Employment & Labor Law
Please select a topic from the drop down list
Thrasher v. Vertex Aerospace, LLC
19 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. D1077
The plaintiff employee brought a claim for retaliation by the defendant employer after the white plaintiff alleged that the employer engaged in racial discrimination against a black co-employee. The defendant brought a motion for summary judgment on several grounds. A Title VII EEOC action brought by a plaintiff in Florida must be filed within 300 days of the alleged unlawful practice or incident. Since the plaintiff filed the EEOC charge on September 10, 2002, any retaliatory acts prior to November 23, 2001 do not fit within the statutory time frame. The plaintiff cannot categorize the acts as constituting a continuing violation to bypass the 300-day requirement because each discrete discriminatory act calls for the application of the filing date requirement for that particular act. The only non-time-barred retaliatory act remaining is the claim that the plaintiff was suspended in retaliation for his complaint of racial discrimination in the employee of the quarter award selection process. Summary judgment for the suspension claim is defeated because the suspension occurred after November 23, 2001 and was based on the requisite objectively reasonable belief that his supervisor acted in a discriminatory manner. Since the suspension occurred days after the plaintiff
Topic(s)
