Judge tosses former Purdue diversity chief’s race bias and retaliation claims

Dive Brief:

• An Indiana district court judge last month tossed a race discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed against Purdue University by a former chief diversity officer at its Fort Wayne campus, finding he failed to show discrimination or establish pretext and could not connect his protected activity to his sanctions.
• The officer in Hammonds v. Purdue University Board of Trustees alleged bias and retaliation after Purdue sanctioned him following an internal determination of harassment against his executive assistant. But he could not identify sufficient comparators who received better treatment, and Purdue was able to show legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its sanction decisions, the court found in the Sept. 17 decision.
• Courts’ determination of the validity of similarly situated comparators often plays a big role in cases alleging discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Dive Insight:

The plaintiff in Hammonds faced sanctions mainly for revoking his assistant’s preexisting remote workday privileges due to his frustration with her protected leave requests and time off, and for moving more slowly in approving or denying her leave requests.

While the diversity chief offered up three comparators, none were similarly situated, the court determined. Two were White and one was Asian — the plaintiff was Black — and all were investigated for alleged harassment violations. 

One was not an appropriate comparator because, although she had her sanctions reduced while the plaintiff’s sanctions were increased, the actual sanctions were “significantly more severe.” The plaintiff experienced a training mandate, loss of a pay increase for one year, some temporary job alterations and a letter of reprimand. In contrast, the White employee was suspended without pay for two full years. They also held very different roles; the White worker was a faculty member while the plaintiff was a cabinet-level senior executive, the court noted.

The Asian employee was similarly a poor comparator because, while he received no sanctions despite “allegations of repeated misconduct” from one worker, the allegations against him were less serious and did not rise to the level of harassment, the investigator determined.

“Unfair treatment and retaliation for legally protected activity are not one and the same,” the court said.

The final comparator, who was accused of exposing himself inappropriately, engaged in more serious misconduct but had the complaint against him dismissed as it fell outside the 120-day time period Purdue requires for incident reports. 

The court also found the plaintiff could not offer evidence pointing toward a race-based motive in Purdue’s decisions, and that when the university increased sanctions, they were following an appeal from the executive assistant and were contextually legitimate.

The court similarly dismissed the diversity chief’s retaliation claim that the university increased his sanctions because he filed a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge, finding timing and lack of knowledge issues with his argument.

The role of similarly situated comparators remains important even as other elements of Title VII have shifted. In June, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services, which reduced evidentiary burdens for majority-group plaintiffs in Title VII cases, did not invalidate requirements that such plaintiffs show they were treated less favorably than a similarly situated comparator.