Dive Brief:
- A former HR manager for Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry may proceed with her sex discrimination and retaliation lawsuit alleging that she was fired for surfacing employees’ harassment and bias complaints in addition to her own related experiences, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Thursday.
- The plaintiff in Pratt v. Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry claimed to have reported multiple instances of misconduct by company leaders, one of whom also allegedly treated the plaintiff and her all-female department as “secretaries” and directed them to perform menial tasks unrelated to their job duties. Later, the plaintiff’s male supervisor gave her a negative performance review that labeled her a “very [divisive] figure at WAF.”
- After the plaintiff raised concerns that she was being retaliated against for making reports about the alleged misconduct, WAF fired her. A district court granted summary judgment to WAF on all claims, but the 7th Circuit partly reversed, holding that a jury could find that the company’s stated reasoning for her firing was pretextual. It upheld a grant of summary judgment as to the plaintiff’s pay discrimination claim.
Dive Insight:
The case details described by the 7th Circuit illustrate the difficulties HR professionals may face in investigating misconduct by company leaders, one of the more challenging scenarios that practitioners can encounter, according to sources who previously spoke to HR Dive.
Per the court, the plaintiff fielded several sexual harassment complaints made against WAF’s vice president of operations, one of which, she told her supervisor, would have been difficult for the company to defend in court. However, the VP was allegedly not disciplined and received only additional training following the incident.
The court noted the plaintiff’s position as an HR manager who maintained personnel records and investigated complaints; that someone in the plaintiff’s role alleged WAF did not properly address complaints “is particularly telling,” the 7th Circuit said.
A reasonable jury, it continued, could conclude that the supervisor’s unresponsiveness to the plaintiff’s own harassment and discrimination reports was evidence that the supervisor “was influenced by this sexist environment, and in fact, had lent it his imprimatur by failing to intervene and address [the plaintiff’s] complaints.”
Meanwhile, a third-party report commissioned by WAF disclosed employee and manager ratings of select company leaders, including the plaintiff. Respondents said the plaintiff had “worked hard to ‘make things better’” and tried to improve the company’s HR department but that she also lacked the trust of employees and engaged in gossip, among other criticisms. Other leaders, including the plaintiff’s supervisor, received similar feedback in the report.
The plaintiff’s negative performance review followed the report. After the review, the plaintiff expressed fears about retaliation. The 7th Circuit noted that the plaintiff was the only woman manager to be reviewed in the report and also was the only person who had negative reviews to be terminated following the report’s publication. Such differential treatment supported an inference of discrimination, the court concluded.
In a partial dissent, one member of the court’s three-judge panel wrote that it should have granted summary judgment to WAF on all of the plaintiff’s claims.
HR employees have featured as plaintiffs in several recent discrimination cases, some of which involve their role in investigating or reporting discrimination. In February, a Utah jury awarded a benefits generalist more than $5 million after it found her employer retaliated against her after she complained about a supervisor’s behavior.
In 2024, a construction company agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that it led an HR manager to resign after the plaintiff investigated sexual harassment complaints against a general manager.
HR may meet resistance from leaders when it investigates and reports misconduct, but the downplaying of credible complaints can increase both personal and organizational risk, attorneys previously told HR Dive. Practitioners facing this issue may be able to escalate it internally or to legal counsel, while improved intake processes can help to identify how to handle complaints at different stages of an investigation.
