The human resources software company Rippling emerged as a top Democratic Party vendor after receiving tax breaks from Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul. It’s also accused of cultivating a “borderline barbaric” culture that penalizes employees who take paid family leave, according to lawsuits and complaints from several former employees.
Newsom and Hochul, the Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reports, awarded Rippling nearly $20 million in combined tax breaks between 2023 and 2025, money that helped the firm build offices in San Francisco and New York City. ActBlue and the DNC have processed more than $23 million in payroll expenditures through Rippling in the 2026 midterm election cycle, campaign finance disclosures show. And while Newsom and Hochul have made expanded paid family leave a cornerstone of their political platforms, Rippling is accused of taking a different approach.
Former employees have alleged in lawsuits that the company fired them after they took family leave or expressed their intention to do so. A March 2025 suit from former engineering manager Fu Zhou alleged that she was fired after taking medical leave to undergo IVF treatments—and that her replacement, a man, was terminated “shortly after expressing his own intention to take family leave.” An anonymous former employee, meanwhile, posted on the employer review site GlassDoor describing the company as “borderline barbaric in today’s workplace culture.”
Rippling responded to the Free Beacon with a legal letter from the leading defamation lawyer Tom Clare, whose firm ClareLocke represented Matt Lauer amid his #MeToo battles, former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler amid revelations of her close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and former Harvard president Claudine Gay amid her plagiarism scandal. Clare, who penned a seven-page letter filled with veiled legal threats—and marked “Confidential—Not For Publication Or Attribution,” a condition to which the Free Beacon did not agree—said the Free Beacon did not afford the company adequate time to comment, demanded the Free Beacon “identify all its sources,” and said Rippling could not comment on pending litigation anyway.
Hellbound and Down 