Question

A 56-year-old female accountant for a large healthcare company applied for promotion to a posted assistant controller position. The accountant had earned a Masters in Accountancy, but had never become a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). The other candidate for the position, a 48-year-old male, had passed the required exams to become an active CPA, and had practiced as a CPA, but had allowed his certification to become inactive at the time of his application for the position. The qualifications for the position listed in the posting indicated that candidates must be a CPA. Both candidates were interviewed by a panel of company executives. The 48-year-old male was selected for the position in May 2018 since he had once been an active CPA.

The accountant filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in October 2018. During the course of cooperating with the EEOC’s resulting investigation, the company discovered the accountant had secretly maintained her own highly-organized electronic copy of approximately 100,000 pages of the company’s confidential financial records on her home computer. The company has no specific policy prohibiting the possession of such information, and the accountant had never been specifically told not to keep her own copies of this type of confidential information. Nevertheless, the company terminated the accountant in December 2018. The stated reason was her unauthorized possession of the company’s confidential financial information.

What legal issues existed at the time the charge was filed with the EEOC? Would the accountant be able to establish a prima facie case of federal age and/or gender discrimination? EXPLAIN.  

If the accountant timely filed an amended charge with the EEOC alleging retaliation, would she be able to establish a prima facie case based upon the facts surrounding her termination? If so, would she be able to establish pretext assuming the company’s stated reason met its burden of articulating a legitimate non-retaliatory reason for her termination?   EXPLAIN.

Answer 1

What legal issues existed at the time the charge was filed with the EEOC? Would the accountant be able to establish a prima facie case of federal age and/or gender discrimination? EXPLAIN.  

The legal issues that existed at the time the charge was filed with the EEOC or the Equal Employers Opportunity Commission in 2018 was that the health care company engaged in and or gender discrimination by denying her the role of an Assistant Controller. Her argument was that she was overlooked for the position despite the fact that the male candidate did's CPA license wasn't active.

In my opinion, the female accountant wouldn't be able to establish a prima facie case of federal age or gender discrimination for the following reasons

• A prima facie case federal case is a case where conclusive evidence has been provided and the facts are undeniable and assumed to be true , unless proved otherwise.

• Even if the male candidate's CPA License wasn't active, the fact still remains that she didn't have a CPA license either. She could have made a strong prima facie case if she had an active CPA license but the male candidate did not

• The male candidate had an active CPA license at some point in time which meant that he was qualified to form a skill standpoint but failed to obtain valid paperwork that renewed his license.

If the accountant timely filed an amended charge with the EEOC alleging retaliation, would she be able to establish a prima facie case based upon the facts surrounding her termination? If so, would she be able to establish pretext assuming the company’s stated reason met its burden of articulating a legitimate non-retaliatory reason for her termination?   EXPLAIN.

If the accountant had timely filed an amended charge with the EEOC alleging retaliation, she would have been able to establish a prima facie case for an unfair termination but she might not have been able to establish a prima faice case based on gender discrimination. The reason being, from a legal standpoint she was fired without reason. Because nowhere in her offer letter or letter of employment, did it state that she wasn't allowed to store company financial records.

In order to prove this, we can also look into the case of Ellen Pao vs Kleiner Perkins  

Ellen Pao filed a gender discrimination lawsuit in 2012 because she was denied an investment role in Kleiner Perkins, while she was working with the venture capital firm. She was fired from the venture capital in 2012, due to performance-related reason and because she refused to take on a transitionary role. Ellen Pao claimed that it was an act of retaliation by Kleiner Perkins. In 2015, the trial came to a conclusion where the court sided with Kleiner Perkins