A lawyer has been accused in an Essex County discrimination suit of blurting out a profanity when she learned her associate was pregnant. But the defendant says she’s being sued because she resisted allowing an attorney in her firm to work on a part-time basis.

Toni Belford Damiano replied, ”That’s great, what the [expletive] am I going to do now?” when family law practitioner Nicole Casciola announced her first pregnancy in September 2010, according to the suit, which accuses Damiano of demonstrating pregnancy animus over the births of Casciola’s three children.