A black plant manager failed to show Koch Agronomic Services LLC, Wichita, fired him because of his race rather than the leadership issues cited by the company, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Feb. 11, according to Bloomberg Law.
Vince Willis became an employee of the Koch Industries Inc. company in July 2014, when it bought the Sylacauga, Ala., fertilizer facility where he worked for Agrium Inc. (now Nutrien Ltd.). Willis stayed on in the plant’s top job, making him “Koch’s only black plant manager,” the court said.
He was fired three years later when testing conducted by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) uncovered several operational problems with equipment and other devices at the plant.
Willis filed a race discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Koch Agronomic responded by saying Willis was fired for leadership failures, including those that caused issues uncovered by the ADEM.
A lower court properly dismissed Willis’ claims under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. §1981 because there was insufficient evidence that the company’s explanation was pretextual, the appellate court said.
Willis said Koch’s firing reasons shifted over the course of the EEOC and lower court proceedings, but the record showed otherwise, the appeals court said.
The company’s examples of Willis’ performance problems may have varied at times, but they all “fell under the umbrella of leadership issues,” the court said.
And it was necessary to provide such examples because a worker’s lack of leadership skills “is a subjective opinion,” the court said.
Willis failed to show that the company’s explanation was false and that he really was fired because he is black, the court said.
The white senior operations quality manager, who was also disciplined but not fired for issues uncovered by the ADEM – and whom Willis said was favored by their white boss – was not comparable to Willis for purposes of showing race bias, the court said.
Their jobs were vastly different, as Willis oversaw the entire plant, it said.
Negative comments that Willis’ boss allegedly made about President Barack Obama in 2016 and earlier were too far removed from Willis’ July 2017 discharge to show race bias, the court said.
Koch sold the Sylacauga manufacturing facility and its Polyon® brand assets to Harrell’s LLC, Lakeland, Fla., in late 2019 (GM Nov. 27, 2019).