Whole Foods successfully defeated a former manager’s race discrimination, retaliation and Family and Medical Leave Act claims in part because the company showed evidence that the plaintiff misrepresented his hours worked, according to a federal judge’s decision Thursday.
The plaintiff in Peoples v. Whole Foods Market, Inc. claimed that the company terminated him after he raised concerns about safety as well as differential treatment. He also took intermittent leave under the FMLA to care for his daughter’s medical condition, and he cited this as another basis for the alleged retaliation.
Whole Foods, meanwhile, maintained that it had fired the plaintiff due the misrepresentation of his work time. Specifically, the plaintiff’s manager reviewed security camera footage and found that he routinely left the company’s facility after clocking in, only to return several minutes later. The manager reported the findings to Whole Foods’ HR staff, stating that he had committed major infractions of company policy.
Judge Thomas Durkin granted the company’s motion for summary judgment, finding that the plaintiff admitted that he misrepresented his time and that Whole Foods had fired employees of various races for substantially similar conduct.
The plaintiff, who is Black, had claimed that his White supervisor exhibited hostile treatment toward him. He pointed to incidents such as his not being invited to monthly after-hours team leader meetings as well as the supervisor’s belief that his safety concerns were false.
At one point, he confronted the supervisor about the alleged mistreatment and asked whether it was due to race; the supervisor replied that she didn’t like the plaintiff “because he’s a negative person,” per the court.
The supervisor’s personal dislike was not racially motivated, however, Durkin wrote. Even if it were, it still would not have supported allegations that his firing was discriminatory because the supervisor in question had not been involved in the termination decision.
“Whole Foods has provided uncontested evidence that at least two comparators were fired, and [the plaintiff] has not provided any evidence that a comparator was not fired,” the judge wrote. “This vitiates discriminatory intent.”
The plaintiff’s remaining retaliation claims also failed because he could not establish any causal link between them and his firing other than timing, which was insufficient, Durkin said.
The case’s outcome may serve as a reminder of the need for thorough investigative procedures that specify how HR teams or other stakeholders must conduct interviews, review evidence and document their findings in order to respond to alleged misconduct.
In Peoples, the court noted that Whole Foods staff received multiple complaints about the plaintiff’s performance and immediately followed up by seeking to meet with him. They were unable to do so, however, because “he had already clocked out” that day. Further investigation revealed the plaintiff’s conduct around clock-in time.
Conversely, employers may invite legal risk when they ignore HR investigations that turn up potential violations. That notion is supported by a July decision of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in partial favor of a former HR manager who alleged her former employer engaged in sex discrimination and retaliation when it fired her after she surfaced other employees’ harassment and bias complaints.