In Title VII actions, plaintiffs have a limited amount of time to file a charge of discrimination (or a court can dismiss the case as untimely). In the case of Wells v. Texas Tech University, the timeliness dynamic was further complicated by a question of whether unpaid participation in a program can make you an employee. The Fifth Circuit took a hard look at both and determined that the plaintiff’s claim was too late.
Cara Wells was a research assistant back in 2009 in the Animal and Food Sciences Lab at Texas Tech University. In that position, Wells claimed that two professors bullied and harassed her, including forcing her to share a hotel room with a male professor during certain conferences. After she graduated and started her PhD program, she continued to work in that lab. She graduated from her doctoral program in 2017 but stayed at the lab as an assistant. She then went on to participate in Texas Tech’s Accelerator Hub program and founded two companies, using one of her former professors as a mentor. There were some professional issues between Wells and the professor, and in 2020, Wells ultimately reported to the Texas Tech the harassment she claimed she suffered during her student days.
In May 2022 (about two years after her harassment report), Wells joined Texas Tech’s Hub program as an unpaid mentor. Texas Tech removed her from that program about a month later, removed her from the website, and took her off any...
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