In Gogel v. Kia Motors Manufacturing of Georgia, Inc., 2020 WL 4342677 (11th Cir. July 29, 2020), a divided en banc court affirmed the grant of summary judgment to an employer on retaliation claims under Title VII and § 1981, reversing the original panel opinion and producing some testy exchanges among members of the court. …
Category: Employment Law and Employee Benefits
Eleventh Circuit Resets Title VII Retaliation Claim Standard
Undaunted by COVID-19, the Eleventh Circuit pressed forward with its work in Monaghan v. Worldpay US, Inc., 2020 WL 1608155 (11th Cir. Apr. 2, 2020), which reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for an employer, sending the plaintiff-employee’s Title VII race retaliation claim to a jury. The district court had both applied the…
Police Detective Can’t Be Fired for Inability to Receive Taser Shock, Holds Divided Panel on Remand from En Banc Court
On August 15, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit decided the employment discrimination case of Lewis v. City of Union City, 2019 WL 3821804, that had been remanded from the en banc court, having decided that the appropriate standard for comparator evidence is whether the proposed comparators are “similarly situated in all material respects.” The panel’s new…
Court Grants En Banc Rehearing in Employment Retaliation Case
The Eleventh Circuit today granted the defendant employer’s petition for rehearing en banc in Gogel v. Kia Motors Manufacturing of Georgia, Inc., 904 F.3d 1226 (11th Cir. 2018). The now-vacated panel opinion, authored by Judge Martin, had affirmed summary judgment for the defendant on the plaintiff’s discrimination claims but revived her claim for retaliation. Judge…
Cash from Corn: Plaintiff Injured at Corn Harvesting Facility Advances to Trial
The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the employer of a forklift driver who injured a truck driver picking up a shipment of corn in Newcomb v. Spring Creek Cooler Inc., 2019 WL 2364498 (11th Cir. June 5, 2019). Because the plaintiff picking up a load of corn at the…
Supreme Court Grants Review of Eleventh Circuit Case, Among Others, to Decide Title VII’s Application to LGBT Discrimination
The Supreme Court today granted certiorari in a number of cases considering whether Title VII prohibits discrimination against LGBT employees, including a case decided by the Eleventh Circuit, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 723 F. App’x 964 (May 10, 2018). In Bostock, a panel of Judges Tjoflat, Wilson, and Newsom affirmed, in an unpublished per…
Court Revives two Employment Discrimination Suits
The court this week published two employment discrimination opinions. In one, the court affirmed summary judgment for the Korean-owned defendant on the plaintiff’s claims that she had been discriminated against because she was a woman and an American, but revived her claim that she had been fired in retaliation for complaining. Gogel v. Kia Motors…
Court Revives Suit Against Employer that Allegedly Denied Woman Promotion for Not Being Korean
The Eleventh Circuit recently gave new life to a plaintiff’s claims of employment discrimination in Jefferson v. Sewon America, Inc., 2018 WL 2449228 (11th Cir. June 1, 2018). Jerberee Jefferson, an African-American woman, filed suit against her former employer, Sewon America, Inc., for racial discrimination and retaliatory termination. Although Jefferson began her career at Sewon…
FLSA Opt-Ins Become Party Plaintiffs Upon Filing Written Consents
In Mickles v. Country Club Inc., 2018 WL 1835316 (11th Cir. Apr. 18, 2018), the Eleventh Circuit held, considering a question of first impression in any circuit, that filing a written consent to proceed as a party plaintiff in an FLSA collective action confers party plaintiff status on the filer, even if no collective action…
Eleventh Circuit Declines to Revisit Dreadlocks Discrimination Case En Banc
Nearly a full year after issuing a revised opinion supporting an initial holding that hairstyles and other “cultural characteristics”—like dreadlocks—cannot form the basis for a Title VII claim of intentional racial discrimination, the Eleventh Circuit denied the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s petition for rehearing en banc in EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions (CMS), 2017 WL…