A former HR employee failed to prove discrimination in a case against the Trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and the Archdiocese of New York, a federal judge held Thursday.
The plaintiff in Torres v. Trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral had been employed by the trustees. When the latter moved to restructure their HR operations by outsourcing them directly to the archdiocese, the trustees informed the plaintiff that her position would be eliminated but offered her a position with the archdiocese’s HR department.
According to court documents, the plaintiff failed to respond to the offer by a given deadline, and her position was eliminated. She sued, claiming that the trustees’ decision constituted race, national origin, sex and age discrimination under federal and state laws. She also filed claims of retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to the defendants on all claims. He held that no evidence existed suggesting the defendants “ever made any comment” about, or tied any decision to, her age, race or gender, and he noted that the plaintiff confirmed this in her deposition.
The plaintiff did allege that a fellow Hispanic employee — who voluntarily resigned from the trustees — informed her that she believed the trustees’ executive director disliked the plaintiff because she was Hispanic. But this constituted hearsay, Engelmayer said, and the plaintiff presented no evidence showing discriminatory animus during her employment or of other bias or harassment.
Similarly, the plaintiff claimed that she was treated less favorably than White male employees who were offered severance pay when their roles were eliminated, whereas she was not given the same.
But the judge noted the trustees’ explanation that severance was not offered to the plaintiff because she had already been offered a job with the archdiocese. Even if a jury viewed severance as more favorable than a separate job offer, the two employees cited by the plaintiff held different positions, and she failed to show that she was otherwise similarly situated to them, the court held.
It instead found that the trustees advanced a legitimate reason to terminate the plaintiff, namely the broader structural changes the organization sought to make as well as its lack of confidence in the plaintiff’s ability to meet its HR needs.
The plaintiff “was insufficiently familiar with the Trustees’ policies and unreasonably relied on outside counsel, incurring unnecessary costs,” the defendants claimed. The executive director also stated concerns about the plaintiff’s ability to identify legal workplace legal exposure and her written work product, “which was often riddled with errors” that the plaintiff was asked to correct. The plaintiff did not offer evidence to rebut those assertions, the court said.
Ultimately, the court concluded that the plaintiff failed to meet her prima facie burden to show discrimination.
Past cases have shown that thorough documentation by supervisors of performance issues and similar concerns can serve as a defense against discrimination claims. The 6th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals held as much in a 2020 decision, where a manufacturer prevailed in an employee’s race bias lawsuit because it showed evidence that the plaintiff had performance concerns and had been informed of them by leadership.
But employers may need to steer clear of common documentation errors such as the use of code words and phrases or absolute expressions, attorneys previously told HR Dive. And in the case of performance concerns, managers and supervisors will need to record clear expectations for employees in order to explain the standards employees may fail to uphold.
