Appin

I. BACKGROUND

23 Plaintiff Ricky L. Appin is a 75-year-old transgender woman who worked as a content 24 editor for Defendant Mergermarket, a financial and data analytics firm, from 2003 until her 25 termination in 2022. That termination is the subject of this litigation. Plaintiff alleges that 26 Mergermarket and other entities in the Ion Trading Group discriminated against her based on her 27 gender, age, and medical history in violation of California’s Fair Employment in Housing Act (“FEHA”) and California’s Family Rights Act (“CFRA”). Mergermarket contends that it terminated Plaintiff Appin’s employment as part of a years-long cost-cutting strategy that replaced all of Mergermarket’s content editors in the United States with lower-paid content editors in India. In March 2024, Plaintiff Appin filed the operative First Amended Complaint, Dkt. No. 51, which asserted eight claims against defendants: (1) age discrimination in violation of FEHA, (2) disability discrimination in violation of FEHA, (3) interference with rights under CFRA, (4) retaliation in violation of CFRA, (5) gender discrimination in violation of FEHA, (6) retaliation in …