Skip to main content

Age Discrimination Claims & Circumstantial Evidence: Attempts to Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill Often Difficult to Prevail Upon


Roberts v. IBM - Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals

Facts: George Roberts worked for IBM and was subsequently fired after a few years at the company and a history of poor work performance.  Notwithstanding the history of poor work performance, Roberts brought an age discrimination claim against IBM and focused on two instances:  1) an instant message between Human Resources managers that talked about Roberts's "shelf life" and 2) the name of IBM's program used to eliminate positions that were not cost effective, labeled "Project Blue."  Roberts argued that the discussion of his "shelf life" was a reference to his age and that the name of IBM's "Project Blue" constituted direct evidence of age discrimination, given that "blue" often referred to older people with blue hair.  The District Court granted summary judgment for IBM.

Holding:  The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Roberts could not succeed on his age discrimination claim and the lower court's grant of summary judgment for IBM was proper.  In essence, the Court found that without direct evidence of age discrimination by IBM, under the McDonnell Douglas burden shifting analysis, Roberts failed to produce sufficient circumstantial evidence to prevail as IBM had a valid nondiscriminatory reason for firing him.

In regard to Roberts's "shelf life" argument, the Court held that this language was at worst an inartful reference to Roberts's amount of billable work.  The Human Resources managers had discussed Roberts's "shelf life" in the context of whether they could justify paying him if there was not enough work, rather than a reference to Roberts's age.  The Court held that this "shelf life" language failed to amount to direct evidence of age discrimination and would qualify, at most, as circumstantial evidence.  Under McDonnell Douglas, even if Roberts's evidence was to be believed, Roberts's poor work performance was a valid nondiscriminatory reason provided by IBM for firing him.

The Court then addressed the "Project Blue" argument and held that, standing alone, the Human Resource department's mention of the color blue in its program could not reasonably be taken as a reference to anyone's age.  In fact, Roberts had not even been discharged as a part of "Project Blue" but instead was fired through a different process several months later.  Consequently, the evidence of "Project Blue" failed to amount to direct evidence of age discrimination.  The Court further held that under McDonnell Douglas, even if Roberts's evidence was to be believed, Roberts's poor work performance was a valid nondiscriminatory reason provided by IBM for firing him.

Judgment: The District Court's grant of summary judgment was affirmed, finding that Roberts had failed to assert a valid age discrimination claim.

Majority Opinion Judge:  Judge Gorsuch

Date:  November 5, 2013

Opinion:  http://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/12/12-5169.pdf

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more