Ratna Bagwe had lost her case last month.
AB Wire
Ratna Bagwe, an Indian citizen living in the US who lost her discrimination case last month against Tennessee-based Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc., is now asking the Seventh Circuit court in New York to review her case, arguing the court needs to fix the way it analyzes employment discrimination claims.
Bagwe said in her petition on Tuesday for en banc review that the panel’s January ruling against her illustrates criticisms that have been waged against the circuit court’s framework for analyzing employment discrimination and retaliation claims, reported Law360. She argued the standards are confusing and don’t help the judges analyze evidence.
“Changing this circuit’s frameworks and the terminology used to describe them is necessary to fulfill the fundamental purpose of Title VII: eradicating workplace discrimination,” she said.
Bagwe had alleged Sedgwick paid her a “comparatively low salary” due to her national origin and race, and that she had been let go for racially discriminatory and retaliatory reasons.
But the appeals panel said in January the facts showed the company fired Bagwe due to interpersonal issues, and that she hadn’t presented a similarly situated worker who was given higher pay.
“She also has failed to present circumstantial evidence that would suggest that her employers had a discriminatory motive, and therefore she cannot prevail under the direct method of proof,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth Ripple wrote in the decision.
In her petition, Bagwe said the panel followed the frameworks that have been established under the Seventh Circuit’s law. But she said the standards have been used to improperly weigh evidence and decide whether the plaintiff will win, not whether a jury could find for the plaintiff, reported Law 360.
She said it also invites judges to give credit to evidence that a jury could reject.
For example, she said the panel noted inconsistencies in testimony from Sedgwick witnesses about how and when the decision was made to terminate Bagwe. Still, the court credited their testimony because of what it said was a “consistent rationale.”
“But a jury could reject testimony about why a decision was made based on inconsistent testimony about how and when it was made or who was involved,” she wrote.
“Members of this court have rightly and roundly criticized those frameworks,” she added later, citing more than half a dozen cases in which judges have expressed displeasure with what are known as the direct and indirect methods of proof in discrimination cases. “The court should address those criticisms collectively and definitively by ordering rehearing of this matter en banc.”
Bagwe initially sued Sedgwick and two of her former supervisors in 2011, saying the company had engaged in “pervasive discrimination” against nonwhite people.
She also alleged that, while at a hotel bar, one of her indirect supervisors and another employee had suggested she should divorce her Indian husband and find a white man because “white men are more fun.” Additionally, Bagwe claimed she was eventually replaced by a white man without leadership or technical skills.
The panel, however, held that the remark about her husband had been made during a casual bar conversation that took placed over a year before Bagwe was fired, and on the issue of Bagwe’s replacement, the appeals panel said he’d had extra experience.
On Tuesday, Bagwe also argued that the Seventh Circuit panel improperly discounted her supervisor calling her an “Indian b—-” on the day she was fired. The panel said the comment could not give rise to an inference of discrimination because it did not reference her termination and was said after the decision to fire her had already been made.