the situation
During a job interview, a female candidate is told by the general manager of a company that she is really looking for a male to fill the position. The female candidate is ultimately offered the job, but at a lower salary than was even advertised. The female candidate is also told by another company representative that the general manager would likely try just to push her out if she takes the job. Based on all of this, the female candidate turns down the job offer. Since the female candidate rejected a job offer from the company, can she really bring a claim for discriminatory failure to hire?
the ruling
A federal court in Virginia recently denied an employer’s motion to dismiss a plaintiff’s claims based on similar allegations. Majure v. Primland, Ltd., Case No. 4:17-cv-00033 (W.D. Va. November 2, 2017). Carla Majure applied to be the spa manager at Primland, a luxury spa and resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. According to Majure’s lawsuit, during the interview process, the general manager told her that she really preferred a male for the position because she felt like a male could “better control” the mostly female staff. After a number of interviews, Majure received a job offer, but it was at a salary less than the stated salary range. The general manager also told Majure that there would be greater demands on her than on others and that she would be subjected to more supervision if she accepted the position. On top of that, Primland’s Director of HR told Majure that the general manager did not want to hire her, but was just under pressure from higher ups to fill the position and also warned her that if she took the job, the general manager would probably make unreasonable demands of her in an effort to encourage her to leave (like she had done with a previous female spa manager).
Majure ended up rejecting the job offer and the job was filled by a male with less job experience, who was still hired at a higher salary than that offered to her. Majure then filed an EEOC charge and eventually a lawsuit, claiming that Primland had discriminated against her in failing to hire her in violation of Title VII.
Primland filed a motion to dismiss and one of its main arguments was that Majure could not possibly have a claim for failure to hire when she had rejected a job offer. But the district court disagreed. First, the court pointed out, it is generally accepted that a plaintiff does not have to have actually applied for a job in order to state a discriminatory failure to hire (if, for example, applying would be futile). And so just like a plaintiff should not have to go through the humiliation of formally applying for a job when she knows she will be rejected, the court explained, Majure shouldn’t have to “be required to accept an offer meant to demean and demoralize her and subject herself to overbearing demands while waiting to be fired so as to permit her to file suit.” If the court accepted the employer’s argument, it explained, it would create a “perverse incentive” for employers to give “sham offers” only to immunize themselves against a Title VII claim.
the point
The federal court here was only ruling on whether the plaintiff had properly stated a claim to survive a motion to dismiss and so was assuming the unique set of facts as alleged by the plaintiff to be true. Majure made some pretty specific allegations about both the general manager’s own statement about preferring a male and a corroborating statement from another company representative. Without this kind of evidence, it may still prove challenging for a plaintiff to make this type of claim, but employers need to be aware that the fact that a job offer was extended may not alone defeat a failure to hire claim.
Originally posted on Virginia Employer Law blog by Elaine Hogan on November 8, 2017.