The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled recently that an employer wasn’t liable under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) under the so-called “cat’s paw” theory of discrimination.
In this case, the plaintiff claimed she was unlawfully fired based on the retaliatory bias of a supervisor who objected to her taking approved FMLA leave. In a case where the “cat’s paw” theory is applied, a plaintiff can prove discrimination if she can show that an otherwise unbiased decisionmaker took an adverse employment action based on a recommendation by a supervisor with discriminatory motives.
Ruling in Parker v. United Airlines, Inc., No. 21-4093 (10th Cir. September 26, 2022), however, the Tenth Circuit found that the decisionmaker, a more senior manager, independently investigated the supervisor’s recommendation and agreed that the plaintiff should be terminated. In so ruling, the court noted that “[r]etaliation entails a causal link between an employee’s use of FMLA leave and the firing … [which] is broken when an independent decisionmaker conducts her own investigation and decides to fire the employee.”
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.