A senior manager for TD Insurance has filed a lawsuit against her former employer after she was fired from her $210,000-per-year-job for adding a Christian symbol to her email signature. In a statement of claim that was filed with Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, Canada, Sonja Denobrega is seeking over $400,000 in damages from the company, alleging she was wrongfully terminated for adding, “I am HIS” with a cross symbol to the end of her email signature.
Denobrega said that she’s taking a stand against TD over their company policy that she said “only allowed for gender/sex identification and allowed no room for other identities.” Denobrega, who once served as the company’s associate vice-president of underwriting operations, also claims that her January 2026 firing was the result of discrimination, alleging that the reason for her firing was at least partially based on both her religious beliefs and her age.
The company has responded by saying that the firing of the 52-year-old had nothing to do with her religion or age, or any other protected characteristic under Canada’s human rights legislation. In TD Insurance’s statement of defense, the company says it had just cause to fire Denobrega without providing her with notice, due to her wilful subordination after she ignored warnings to change her email signature in order to “bring it into compliance.”
According to a report from Yahoo News, the court document says, “The Plaintiff’s employment was terminated solely due to her failure to comply with TD’s standards regarding email signatures, which were explained to her on several occasions. As a senior employee in a leadership position, the Plaintiff was expected to model compliance with TD’s policies, not to defy them.”
“Her misconduct undermined TD’s ability to rely on her to follow TD procedures and guidelines and resulted in a loss of trust that irreparably damaged the employment relationship,” the document continued. So, in other words, they really did fire her over her email signature, which was a Christian symbol. The question many are asking themselves is if this same sort of standard or policy would be applied to someone with a Pride flag in their signature?
Denobrega said she spoke to the company’s Human Resources representative, requesting that TD remove pronouns from signature lines. However, the company responded by saying that its policy of allowing, though not requiring, employees to identify their pronouns was not up for negotiation, saying that to reverse it would violate federal law.
“TD cannot reverse this policy as doing so would be a breach of its obligations under the Canadian Human Rights Act,” the company went on to say in its statement of defense. As of this writing, none of the allegations, those against TD Insurance or Denobrega, have been proven in court. The latter has over 25 years of experience in the insurance industry, though she had only been employed with TD for several months after switching from a rival company.
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It all started when one of Denobrega’s colleagues modified her email signature to say, “Pronouns: I am HIS” with the cross symbol, which resulted in a complaint that said the signature could be taken as a micro-aggression against individuals in the LGBTQ community. Denobrega was then inspired to support her colleague and look into TD’s Christian-related resources, which she said were unimpressive.
In fact, she believed there “were fewer resources for Christians at TD and more resources for the LGBT community which she found unfair.” Once she found out that her colleague was asked to take the line out of her email signature, she added it to her own as a means of solidarity, a move that ultimately led to the company booting her to the curb.