the situation
Based on reports made by your supervisor
about some performance problems of one of his subordinates, you fire
him. The terminated employee then claims that the supervisor made a
number of racist statements to him. Since the supervisor didn’t make
the decision to fire the employee, can your company still face a claim
under Title VII for discrimination?
the ruling
If the only information you had supporting
the termination of the employee came from the offending supervisor, you
may have a problem. This is called the “cat’s paw” theory of liability
and in a recent case, a federal court in Michigan held that a plaintiff
could proceed on a claim against his employer even where his allegedly
racist supervisor had no control over the decision to fire him. Henry
v. Shawnee Specialties, Inc., et al., Case No. 1:14-CV-1234 (March 31,
2016).
LeVance Henry was a black man who was hired
by a staffing company to work as a third shift die cast technician for
Shawnee Specialties. There were only two other people working the third
shift—supervisor Mark Byers and Bill Lindley, both of whom were white.
According to Henry, a few months after he
started working at Shawnee, Byers falsely accused him of making bad
parts and made him undertake dangerous tasks. A few weeks later, Byers
again accused him of making bad parts. Byers also told Henry that
Byers’ father was a racist and that if Henry had come into his childhood
home, he would have been shot. Byers also told him that he was a
racist, but that he was trying to overcome it.
Henry complained to someone higher up in
management, plant manager Joe Yacklich. Yacklich said he would look into
it and see about transferring Henry to a different shift. But when the
second shift supervisor said that he did not want to work with Henry,
Yacklich and the president of Shawnee decided to terminate Henry based
on performance issues.
Henry brought claims of race discrimination
and retaliation against Shawnee and the staffing company. Shawnee
sought summary judgment—and one of its arguments was that even if Byers
had made racially insensitive remarks and was motivated by racial
animus, it did not matter because he was not involved in the decision to
fire Henry. But, the federal court found that it did matter. There
was evidence that Byers influenced the decision-making process. The
president said that he had been told that Henry was having performance
issues and not following Byers’ direction. The plant manager said that
he had heard about performance issues from Byers and the Byers had told
him that something needed to be done about Henry. And the only reason
that the second shift supervisor did not want to work with Henry was
because of complaints he heard from Byers. In fact, all of the
information that the plant manager and the president had about Henry
that led to his dismissal came from Byers. No one conducted an
independent investigation into the Henry’s performance .
Given that Byers had such an influence on
the decision-making process, the court agreed with Henry that Byers’
racial animus could be imputed to Shawnee. Bottom line-if Byers
intended to cause an adverse employment action and his discriminatory
animus was the proximate cause of the termination, Shawnee could be
liable for discrimination.
the point
In evaluating potential discrimination
claims, employers often are focused on who the decision makers are—but
as this case illustrates, we need to also be aware of the source of the
information relied upon by these decision makers. If that information
is tainted, the decision itself might be tainted.
Originally posted to Virginia Employer Law Blog, by Elaine Hogan on April 6, 2016.