Judge lets security officer’s discrimination claims against Universal Protection proceed

The worker, who is Nigerian, joined the company as a security officer in July 2019, according to the complaint. She says she asked for medical leave in late 2020 to care for her disabled son, and that the company denied the request without proper notice or guidance. After that, she alleges, her working conditions fell apart. 

The complaint describes about a year of hostility. She claims a supervisor ignored her, falsely marked her late, and once wrote her up for lateness on a day she was not scheduled to work. On another occasion, she alleges, a supervisor burst into a restroom while she was using it to accuse her of hiding. When she reported the treatment to Human Resources, she says the representative yelled at her, called her a “troublemaker,” and hung up. 

One remark carried the discrimination claim past dismissal. According to the complaint, a manager responded to her report of mistreatment by saying, “This isn’t Nigeria where you’re from; people can talk to you however they want.” The company called it a stray remark by someone who made no decisions about her job. The judge disagreed for now, writing that the comment, followed by a suspension and firing, “plausibly supports an inference of discrimination.” 

Timing drove the retaliation claim. The worker alleges she filed formal discrimination complaints between July and September 2021. She was suspended in October and fired in November. The court called that gap close enough to support a plausible retaliation claim. 

The court also weighed how the complaint was handled inside the company. It said the alleged phone call – the yelling and hang-up – helped show that management knew about the worker’s complaints. The judge let a hostile work environment claim proceed too, pointing to a pattern of intrusive incidents rather than one severe act.