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The Employer Handbook Blog
A RIF Needed One More Answer: Why Was the Employee on Leave Chosen?
Calling a termination a reduction in force does not make the selection process disappear. If the paper trail cannot explain the choice, a jury may get the opportunity to examine it.
TL;DR: An employer said it eliminated a plant manager’s position because it had too many layers of leadership. But it produced no documented objective criteria explaining why it selected him instead of the operations manager, no contemporaneous documents substantiating the reduction in force (RIF), and no clear answer about who made the decision. A federal court denied the employer’s motion for summary judgment on the employee’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) retaliation claim.
Two overlapping jobs and one unanswered question
The employee managed a manufacturing plant. Beginning in 2022, he took time off for several medical issues, including surgeries in October 2022, May 2023, and November 2023.
His final absence was unpaid FMLA leave from November 7 through November 15, 2023. Two weeks after he returned, the company fired him.
The company had promoted another employee to operations manager several months earlier. That manager reported to the plaintiff, and a consultant later concluded that the two positions were redundant.
The consultant questioned why a $25 million plant needed both positions. The company formally retained him five days before the plaintiff began FMLA leave and, around the time the plaintiff returned, told the consultant that he would be promoted.
The termination letter cited unsuccessful product launches, a lack of team cohesiveness, and “simply too many layers of leadership for an organization our size.”
The business reason did not explain the selection
The court recognized that financial problems and overlapping positions could justify eliminating a management role. The missing piece was why the company selected the plaintiff instead of the operations manager.
The record contained no documented objective criteria comparing the two managers. The plaintiff had received multiple performance bonuses, and a witness testified that a troubled product launch improved after it came under his leadership.
The company also struggled to identify the decisionmaker. The HR director pointed to two possibilities. One of them, the consultant, denied recommending the termination and said he learned about it the day it happened.
The RIF documentation presented another problem. The court found no documents substantiating a reduction in force when the plaintiff was terminated. Someone higher up in the company reportedly believed that he had left voluntarily. The other RIF terminations began ten months later.
Combined with the timing, those gaps permitted a reasonable jury to find that the company selected the plaintiff because he took FMLA leave. The court therefore denied summary judgment.
The ruling shows why a legitimate restructuring rationale must be connected to an identifiable and consistently applied selection process. Three practical lessons follow.
Three lessons for employers
Selection criteria matter
A business reason may support eliminating a position. Employers also need contemporaneous criteria explaining which employee was selected when others perform comparable work. Performance, skills, seniority, compensation, and future operational needs may all be relevant if applied consistently.
The decisionmaker should not be a mystery
HR should document who recommended, reviewed, and approved each selection. Conflicting testimony about who made the decision can undermine an otherwise legitimate explanation.
Severance and releases are different things
The plaintiff accepted severance, but the agreement contained no release or waiver. The court therefore refused to treat the payment as a bar to his lawsuit, although he must return it if he prevails.
The employer may still prove that business conditions drove the termination. For now, it lost summary judgment because the record never answered the most important selection question: Why this employee?