The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has rejected a request by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for a new trial in a religious discrimination case brought by the agency, finding that a federal trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to impose penalties on an employer after two employees failed to retain their handwritten notes from the hiring process.
In EEOC v. JetStream Ground Services, Inc., No. 17-1003 (10th Cir. December 27, 2017), the trial court denied the EEOC a new trial after a 2016 jury verdict found in favor of the company. The agency had alleged that the company unlawfully failed to hire several Muslim workers because they planned on wearing hijabs to work.
The EEOC’s allegations rested heavily on the legal theory of “spoliation,” which is legalese for the intentional, negligent, or malicious destruction or significant alteration of relevant evidence. Here, the agency argued that the jury should have been instructed that missing handwritten notes regarding whom to hire created an adverse inference unfavorable to the company. In affirming the trial court’s ruling, the appeals court found, however – and the EEOC conceded – that the handwritten notes were not destroyed in bad faith, and the court thus refused to draw an adverse inference.
A copy of the Tenth Circuit’s decision in JetStream is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.