Court rejects cat’s paw theory in RIF result, finding no monkey business

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi recently addressed a unique issue surrounding application of the cat’s paw theory when determining whether an employer’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its actions were genuine. The cat’s paw theory allows a court or jury to impute an employee’s discriminatory animus to the employer. The court analyzed whether the employee with discriminatory animus must know that his conduct may ultimately result in a more significant adverse employment action later and how it might do so. Let’s take a closer look.

Yellow, orange, red

Birta R. Ford, an African-American female over the age of 40, began working at Wal-Mart’s Louisville, Mississippi, location in 1993. In 2012, the store manager at the time promoted her to one of the assistant store manager positions. In August 2018, Matthew Wisecup took over as the store manager.

Wal-Mart uses a progressive employee discipline plan with three different disciplinary action levels: yellow, orange, and red. On March 27, 2018—before Wisecup became the store manager—Ford’s previous supervisor issued her a yellow-level disciplinary action because she failed to report an incident in which an associate directed a racial slur at another associate to the company’s ethics department.