Browse the headlines about DEI-training backlash lawsuits and they usually go one way: a white employee gets offended and sues over it. This one, initiated by the EEOC, ain’t that at all.
Workplace profanity was business as usual, right up until it accompanied a complaint about racism.
A supervisor approved the employee’s hairstyle at her interview, then sent her home for wearing it on day one. A federal appeals court says the case over what happened next isn’t finished, for either side.
An employee’s attempt to end fifty years of discrimination-law precedent went nowhere on appeal. But, two of the three judges who rejected it wrote separately to say they’d take another case just to do it.
She reported the harassment and lost her job. Her supervisor testified that the man she reported wasn’t disciplined; he got training instead.
A coworker allegedly groped her and threatened her on shift. Years later, she got fired not for reporting it, but for how she finally hit back.
A supervisor was shown a slur drawn across a face on a breakroom whiteboard and shrugged it off. A federal appeals court didn’t.
An employee accused his manager of anti-Black bias over comments made eight months earlier. A federal appeals court said the comments were about politics, not race, and the case fell apart.
She said the training singled out white employees as inherently racist. Her own testimony said otherwise, and that’s what sank her case.
A hospital and university didn’t just demote an employee over his criticism of a race-based practice. They went on social media to trash him, and that’s the bigger legal problem.
The Employer Handbook Blog