Offensive racial remark not enough to win discrimination case

The plaintiff in this case was fired from his job at Delta Airlines after a dispute arose about a passenger's stolen laptop and plaintiff's station manager told him that "Dominicans are the usual suspects." Discriminatory statements like that get the case off to a good start, but that's not how the case ends. The case is dismissed, and the Court of Appeals affirms the dismissal.

The case is Jiminez v. Delta Airlines, Inc., a summary order issued on April 12. After the laptop was reported stolen, detectives interviewed plaintiff, who "exhibited many non-verbal signs of dishonesty and verbal deflection." At least that's what the Port Authority investigation summary said. But plaintiff did deny taking the laptop. At around this time, the Delta Station manager made the comments about Dominicans. Shortly thereafter, in June 2018, Plaintiff was fired, and Delta's EEO manager said plaintiff was fired because he had "provided false and misleading information when he denied knowledge or contact with the laptop." EEO also said plaintiff had failed to report a coworker whom he had knowledge of taking money from a passenger's purse and received a written coaching letter in May 2017 for misconduct.

Plaintiff's racial discrimination case is dismissed because he cannot show that Delta offered knowingly false reasons for his termination. The Court (Parker, Lohier and Lohier) reminds us that it is not enough to show the employer's reasons for the termination were false. You have to show that management knew their reasons were false and that they intentionally offered a false reason to cover up for discrimination. It looks like the Second Circuit is stating that Delta conducted an investigation prior to plaintiff's termination, which negates any finding of bad faith.

To begin, Delta terminated Jimenez’s employment after investigating his involvement in the laptop theft for weeks. Delta reviewed the Port Authority detectives’ summary of their independent investigation, which stated that during the interview Jimenez “exhibited many non-verbal signs of dishonestly [sic] and verbal deflection” and “skirt[ed] around the question” of whether “he would pass a polygraph exam.” Leading up to his termination and during his post-termination appeal, Delta also reviewed internal records confirming that Jimenez “was the only AMT assigned to the aircraft” from which the laptop was stolen, and concluded that “there is no evidence to support [Jimenez’s] allegation that others gained access to the aircraft and took the laptop.”

The Court does note that the offensive racial remark is in the record. But that remark does not alter the outcome. It cites Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Assoc. of African American-Owned Media, 140 S. Ct. 1009, 1014-15 (2020), for the proposition that “[Section] 1981 follows the general rule . . . [that] a plaintiff bears the burden of showing that race was a but-for cause of [his] injury.” That but-for causation standard makes the difference. The motivating-factor test does not apply in cases like this, which means that some evidence of discrimination is not always enough to win the case.