Anderson v. Amazon.com

Background

Keesha Anderson sued Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon.com Services, Inc. under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law. She alleged racial discrimination and retaliation while working on the Amazon Music team as a Senior Event & Experiential Marketing Specialist. Anderson claimed that managers limited her opportunities, criticized or downgraded her performance because of her race, failed to promote her, and placed her in Amazon’s Focus, Pivot, and performance-improvement-plan programs in retaliation for complaints about discrimination.

Amazon denied Anderson’s allegations and said her difficulties resulted from poor performance rather than race or retaliation. Before discovery, the court had denied Amazon’s motion to dismiss. During discovery, Anderson disclosed that she had secretly recorded workplace conversations and deleted some recordings. The record also showed that the person Anderson had described as an anonymous whistleblower was her former manager, Tatiana Simonian. A recording showed that Simonian had not made several statements that Anderson had presented in bold in her complaint.

Rulings on Discrimination and Retaliation

The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Summary judgment is warranted when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

For Anderson’s federal racial-discrimination claims, the court concluded that Anderson had not shown that Amazon’s stated reason—concerns about her work performance—for placing her in performance-management programs was a pretext for race discrimination. The court said that disagreeing with an employer’s evaluation, pointing to some positive comments, or relying on the challenged statements did not create a genuine issue for trial. The court also rejected Anderson’s failure-to-promote theory because Amazon gave a nondiscriminatory explanation that she lacked the particular skills sought for the higher-level position. The court found that the employees Anderson identified as comparators were not shown to be similarly situated in all material respects.

The court also granted summary judgment on Anderson’s retaliation claim under § 1981. It found insufficient evidence connecting her complaints about Abigail Akzin to her later placement in Focus, Pivot, or a performance improvement plan. The court concluded that the supposed whistleblower evidence did not support the claimed retaliation, that other evidence relied on speculation, and that the timing of the actions did not establish causation.

The court separately granted summary judgment on Anderson’s New York State and New York City discrimination and retaliation claims. Although the New York City law uses a more lenient discrimination standard than federal law, the court found no evidence that race motivated the challenged actions. It likewise found no evidence that retaliation played any role in Amazon’s decisions.

Sanctions and Other Motions

Defendants’ motion for sanctions under Rules 11 and 37 was denied. The court found Anderson’s deletion of recordings troubling but concluded that defendants had not shown she acted with the required intent to deprive them of evidence, and that any prejudice was minimal, if any. The court also found that Anderson had not shown that the documents she claimed Amazon destroyed ever existed. The court declined to impose Rule 11 sanctions despite concerns about the inaccurate whistleblower allegations, because it could not determine that Anderson and her counsel acted in bad faith and they turned over the relevant recording and sought to amend the complaint after the issue arose.

Anderson’s motion for sanctions under Rule 37 was denied. Her motion to strike defendants’ amended responses to requests for admission and to exclude defendants’ expert report was denied as moot because the court did not rely on those materials in deciding summary judgment. The clerk was directed to terminate the listed motions and close the case.