Ex-employee alleges corporate policy to fire older workers
The Supreme Judicial Court has decided that a terminated employee can bring a “cat’s paw” discrimination claim based on evidence that his employer was pursuing a corporate strategy to lay off older workers at the time he was selected for a reduction in force.
Plaintiff Mark Adams, terminated at age 54 in a 2017 RIF, sued his former employer, defendant Schneider Electric USA, producing emails between company officials suggesting that corporate higher-ups wanted to increase “age diversity” by hiring recent college graduates while reducing the number of older employees.
“It really does emphasize that discrimination laws apply equally in age discrimination cases.”
Meanwhile, Kenneth Colby, the manager who selected employees for the RIF, denied knowledge of any such corporate policy and claimed he did not use employees’ ages to determine whom to lay off — a lack of knowledge that Adams disputed.
A Superior Court judge granted summary judgment to Schneider Electric, finding that Adams could not show that Colby’s stated justification for his termination, to cut costs, was a pretext for discrimination since all comments suggesting age discrimination came from other officials.
The SJC disagreed.
“It is possible … for a mid-level manager … to be found to further a discriminatory corporate policy without knowingly doing so,” Justice Scott L. Kafker wrote for the court. “This is an example of the so-called cat’s paw or...
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