A high-ranking former official in USC’s athletic department filed a lawsuit alleging that USC allowed former athletic director Mike Bohn to racially harass and discriminate against her, then fired her after she voiced concerns about Bohn’s conduct.
Joyce Bell Limbrick was the highest-ranking female and Black official in USC’s athletic administration, as well as the only Black female administrator on the department’s executive team. Bell Limbrick says her once-promising career was irreparably changed when Bohn was hired to lead USC’s athletic department in 2019.
Bohn resigned in May 2023, a day after The Times asked him and USC about internal criticism of his management of the athletic department. The Times later found Bohn had been under investigation for racial and gender discrimination at the University of Cincinnati, his previous employer, at the time of his hiring.
“Ms. Bell Limbrick had a thriving career at USC and she loved her work. Then, Mike Bohn arrived,” her attorney, J. Bernard Alexander, said in a statement.
”[Bohn’s] incessant, racially charged remarks made Joyce feel uncomfortable and undervalued, but more than that — he actively isolated her from the executive team and undermined her work. She already was vulnerable as the only Black woman on the team, and rather than support her, the university allowed Bohn to make her life hell.”
The university said in a statement to The Times Friday that it just received Bell Limbrick’s complaint and would respond “once we have reviewed it fully.”
Her lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, offers the most detailed claims yet about the concerning conduct that led to Bohn’s resignation, including harassment and racially insensitive comments and one instance of unwanted touching by Bohn, who Bell Limbrick says punched her on the arm at a university volleyball match in October 2022, prompting a university investigation.
Her allegations, according to the complaint, became part of a wider investigation into Bohn’s conduct led by an outside law firm, Cozen O’Connor, hired by USC. The university told athletics employees in March 2023 that the firm, which specializes in cases of discrimination and harassment, merely was valuating the department’s culture ahead of its move to the Big Ten Conference. But Bell Limbrick says Linda Hoos, USC’s vice president and Title IX coordinator, told her the same day that the firm’s actual intent was to investigate complaints and reports of misconduct by Bohn, including her own.
USC never shared the results of that investigation. Then, in September 2023, four months after Bohn resigned, the university fired Bell Limbrick citing a “pattern of poor performance.” The decision stunned Bell Limbrick, who was the only member of an 11-member executive team to lose her job and, according to the complaint, had just been awarded a “merit increase” on account of her “overall job performance.”
Bell Limbrick believes the timing of her firing, just months after she voiced concerns about Bohn, was no coincidence. She says her “upward trajectory was unlawfully stripped” and her career has been “derailed” since, as she’s been unable to find “substantially similar employment.”
Bell Limbrick worked at USC for nine years, initially as the director of athletic compliance, before Bohn was hired in 2019. Shortly after he became athletic director, Bohn promoted Bell Limbrick to senior woman administrator, one of the highest-ranking positions in the department. According to her complaint, she was one of the few Black women to hold such a position at a major American university.
But soon after she learned that Bohn told one of his close staffers he offered Bell Limbrick the position only because the department “needed a woman and some diversity, so [she] was a perfect fit.”
Bell Limbrick raised her concerns about Bohn’s comments to other officials. It was shortly after that, Bell Limbrick alleges, that Bohn began to retaliate against her, excluding her from activities, stripping her of responsibilities and refusing to meet with her one on one. When the department returned to the office in July 2022, Bohn relegated Bell Limbrick to an office in Galen Center, far away from other department officials.
The lawsuit details two coaching searches, one for USC’s women’s volleyball coach and the other for USC’s women’s basketball coach, in which Bell Limbrick says Bohn attempted to undermine her work. She says Bohn prevented her from interviewing prospective volleyball coaches as part of a 2020 search, save for one Black female candidate, and during the 2021 search that landed women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb, Bell Limbrick says that Bohn, as a self-proclaimed “basketball guru,” took over the process. At one point, she says, he called Bell Limbrick to emphasize that one of the finalists for the position, a White woman, had a husband who was Black.
Other discriminatory comments from Bohn, according to Bell Limbrick, were made directly in front of USC donors and staff — and relayed to university officials.
In Oct. 2021, the lawsuit states, Bohn told a room of donors in Chicago for the USC-Notre Dame game that “female athletes should be responsible for looking out for male athletes to ensure they don’t do anything that would get them in trouble in their personal lives.”
In another instance, in Aug. 2022, Bell Limbrick says that Bohn, after singing the song “California Love,” called out to Bell Limbrick to ask if the song was by Dr. Dre. Less than two months later, in Oct. 2022, the lawsuit states that Bohn made a comment at a football game to Bell Limbrick about the rapper Wale, who’d been in a suite at the Coliseum. “Do you know him?” he asked her.
Also that October, Bell Limbrick was made aware of a situation in which fans outside of the Coliseum put a USC jersey of wide receiver Mario Williams on a gorilla who appeared on the game’s broadcast. Bell Limbrick shared the incident with Bohn, who, according to the complaint, laughed it off.
“Well,” she recalled him saying, “[Williams] does kinda look like the gorilla.”
His comment came just two weeks after Bohn punched her in the arm at a women’s volleyball match, which led to an investigation. As part of the investigation, the lawsuit states, Bell Limbrick detailed to USC “Bohn’s history and rumors of inappropriate and unwanted touching involving … other females at both Cincinnati and USC.”
Another five months passed before USC’s general counsel told athletics administrators in an executive meeting that an outside firm had been hired to review the department.
Bohn resigned two months after that, and USC, according to Bell Limbrick, never discussed any of the issues raised in The Times reporting on Bohn’s sudden resignation.
Following Bohn’s resignation, USC president Carol Folt announced there would be changes to USC’s athletics structure and brought in consultants from Huron to assess its current state. Bell Limbrick met several times with the consultants, and according to the complaint, shared again Bohn’s conduct and retaliation against her.
She hoped to get her career in college athletics back on track from there. But on Sept. 21, 2023, Bell Limbrick was fired.
She’s now suing USC for race and gender harassment, discrimination, retaliation and the failure to prevent discrimination and retaliation. She’s seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
