Employment — national origin discrimination

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Civil

Employment — national origin discrimination

Where an employee intimidated co-workers and sought to slow down work in order to get more overtime, his termination was not the result of national origin discrimination.

“Hnin suggests that TOA’s violation of its own policy establishes pretext. More specifically, Hnin maintains that TOA violated its own policy because it skipped any disciplinary steps and terminated him immediately without warning. TOA’s standards of conduct policy, however, provides that ‘[s]ome infractions are serious enough to warrant the probation or dismissal of the associate without prior warning.’ TOA’s handbook lists these infractions, including violations of its sexual harassment policies. In short, because TOA did not violate its own policy, this pretext argument fails. See Hague v. Thompson Distrib. Co., 436 F.3d 816, 828 (7th Cir. 2006). Hnin’s related argument that TOA did not en-force its harassment policy evenhandedly based on comparator evidence is equally unavailing because, as discussed in detail above, TOA terminated Smith’s employment without warning after conducting an investigation into his sex-based harassment and the other comparators’ misconduct was not similar enough to Hnin’s conduct to raise a genuine dispute of material fact for trial.”

Affirmed.

13-3658 Hnin v. TOA, LLC

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Barker, J., St. Eve, J.