If retaliation claims could be proven just by pointing to an employer’s handbook, summary judgment would be extinct. This court made clear that policies don’t replace proof.
TL;DR: An employee argued that retaliation could be inferred because the employer’s harassment policy required managers to report complaints “up the ladder,” so the decisionmaker must have known. The court rejected that theory as speculation. Retaliation still requires evidence of actual decisionmaker knowledge – and even then, the claim fails without proof of pretext.
“Someone should have told her” is not evidence
The employee claimed she was fired in retaliation for complaining about sexual harassment. The issue wasn’t whether her complaint was protected activity. It was whether the person who fired her knew about it.
The decisionmaker said she didn’t. The employee never complained to her directly. That should have been the end of the retaliation claim.
Instead, the employee tried a workaround.
She pointed to the employer’s harassment policy. The policy required managers who received complaints to escalate them. From that, the employee argued a jury could infer the decisionmaker must have known – even though there was no evidence anyone actually told her.
The court wasn’t persuaded.
A policy doesn’t fill in missing facts
Retaliation still requires a link between the protected activity and the adverse action. That means actual knowledge by the decisionmaker.
That’s different from harassment claims, where an employer can be liable if it knew or should have known and failed to act. Retaliation, by contrast, turns on whether the person making the decision actually knew about the protected activity.
The court refused to assume the policy worked the way it was supposed to. It would not speculate that the complaint traveled “up the ladder” just because the policy said it should. As the court explained, it’s not enough that an employer could have known or even should have known. There has to be evidence the decisionmaker actually knew.
A policy sets expectations. It doesn’t create facts.
When complaints stop short of the person making the call
This argument usually shows up when an employee complains to someone other than the person who later makes the employment decision. In those situations, employees often try to rely on internal reporting rules to bridge the gap.
Courts, including this one, aren’t persuaded. Without evidence that the complaint actually reached the decisionmaker, a policy alone isn’t enough.
The real reason the claim failed
The opinion doesn’t stop with knowledge. It goes further.
The court emphasized that even if the decisionmaker had known about the complaint, the claim still failed because the employer had a legitimate reason for the termination and the employee couldn’t show it was a lie.
The decisionmaker reviewed the employee’s disciplinary history, believed termination was warranted, and acted on that belief. The court focused on honest belief, not perfect judgment.
Without evidence of pretext, the retaliation claim couldn’t survive.
Takeaways for employers
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Retaliation still turns on who knew what, and when
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Policies don’t impute knowledge by themselves
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“Should have known” may matter for harassment claims, but retaliation still requires actual decisionmaker knowledge
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Require managers to escalate harassment complaints promptly and consistently
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Before taking disciplinary action, have the decisionmaker confirm and document whether any harassment complaint reached them
Bottom line
Harassment policies matter. Courts just won’t let them do the plaintiff’s causation work. Without evidence of actual knowledge and without proof of pretext, retaliation claims don’t get to a jury.