Dive Brief:
- A former delivery driver for a Michigan manufacturer failed to show he was fired because of his disability or his related workers’ compensation claims rather than the employer’s finding that he was responsible for painting graffiti on goods delivered to customers, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Monday.
- The plaintiff in Welch v. Heart Truss & Engineering Corp. injured his knee in an on-the-job fall. He submitted a workers’ compensation claim two years later after aggravating the injury but was denied. He injured his ankle sometime after and filed a separate claim, which was granted. Due to his knee injury, however, his employer reassigned him from a driving role to a factory role that paid less.
- Graffiti began appearing on the company's products shortly after the reassignment, per court documents. The employer claimed that the plaintiff was responsible and fired him, relying on a supervisor’s account that the plaintiff confessed to painting the graffiti. The plaintiff claimed the transfer and firing constituted disability discrimination and retaliation, but a district granted summary judgment to the employer. The 6th Circuit affirmed.
Dive Insight:
The plaintiff in Welch claimed that his firing violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and Michigan’s analogous civil rights laws as well as the state’s worker’s compensation laws. But the 6th Circuit held that the plaintiff failed — under the McDonnell Douglas framework — to show that the manufacturer’s proffered reason for his firing was pretext for discrimination.
For example, the plaintiff claimed that his identification as the graffiti artist was not based in fact, noting that he disagreed with the account given by a manager who reported his confession. But the 6th Circuit held that the employer had no reason to doubt the accuracy or objectivity of the manager’s account, and it went further by investigating other incidents of graffiti, narrowing down its list of potential culprits and assigning the manager to investigate the shift during which the plaintiff worked.
Similarly, the plaintiff alleged that disability discrimination and retaliation were the “likelier actual motivation” than the graffiti, arguing that the company “subtly changed over time” its reason for firing him, failed to follow its own policies and showed hostility towards his protected characteristics. The court found each of these explanations insufficient to show pretext.
The 6th Circuit issued a similar previous decision in 2020, when it held that an auto supplier did not discriminate against an administrative assistant with asthma when it refused to transfer her or rehire her after the supplier had been acquired by another firm. The court noted in that case that an employer’s knowledge of a disability is not enough to show pretext for discrimination.
Elsewhere, the 9th Circuit held in 2019 that a Montana worker who claimed he was fired because of his disability could not show that his employer’s proffered reasoning — that he failed to communicate with his supervisor as instructed — was pretextual.
