Articles Posted in Employment Discrimination

An important new decision handed down last month by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals stands to be a “game changer” for some employment discrimination cases that will be decided by federal courts in Georgia. The appeals court’s rejection of the old methodology for deciding if an employer had violated the law now means that employees could potentially have an easier time getting past the summary judgment phase of a case, making it to trial, and winning. Under the new rule, in cases in which the employer had both legal and illegal motivations for acting, all the employee must show to succeed is that the employer took an adverse employment action and that the employee’s membership in a protected class was a motivating factor in the action.

The case that led to this ruling was Quigg v. Thomas County School District. The employee, Linda Quigg, was the superintendent of public schools in Thomas County, Georgia, from 2007-11. After the local school board voted 5-2 not to renew her contract in 2011, Quigg launched a legal action, asserting that she was the victim of sex discrimination and retaliation. Quigg offered evidence that, during her tenure, some board members made statements that indicated an anti-female gender bias. Additionally, however, the board had evidence that some members legitimately disapproved of Quigg’s on-the-job performance, and some of Quigg’s evaluations indicated legitimate performance-based concerns.

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As an employer, investigating employee misconduct and assessing proper punishment to each employee involved in breaking the rules is often complicated. It is very important to complete this task carefully and meticulously, though, especially if one the employees involved is a member of a protected class. In the case of one bank, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that its decision to punish an African-American employee involved in a workplace fight more harshly than the white employee involved in the same fight may constitute racial discrimination. The unfavorable ruling for this employer highlights the potential pitfalls that can await employers that issue different punishments to employees involved in similar misdeeds, especially when the employees are of different races, genders, religions, and so on.

The case began with a verbal disagreement between Curtis Wheat and Brad Hatfield, two male co-workers at Fifth Third Bank. The disagreement escalated into an argument and eventually a physical fight. After the event, the bank sent Michelle Healy, an employee relations consultant, to interview both of the men. An angry Wheat told Healy that he would “take care of [the problem with Hatfield] myself” and “Monday is going to be a big day,” but he refused to elaborate further.

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Two Georgia women, who lost their jobs and subsequently launched Title VII sex discrimination cases against their former employers, ultimately took their cases all the way to the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to defend their positions. These two cases, one of which was decided in mid-January and one of which remains pending, offer some important insight into the state of federal sex discrimination law and the changes that could soon take place.

The recently decided case involved an auto mechanic from Cobb County. When Credit Nation Auto Sales hired the mechanic, the mechanic identified publicly as a man named Louie Chavez. In 2009, Chavez began transitioning from male to female and began going by the name Jennifer Chavez. Chavez’s supervisor expressed unease about the mechanic’s decision, fearing that the mechanic would negatively affect business.

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An Ohio man, who had a disability that affected his ability to stoop, bend, and twist, could not pursue an Americans With Disabilities Act case against the employer that terminated him. The law required the employee to show that the party that decided to terminate him knew about the disability. In this case, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers not only Ohio but also Tennessee, decided that the employee lacked this necessary evidence establishing knowledge, and so his case was properly decided by the trial court in favor of the employer.

The employee, Michael Arthur, was a man who was born with spina bifida occulta, which is a birth defect that causes a malformed spinal cord. In 2002, three years after Arthur began working for American Showa, Inc., the man underwent surgery to fuse some of his spinal discs. Even after the surgery, the employee continued to have problems and took FMLA leave in 2003 due to his back.

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A Florida man should not have had his age discrimination case thrown out, even though both he and his replacement were both in their 40s. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decided to reverse a summary judgment in favor of the man’s employer, stating that an age discrimination case requires only a “substantially younger” replacement and that the employee’s allegation that age bias was the reason the employer replaced him with a man seven years his junior was enough to meet this “substantially younger” standard.

The employee, Robert Liebman, had worked for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company for 28 years when MetLife fired him in 2013. He started in 1985 as a sales representative and, by 2013, had risen to the position of Managing Director of the insurer’s West Palm Beach and Boca Raton offices. At the time of his termination, Liebman was 49 years old. Liebman sued MetLife for violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The employer asked the trial court to grant summary judgment in its favor on the age discrimination claim, noting that the employee that it selected to replace Liebman was also over 40 years of age and, therefore, a member of the same protected class as Liebman. The trial court sided with the employer and issued a summary judgment order in favor of the insurer.

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A North Georgia man’s claim that R.J. Reynolds’ hiring practices for sales manager jobs violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act got new life as a result of a recent decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court decided that both employees and job applicants alike can pursue age discrimination claims based upon the discriminatory results created by an employer’s policies.

The case involved Richard Villarreal’s pursuit of employment with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. In November 2007, Villarreal submitted an application to Reynolds through an online job board, Careerbuilder, for a sales manager position. At that time, Villarreal was 49 years old. The employer never contacted the applicant about the job. In May 2010, he filed an ADEA violation claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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An employer’s obligation to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act and refrain from discriminating against employees with disabilities places certain limitations on what an employer can and cannot do. One obligation an employer does not have under the law is to accommodate an employee if that accommodation would mean that the employee would pose a health or safety risk to himself or others. The existence of this risk was what doomed a policeman’s case in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is helpful for Tennessee employers in assessing how to deal with employees who are potential risks.

The employee in the case, Todd Michael, had been a policeman with the City of Troy, Michigan, for two decades when others around him began noticing instances of odd behavior. The police chief began an investigation of Michael. The chief eventually suspended the investigation in 2009 when Michael informed the chief that he needed brain surgery.

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An employee at an auto parts manufacturer was unsuccessful in his pursuit of his claim of race and national origin discrimination. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the employer because the employee’s attacks on the employer’s nondiscriminatory reasons for its actions did not demonstrate that the employer’s reasons were mere pretexts for discrimination. Although the case originated in Alabama, the 11th Circuit’s ruling is very instructive for Georgia employees regarding what does (or does not) show pretext in employment discrimination cases.

The alleged victim of discrimination was Claude Short, who had worked for Mando American Corp. as the Quality Director at its Opelika, Alabama facility since 2006. By late 2008, the employer had transitioned Short into a new role. The employer wanted Short to work from an office in suburban Detroit, but he persuaded the company to let him work from a vacation home he owned in Tennessee.

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An African-American high school football coach, the first in a west Georgia high school’s history since desegregation, lasted only two seasons before getting fired. The school alleged that it acted due to the coach’s improper recruiting practices. The coach claimed that racial discrimination was the real reason. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a summary judgment in favor of the school in the coach’s Title VII case. The outcome serves as a reminder to Georgia employers and employees that, in showing that the stated reason for termination was a mere pretext for discrimination, an employee must not simply show that the employer’s basis was incorrect or unfounded. As long as the employer honestly believed the nondiscriminatory reason for the firing, the action was not a pretext for discrimination, no matter how wrong that reasoning was.

The coach was Charles Flowers, who had won state championships in football and baseball while coaching at Shaw High School in Columbus from 1987 to 2005. In 2010, Troup High School hired Flowers, who became the first African-American football coach at the school since Troup County schools desegregated in 1973.

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