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Non Employee Lacks Standing to Bring Title VII Claim Against Daughter’s Employer

 

Simmons v. UBS Financial Services, Incorporated - Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals


Facts:  James Simmons (“Simmons”) worked for Prelle Financial Group, a third party wholesaler of life insurance products to clients of UBS Financial Services, Incorporated (“UBS”).  Simons often worked out of UBS’s offices.

Simmons’s daughter, Jo Aldridge (“JA”), was a UBS employee.  She submitted an internal complaint of pregnancy discrimination and filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  JA eventually resigned and settled her claims with UBS.

In the following months, Simmons’s relationship with UBS deteriorated.  Simmons alleged that in retaliation of JA’s complaints, UBS revoked Simmons’s right of access to the UBS office and then eventually prohibited him from doing business with its clients.  This resulted in the end of Simmons’s employment at Prelle Financial and he subsequently left.

Simmons proceeded to bring a Title VII suit against UBS and others.  His claim agains UBS involved a claim that the company “retaliated against his daughter by taking adverse actions against him.”  UBS moved to dismiss on the grounds that as Simmons was not a UBS employee, he could not sue under Title VII.  The district court agreed and dismissed the claim.  Simmons subsequently appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Holding:  As readers might recall, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that a purported plaintiff establish statutory authority.  To qualify as an “aggrieved” claimant, the plaintiff must bring a claim that “falls within the zone of interests sought to be protected by the statutory provision whose violation forms the legal basis for his complaint.”  For the purpose of the appeal, the Court of Appeals assumed that JA had a claim for retaliation against UBS in response to UBS’s termination of its business activities with Simmons in response to her protected activity.  As a result, the Court turned to whether Simmons was a proper Title VII claimant, even though he had not engaged in protected activity.

In this case, the fact that JA was an employee of UBS was not enough to place Simmons in a position to have standing to bring a Title VII claim against UBS.  There was no evidence that as a non-employee of UBS, Simmons qualified as a claimant with a lawful Title VII claim against the company.  

Judgment:  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of Simmons’s Title VII claim against UBS on the grounds that as a non employee, he did not fall within the zone that Title VII protects.

The Takeaway:  This seems like a rather straightforward ruling, right?  Perhaps.  Nevertheless, this was a rather nuanced legal argument to make, in so much that the employee’s father attempted to extend the reach of Title VII.  While I recognize this unique argument, the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning was on the money here, based upon the statutory reading of Title VII and relevant caselaw.  Quite simply, a non employee, such as Simmons, falls outside the zone that Title VII protects and therefore has no valid Title VII claim.

Majority Opinion Judge:  Judge Smith

Date:  August 24, 2020

Opinion:  https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca5/20-20034/20-20034-2020-08-25.pdf?ts=1598362235

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