Appeals court sends fired HR manager’s bias claims to trial

The record, as the court described it, included employee reports that managers made sexist comments, among them a vice president who called a female manager a “bitch” and another manager who called the HR manager herself a “cunt” and “bitch.” A jury, not a judge, should weigh those competing accounts, the court held, writing that “summary judgment is not the time to decide which narrative to believe.”

The retaliation ruling is the one HR leaders will want to note. The trial court had held HR employees to a stricter test, reasoning that passing along colleagues’ complaints was just part of the job, not protected activity. The Seventh Circuit voiced doubt about that standard but stopped short of striking it down, finding it did not have to because the manager had also opposed conduct aimed at her personally.

The court let the sex discrimination claim proceed too. It cited evidence that male managers who drew similar criticism in an outside consulting review kept their positions without discipline, while the only woman reviewed was disciplined and later fired. The court also said a broader culture of sexist comments could bear on whether her firing was tainted by bias.

One judge dissented in part. He argued that remarks by managers who played no part in the firing could not prove discrimination, and that the male managers were not close enough comparators.

On a separate pay discrimination claim, the court sided with the employer, ruling the record too thin to compare the manager’s pay against a male colleague’s.