Pruitt v. Bayer U.S. LLC

Background

Leroy Pruitt brought an employment discrimination and wrongful-termination lawsuit against Bayer U.S. LLC. He had worked for Bayer from June 2012 through June 2017 in roles including janitor, production cleaner, and material handler. Pruitt alleged that coworkers and supervisors harassed him and made discriminatory remarks based on his sexual orientation. He also alleged discrimination and harassment based on his HIV-positive status.

Pruitt was placed on paid administrative leave in February 2017. He underwent a fitness-for-duty evaluation with a psychiatrist contracted by Bayer and was initially found fit to return to work. After Pruitt reported to a company hotline that coworkers had created a hostile work environment and had distributed a photograph of him, he underwent a second evaluation and was found unfit for duty. Although his primary-care doctor later cleared him to return, Bayer did not allow him to do so. Bayer placed him on short-term-disability-benefits-eligible leave in June 2017. Pruitt claimed Bayer terminated him; Bayer maintained that Pruitt resigned while on leave.

Pruitt filed the case without a lawyer, and Bayer removed it from state court to federal court. Before filing the lawsuit, Pruitt administratively exhausted his claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

Claims and summary-judgment standard

Pruitt asserted four claims: (1) discrimination based on sexual orientation and HIV-positive status under California Government Code section 12940(a); (2) harassment based on those protected characteristics, and failure to address that harassment, under section 12940(j)(1); (3) retaliation under section 12940(h) for reporting concerns through Bayer’s internal hotline; and (4) wrongful termination in violation of public policy.

The court explained that summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence shows no genuine dispute about a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law. A party opposing summary judgment must present evidence, not merely allegations or assertions in a legal brief. The court also stated that people representing themselves must follow the same summary-judgment rules as parties represented by lawyers.

Discrimination claim

The court held that Pruitt did not establish the required initial showing of employment discrimination. Although the evidence showed that he belonged to protected classes and Bayer appeared to concede that at least some adverse employment actions occurred, Pruitt provided no evidence of circumstances suggesting that Bayer acted because of his sexual orientation or HIV-positive status.

The court further held that, even if Pruitt had made that initial showing, Bayer presented evidence of legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its actions. Bayer attributed the paid leave to Pruitt’s unsubstantiated complaints about coworkers, the second fitness evaluation to concerns about his conduct, the refusal to let him return to the workplace to managers’ decision to rely on the psychiatrist’s evaluations, and the end of his employment to leave followed by Pruitt’s resignation. Because Pruitt offered no evidence that these explanations were pretexts, the court granted summary judgment to Bayer on the discrimination claim.

Harassment claim

Pruitt alleged that employees directed homophobic slurs at him. The court stated that a harassment claim requires evidence that the conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile or abusive work environment and that the employer knew or should have known about it but failed to take appropriate corrective action.

The court found that Pruitt offered only assertions in his opposition brief. His deposition did not identify anyone who made or witnessed the alleged statements, and Bayer presented evidence that no reports of homophobic slurs had been made to its Human Resources department. The court therefore granted summary judgment to Bayer on the harassment claim. The court also noted that Pruitt conceded in his deposition that no one at Bayer had made negative comments to him based on his HIV-positive status.

Retaliation claim

Pruitt alleged that Bayer retaliated against him by requiring a second fitness-for-duty evaluation after he made internal complaints. The court assumed that Bayer’s explanation—that the complaints reflected expanding concerns about conspiracies to harm Pruitt, including outside the workplace—was a legitimate, nonretaliatory reason for the evaluation. Because Pruitt offered no evidence showing that this explanation was a pretext, the court granted summary judgment to Bayer on the retaliation claim.

Wrongful-termination claim

Pruitt based his common-law wrongful-termination claim on the public policies reflected in the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. The court held that his failure to provide evidence supporting his Fair Employment and Housing Act claims also prevented him from recovering for wrongful termination based on those policies. The court therefore granted summary judgment to Bayer on this claim.

The court did not decide whether Pruitt would have needed to prove constructive discharge, because it found no evidence that the end of his employment violated public policy. It also did not decide whether punitive damages would have been available because Pruitt had no viable claims for relief.

Disposition

Judge Richard Seeborg granted Bayer’s motion for summary judgment as to each of Pruitt’s claims. Bayer’s two motions to exclude evidence, filed in case a trial occurred, were denied as moot.