The University of Southern California has settled a lawsuit with a former high-ranking athletic department official who alleged the university allowed former athletic director Mike Bohn to racially harass and discriminate against her, then fired her when she voiced concerns about Bohn’s behavior.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Joyce Bell Limbrick was the highest-ranking Black and female official in USC’s athletic department when she was fired by the university in September 2023, four months after Bohn resigned amid an internal investigation into his conduct and the culture of the department.
Bell Limbrick filed suit early last year, accusing USC of wrongful termination.
Terms of the settlement, reached last week, were not disclosed.
"While the lawsuit never made it to trial, it nonetheless offered the most detailed account yet of the conduct that led to Bohn’s resignation," Ryan Kartje of the Times wrote.
Per Kartje's reporting, Bell Limbrick filed a Title IX complaint with the university against Bohn in October 2022, after an incident in which she says Bohn punched her on the arm at a USC volleyball match. That complaint ultimately compelled an investigation, during which, according to her complaint, Bell Limbrick told USC officials of “Bohn’s history and rumors of inappropriate and unwanted touching involving … other females at both Cincinnati and USC.”
The university hired an outside law firm that specializes in institutional responses to racial and sexual harassment and discrimination to investigate Bohn five months later, Kartje reported. The Times learned of that investigation shortly thereafter, as well as a previous investigation into Bohn’s conduct at Cincinnati, and in May, asked both Bohn and USC about those concerns.
Bohn resigned a day later, according to Kartje. USC then fired Bell Limbrick, citing “a pattern of poor performance.” She 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 worked at USC for nine years, initially as the director of athletic compliance, before Bohn was hired in 2019," Kartje wrote. "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 had been one of the few Black women to hold such a position at a major American university."
”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,” Bell Limbrick's attorney, J. Bernard Alexander, said in a statement in 2025.
The Times spoke with six sources who largely corroborated Bell Limbrick's claims about Bohn’s conduct, which allegedly included inappropriate comments made in front of USC donors and staff, as well as insensitive or discriminatory remarks made in her presence.
