Civil Rights Violations – FELA

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Civil

7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Officials: RIPPLE, KANNE, and TINDER, Circuit Judges.

Civil Rights Violations  – FELA

No.2451 Ronald Sweatt v. Union Pacific Railroad Co

Appellant time barred for bringing FELA claim, fails to set forth evidence age or race based discrimination.

“We begin our analysis with Sweatt’s race discrimination claim under § 1981. Union Pacific offered nineteen people jobs as Security Officers in the past five years. Sweatt uses these individuals as his comparators. Discovery revealed their racial makeup: fifteen were Caucasian, three were His- panic, and one was African-American. Nine of these individuals hailed from the Northern Region where Sweatt sought his Chicago position. Of those individuals, one was outside Sweatt’s protected class and was untruthful on the topic of traffic citations in his paper application. He was hired. But importantly, that candidate immediately rectified the discrepancy in his paper application during his interview. Sweatt, by contrast, did not. During Sweatt’s interview, he denied being arrested, and he corrected himself only when confronted by Agent Weller with the specific details of the arrest. That makes Sweatt and this particular comparator qualitatively different.”

Affirmed.

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.