Dive Brief:
- A former Honeywell employee failed to show that the company discriminated and retaliated against him when it fired him for failing to complete a mandatory unconscious bias training, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Wednesday.
- Honeywell required the plaintiff in Vavra v. Honeywell International, Inc. to complete the training by Feb. 25, 2021. The employee never accessed the training, calling it a “joke,” and ignored several reminders to complete it, according to court documents. He also complained about the training’s link to a 2020 statement about racial bias by an executive, whom the plaintiff said was “‘making his non-white colleagues all victims and turning his white colleagues … into villains.’”
- The employee sued, alleging race discrimination under both federal and Illinois state laws, but a district court found that his opposition to a training he had not taken was not protected activity under either and granted summary judgment to Honeywell. On appeal, the 7th Circuit affirmed.
Dive Insight:
The 7th Circuit’s decision comes at a time of intense scrutiny of organizational diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, as acknowledged just weeks ago by speakers at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in Chicago.
DEI backlash has come not just from private parties and individual employees but also from state governments. Florida is perhaps the most notable example; the state passed a law in 2022 banning certain employer-mandated diversity training programs, but the 11th Circuit blocked it from taking effect.
In Vavra, the court held that an employee must have some knowledge of the opposed employer conduct in order to show an objectively reasonable belief that the action in question violated the law under Title VII or Illinois state law. But because the plaintiff had never accessed the training or its contents, his belief could not be considered objectively reasonable. Nor did the plaintiff’s complaint about the 2020 message from an executive sufficiently demonstrate an objectively reasonable belief, the court said.
“[The plaintiff] assumed, based on [the executive’s] email, that the training would vilify white people and treat people differently based on their race. But that presumption is purely speculative and insufficient to make his belief objectively reasonable, especially because there is no indication [the executive] had any involvement in creating or selecting the training’s contents,” the 7th Circuit said.
Still, several employers continue to face legal challenges to their DEI programs and training, many of them filed by advocacy groups such as America First Legal and the American Alliance for Equal Rights.
Employers have a number of considerations when deciding how to deal with DEI backlash, whether in a legal setting or in the workplace. According to sources who previously spoke to HR Dive, such strategies may include making DEI training voluntary for employees or separating training on discrimination, harassment and similar misconduct from DEI training.
