The City of Kanas City, Missouri's former head of its civil rights department is suing its City Manager and the City for race and age-based discrimination.
The lawsuit was filed nearly a year after the plaintiff alleged that she was forced to resign from her position as head of the Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Department because she warned city officials that a multi-million-dollar Northland data center campus being built by Meta, Facebook's parent company, violated the City's hiring rules. In May 2023, the city council approved changes to its contract with Meta that require the developer to follow city requirements to hire a certain number of minority and women-owned businesses.
The lawsuit states, however, that beginning in 2022, the City Manager created obstacles that made it difficult for the plaintiff to carry out her job duties as head of the civil rights office. This began after she voiced concern that the Meta development was not hiring the proper number of city-mandated minority and women-owned contractors.
A spokesperson for the mayor's office did not comment on the pending litigation but pointed out that more than $186 million in construction and other support work has already been committed to registered minority- and women-owned businesses on the Meta project. "Kansas City and Brian Platt sued for discrimination by ousted civil rights director" www.kcur.org (Mar. 14, 2024).
Commentary
One aspect of this suit involves pretextual termination. The plaintiff alleges that City officials maintain that the plaintiff, who was at the time the highest-ranking Black woman in city hall, was asked to resign because she violated a rule requiring city hall employees to live in Kansas City. They cite a Lee's Summit, Missouri home that she purchased as evidence that she violated the residency requirement. However, the plaintiff maintains that her primary residence has always been in Kansas City. Jackson County property records show she owns homes in both Kansas City and in Lee's Summit. A car registered in her name lists the same Kansas City address.
She alleges her firing her over the residency requirement was "pretextual" and that the City applies its residency requirement selectively, citing several department heads who own residential property outside city limits but have not been asked to resign from their positions. The lawsuit says the city has selectively used its residency requirement to terminate female, minority employees.
In a workplace discrimination case, a pretext occurs when an employer gives a false reason for terminating employment or discriminating against an employee. Pretext can be established by showing that the employer's reasons are unreasonable, inconsistent, or contradictory.
For example, if an employer claims to have fired an employee due to an economic downturn, but hired more employees or gained new contracts before the downturn, that could be considered pretext. The allegation in the Kansas City lawsuit that residency rules were inconsistently applied to all others who would otherwise be subject to those rules, and yet whose employment was not affected, if proven, could be a pretextual reason for termination, and therefore illegal.