The district court erred in granting the employer summary judgment in this race discrimination and retaliation lawsuit. The employee, a millwright, raised genuine issues of fact by showing that the head millwright repeatedly demeaned him with belittling racist remarks, that the employee complained and little was done to remedy the situation and that, instead, the employee was fired within a month of his making the complaint. Also, the employee showed that he was terminated when he walked off the job because he had been assigned to work the same shift as the head millwright but that other employees were not fired for similar refusals to work.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Pregerson, J.; Bea, J., dissenting in part); January 26, 2017; 2017 WL 370862