Dive Brief:
- The YMCA of Waukesha, Wisconsin, will settle a former vice president of operation’s claims that she was wrongfully fired due to her pursuit of in vitro fertilization treatment, according to court documents filed June 13 (Rehm v. YMCA of Greater Waukesha Inc.).
- The decision to settle followed U.S. District Court Judge Pamela Pepper’s order allowing the employee’s wrongful termination claim to proceed last December. The judge dismissed four other claims, including charges of unequal pay and retaliation in violation of both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
- The terms of the settlement agreement have not yet been released but both parties said in a court document “they have a good faith belief that this case is resolved.”
Dive Insight:
The dispute in the case centered on whether YMCA’s reasons for firing the VP were pretextual.
The CEO of the YMCA branch asserted the VP demonstrated a lack of leadership and disregard for her job duties, according to the judge’s December order, telling her at her termination that she was “not performing at a level commensurate with a vice president of an organization.” He also contended that staff had complained about her poor work ethic and lack of accountability.
However, the worker said she had consistently received positive feedback on her performance and no feedback suggesting she needed to improve. She also said the CEO could not point to specific incidents of lackluster job performance — and pointed out that she received an incentive bonus just a few months before her firing.
The worker also argued that the alleged performance issues were manufactured as pretext and occurred more than two years before her firing, and that YMCA could not provide a consistent explanation for who decided to fire her.
Finally, the employee pointed to comments the CEO made to a team with multiple pregnant employees, including that he was “going to have to change the water in here” and that no one else was “allowed to get pregnant.”
“Although a factfinder could conclude that the defendant’s reasons for firing the plaintiff were legitimate, the plaintiff has shown that there is reason to question [the CEO’s] justifications,” Pepper found. She found that given the timing of the CEO’s comments on worker pregnancies, the timing of performance issue documentation beginning just days after she announced she was starting IVF and comments from the CEO during that conversation, there was a genuine issue of material fact concerning the motivation for the firing.
Employers and HR professionals should document performance issues, compliance experts have advised, but doing so is not always a silver bullet. The timing of such documentation — and how closely it aligns with other events — can complicate an employer’s defense.
In a similar case, for example, a terminated worker alleged her company, Santander Consumer USA, began aggressively documenting her deficiencies shortly after she announced she was pregnant. The worker and Santander reached a settlement on that case in late February, according to court documents.
