Her claim transitioned to long-term disability on February 18, 2025, reducing her income to a fraction of her pre-disability earnings. She remains on LTD and is paying out of pocket for benefits the bank previously covered. The complaint alleges a broader pattern at Wells Fargo of denying or scaling back remote-work accommodations for employees with disabilities and imposing return-to-office schedules that conflict with medical certifications.
Lane filed an EEOC charge on December 5, 2024, and received her right-to-sue notice on February 9, 2026. She seeks back pay, front pay, lost benefits, compensatory damages, liquidated damages under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and attorneys' fees. The case highlights ongoing tensions between corporate return-to-office mandates and disability accommodations, a topic of increasing relevance for financial advisors managing succession planning and cross-border wealth clients.
