By Daniel Wiessner
May 21 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court panel on Tuesday seemed unlikely to revive a lawsuit brought by a white former manager at Honeywell International accusing the engineering company of illegally firing him for refusing to complete a brief training session on unconscious workplace bias.
All three judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel during oral arguments in Chicago suggested that because plaintiff Charles Vavra did not watch the mandatory video on preventing unconscious bias, he could not reasonably believe the training was racist.
“It would be very different if your client had watched it and came in and said ‘I found it discriminatory for the following reasons,’” Circuit Judge Amy St. Eve said to Vavra's lawyer, Alec Beck.
Beck told the panel that unconscious bias training, which became common after nationwide protests in 2020 over the treatment of Black people by police, was inherently racist because it teaches that members of certain races harbor specific beliefs.
He said that Honeywell did not provide details about the content of the training during discovery. But even without it, the court could look at the context in which Honeywell began mandating the training in the aftermath of the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, two of the Black Americans killed at the hands of police in 2020, Beck said.
“I agree that if I had the program and it said ‘all white people suck,’ that’d be great. We don’t have that here,” he said.
But Circuit Judge Thomas Kirsch said that because Vavra never saw the video, he still could not show that he believed it was discriminatory when he complained, which is required to prove that a plaintiff was engaged in protected activity under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Vavra sued Honeywell in 2021, claiming he was fired from his role as an estimating manager earlier that year after sending a lengthy email to human resources detailing his objections to the training and calling it "reckless and irresponsible." He accused Honeywell of retaliation in violation of Title VII.
U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso dismissed the case last year, agreeing with Honeywell that Vavra could not have believed he was engaged in protected activity when he complained about the training because he had not viewed it. Alonso also agreed with the company's argument that Vavra was fired for refusing to complete the training, and not for complaining about it.
Jennifer Colvin, a lawyer for Honeywell, told the 7th Circuit panel on Tuesday that Vavra's only exposure to the training was a Honeywell executive's email that first announced it in 2020 and said it was designed to "create an environment that values everyone's perspectives."
“No reasonable person could’ve read that and thought that [the executive's] email combined with the training was going to vilify an entire class of white people,” Colvin said.
The panel includes St. Eve, Kirsch and Circuit Judge Michael Scudder, all of whom are appointees of Republican former President Donald Trump.
The case is Vavra v. Honeywell International Inc, 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 23-2823.
For Vavra: Alec Beck of Parker Daniels Kibort
For Honeywell: Jennifer Colvin of Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart
Read more:
U.S. companies vow to fight racism but face critics on diversity
Some companies alter diversity policies after conservatives' lawsuit threat
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York)
((daniel.wiessner@thomsonreuters.com))
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