Blizzard Breast Milk Scandal: Lawsuits, Settlements, and Reforms

The Blizzard breast milk scandal refers to reports from current and former Activision Blizzard employees that nursing mothers had their pumped breast milk repeatedly stolen from office refrigerators, along with accounts of filthy and insecure lactation rooms. The reports, which surfaced publicly in late 2021, became one of the most widely cited examples of a workplace culture that California regulators, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission all found had failed women, producing more than $100 million in combined settlements.¹²³

What Nursing Employees Said Happened

The allegations reached a wide audience in December 2021, when employee activist Jessica Gonzalez posted a Twitter thread compiling accounts from a Blizzard Women Discord server. Nursing employees said their milk had been taken from refrigerators that were supposed to be locked and reserved for that use.⁴

Producer Stephanie Krutsick described a 2008 incident in which her entire pumped supply disappeared from a breakroom refrigerator. The bags were clearly labeled with a baby’s face, and she was the only lactating woman in the building. “Someone had either taken my bags and tossed them, or stolen them for some creepy reason,” she said. Krutsick also said male managers judged and penalized her for the time she spent pumping, which cost her project responsibilities. Another employee, Stephanie Lyon, put it more directly: “I’m not HR so I’m done tip-toeing around these issues to be sensitive, men stole them.”⁴

The theft was only part of what an employee-led committee documented. Pumping rooms were described as filthy and poorly secured. Chairs could not be locked in position, so many workers pumped while sitting on the floor. Tables were made of porous, textured wood that let milk residue build up. Outlets were scarce, there were no locked cubbies for equipment, and the refrigerators meant for breast milk were also being used by other employees to store beer.⁵⁶ California’s state lawsuit added another allegation: female employees were kicked out of lactation rooms so others could hold meetings in them.⁷

The Culture Around the Lactation Rooms

The breast milk incidents did not sit in isolation. California’s civil rights complaint described a workplace where women were about 20 percent of the workforce and faced pay disparities, slower promotion, and open harassment. Alcohol was central to office life: full bars, a weekly frozen margarita machine, and events called “cube crawls” where employees and managers drank their way from cubicle to cubicle continued until at least 2019. Male employees played video games during work hours, bragged about sexual encounters, and joked about rape, according to the complaint.⁷⁸

Mothers faced particular hostility. Supervisors said women should not be promoted because they might get pregnant, and employees were criticized for leaving to pick up children from daycare. A former employee described human resources as “almost like a gang that would ruin your career if you reported certain individuals.”⁷⁸ Senior figures faced only limited consequences at the time; former World of Warcraft senior creative director Alex Afrasiabi, later fired in 2020, had received only verbal counseling from Blizzard president J. Allen Brack despite conduct that colleagues had to physically intervene to stop.⁹

The Lawsuits and Settlements

California Civil Rights Department

On July 21, 2021, after a two-year investigation, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (now the Civil Rights Department) sued Activision Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, and Activision Publishing in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The complaint alleged violations of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and the California Equal Pay Act, citing pay disparities, discriminatory promotion practices, sexual harassment, and retaliation. Women of color, the complaint said, faced particularly hostile treatment.¹⁰

A consent decree approved on January 17, 2024 resolved the case for roughly $54.9 million, with about $45.75 million going into a fund for eligible female employees and contract workers who had worked in California between October 2015 and December 2020. Activision Blizzard also agreed to retain an independent consultant to review compensation, promotion policies, and training materials for three years. The company did not admit liability.¹¹¹

EEOC

The EEOC filed its own suit in September 2021, alleging sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and retaliation. The two agencies had split the work, with the EEOC handling harassment and the state agency leading on pay and promotion.¹² A federal judge approved a consent decree on March 30, 2022 requiring $18 million for employees who experienced sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, or related retaliation between September 2016 and the date of the decree. Activision Blizzard also agreed to hire a neutral EEO consultant overseen by the EEOC, build a centralized complaint tracking system, offer anonymous reporting channels, run climate surveys, and update anti-harassment training at all U.S. locations.²

SEC

On February 3, 2023, the SEC announced a $35 million settlement over separate but related failures. The agency found that from 2018 to 2021 the company lacked disclosure controls needed to collect and analyze employee complaints about workplace misconduct, meaning management could not gauge whether the scale of the problem required disclosure to investors. The SEC also found that from 2016 to 2021, language in separation agreements effectively discouraged departing employees from cooperating with SEC investigators, violating whistleblower protection rules. The agency noted it found no fraud, no investor harm, and no evidence any former employee was actually blocked from contacting SEC staff. Activision Blizzard agreed to a cease-and-desist order without admitting or denying the findings.³¹³

What Changed Inside the Company

Employees pushed hard from within. In late July 2021, more than 2,000 workers signed an open letter calling management’s initial response to the California lawsuit “abhorrent and insulting,” and staged a walkout at the Irvine headquarters and online. Their demands included ending mandatory arbitration for discrimination cases and releasing salary data.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

The company said it upgraded lactation facilities, installed locks on breast milk refrigerators, and added pin codes to pumping rooms. It also ended mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment and discrimination claims, quadrupled its ethics and compliance team, adopted a zero-tolerance harassment policy, tightened alcohol rules, and replaced its chief people officer.¹⁷¹⁸ By January 2022, Activision Blizzard said 37 employees had been fired or pushed out and 44 disciplined in connection with misconduct investigations opened since July 2021.¹⁹

What Lactation Law Actually Requires

The conditions described at Activision Blizzard fell short of what both California and federal law require. Under California Labor Code Sections 1030 through 1034, employers must give nursing employees reasonable break time and a private space that is not a bathroom, is clean, has a surface and a place to sit, and provides access to electricity, a sink, and a refrigerator for milk storage.²⁰ Employers must maintain a written lactation policy, and retaliating against an employee for requesting or taking pumping breaks is illegal.²¹

At the federal level, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, signed December 29, 2022, expanded Fair Labor Standards Act protections to cover nearly all employees, including agricultural workers, nurses, teachers, and transportation workers. Employers must provide reasonable break time and a private, non-bathroom space for up to one year after a child’s birth. Since April 2023, employees whose rights are violated can sue their employers directly, with remedies including lost wages, liquidated damages, and reinstatement.²²²³

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