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Judge David Keesler threw out the defamation and blacklisting counts on technical grounds while letting the discrimination and retaliation claim live, which puts U.S. Bank's organisational review in front of a fact-finder.
The Investor · Invest desk
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Neither dismissal touches whether U.S. Bank did anything wrong. The defamation count went out on the calendar, having missed the statute of limitations [4], and the blacklisting count went out on a definition: Keesler found that when a U.S. Bank employee spoke about Srini Nallasivan to a firm on the verge of hiring him, the speech was not "unsolicited" and therefore fell outside North Carolina's blacklisting statute [5]. That is a genuinely interesting term of art, because a reference check is solicited by construction, which means the conduct alleged here (an offer with a generous pay package withdrawn four days after a U.S. Bank employee spoke negatively, per the complaint [17]) is reachable in North Carolina only inside the defamation window, and Nallasivan arrived outside it.
So the surviving claim is the cheaper-sounding one, or rather the one whose arithmetic is easier to state. He pleads lost wages and benefits plus emotional distress amounting to at least $100,000 [7]; his supervisor allegedly promised severance of more than $100,000 conditional on his helping with the transition [15]. The floor of the case and the sum the bank allegedly withdrew are the same number [20]. The acceleration compounds it: a January 2024 notice with a May last day, moved a month later to mid-March with no severance [15][16], takes roughly two months of pay out on top [19], which Nallasivan's lawyers call "a classic bait-and-switch" [16].
What makes "the role was eliminated" a shakier defence here is the sequence of events leading up to it, not the elimination itself. A September 14 letter accused him of being combative, aggressive, uncollaborative, of hiding information and circumventing regulations [13]; in November he learned another employee, a white man according to the complaint [14], would take over the chief of AI role he had held since 2019 [14]; the elimination notice came about four months after the letter [23]. Keesler's wording is recommendatory, that the claim "should, at this stage, be allowed to proceed" [2], and "not time-barred" is a finding about a clock rather than about conduct [2]. U.S. Bank declined to comment on the ruling [8] and in August 2025 said the job was eliminated after "a robust and considered organizational review" [9].
This could go three different ways from here. Maybe the recommendation is not adopted as written and the blacklisting count comes back. Maybe U.S. Bank settles before internal documents about the November succession decision are produced, which is what most defendants with a fourteen-year-veteran plaintiff (twelve years at Bank of America, two at AIG before his 2018 hire [10][18]) tend to do. Or maybe discovery shows the consolidation was approved before the supervisor was pushed out in September 2023 [12], in which case the chronology is coincidence.
This is probably wrong, but the useful read is a pricing one: eliminating an AI leadership post is a defence that costs a motion, and after Thursday it costs discovery. The complaint alleges glowing annual reviews through 2022 [11] and asserts the actions "were intended by U.S. Bank to replace Mr. Nallasivan, a person of color" [22], which is exactly the sort of contested narrative that motions cannot resolve. What would falsify it: a documented reorganisation dated before September 2023 in which the AI duties were folded into an existing role, at which point the successor's race and the letter's timing stop doing work.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
In January 2024, U.S. Bank allegedly told Nallasivan his job was being eliminated with a last day in May, and his supervisor allegedly promised a severance package of more than $100,000 if he would help with the transition, which he agreed to do.
One month later, the complaint says, U.S. Bank told Nallasivan his exit date would be mid-March and he would not receive the severance; his lawyers wrote, "This was a classic bait-and-switch."
The lawsuit says a financial firm offered Nallasivan a job with a generous pay package and withdrew the offer four days later after "an employee at U.S. Bank had spoken negatively about Mr. Nallasivan."
U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler in North Carolina delivered a split ruling on Thursday in Srini Nallasivan's suit against U.S. Bank.
Keesler wrote that Nallasivan's accusation of discrimination, harassment and retaliation "is not time-barred and should, at this stage, be allowed to proceed."
Keesler ruled that Nallasivan's claims of defamation and blacklisting should be dismissed.
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Evidence-backed comparisons of source perspectives and observed adoption signals. Read the methodology
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Ruling quoted, complaint unchecked
The procedural spine is solid: American Banker quotes Keesler's "not time-barred" language and states plainly which counts fall and why. Everything else — the glowing reviews, the pushed-out supervisor, the promised severance, the rescinded offer — is the complaint speaking, reproduced faithfully but tested by no one. No docket number, no filing link, no employment lawyer reading the North Carolina statute back to us.
A docket, not a deployment
There is nothing here to measure uptake of — no release, no rollout, no usage figure. The only forward motion is a case surviving a dismissal motion, and our coverage gives no visibility into whether U.S. Bank's AI organisation changed shape after the reorganisation it defends.
Surviving is not winning
The reporting itself is disciplined — "allegedly" does real work throughout — but the shape of the news invites over-reading. A magistrate saying a claim "should, at this stage, be allowed to proceed" has weighed timeliness and pleading, not truth, and two of the four counts died on technical grounds that leave the underlying conduct legally untouched. The gap is modest and comes from framing, not from the facts asserted.
Two adversaries and one narrator
Both voices in this story are paid to hold their positions: a complaint drafted to survive dismissal, and a spokesperson line drafted to protect a reorganisation. The narrative detail — bait-and-switch, glowing reviews, the four-day offer withdrawal — comes from counsel with a damages claim; the counter-narrative comes from a bank that then declined to say anything about the ruling. American Banker sits inside the industry it covers, which shows in the deference to "a robust and considered organizational review" as the framing of the defence.
Firm on the ruling, thin beyond it
We would bet on the outcome — split ruling, discrimination and retaliation alive, defamation and blacklisting out — because it is quoted and unambiguous. Confidence drops sharply for the human story around it: one publication, one filing, one stale statement, and no response from the plaintiff's lawyers to the outlet that broke it.