Equitable treatment proves discipline wasn’t biased

Employers that treat all employees the same when disciplining them tend to win when employees claim discrimination. That’s because if the employer has treated everyone the same, the aggrieved employee won’t be able to find someone outside his protected class who was treated more favorably. That means the suit will be quickly dismissed.

Recent case: Amalraj is a native of India. He was discharged from his information technology job after several computer system outages occurred on his watch.

Amalraj sued, alleging that his employer was biased against him. He complained that he was supposed to have at least three “strikes” before being fired, but did not because of his origins. But when pushed to show even one non-Indian employee who had been treated more leniently after an outage, he could not. The case was dismissed. (Gnanasigamani v. SGS Testcomm, ED CA, 2017)