MANAGER’S EEO-RELATED THREAT IS ILLEGAL AND COSTLY
An employee, who EEOC calls Shelby, had a meeting with a high-level manager to describe how he believed his first line supervisor was discriminating against him. When the employee finished outlining the allegations and facts, the manager told him, “if anything [Shelby] said was untrue, [he] would be terminated from [the Agency].” When the employee filed a complaint with EEOC, the Commission wrote that we, “find the underlying warning … to be retaliatory. We have long held that the truth or falsity of a complainant’s allegations goes to the merits of the complaint and is irrelevant as to whether he or she can bring a claim of discrimination.” EEOC’s concern is that warning such as that could dissuade a reasonable person from engaging in protected EEO activity for fear that an unsuccessful EEO complaint could result in disciplinary action. It ordered the agency to meet with the employee to determine how much it should pay him in compensatory damages. Check out Shelby R. v. Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Sec’y, Dep’t of Homeland Security, EEOC No. 2020005406 (2022)
If the threat to fire the employee was retaliatory, why wasn’t it retaliatory when the agency actually fired the employee for opposing discrimination?