The employee said he was terminated based on his race and gender. How his employer successfully showed it was something else.

Larry Hill, an African-American, was the associate director of admissions at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

The Institute measured employee performance by things such as number of calls made to prospective students and number of recruited students who started classes.

Hill said the director of admissions discriminated against him based on race and gender by assigning better and more leads to Caucasian women. And he claimed he was fired because he complained about the unfair practice.

But the Institute said it assigned leads based on attendance, seniority and performance. And it added that Hill was let go because he was insubordinate and had disrupted the office setting.

Hill didn’t show these reasons were pretextual. Therefore, he lost on his bias claims.

But the retaliation claim survived. Although the Institute argued Hill did not engage in a protected activity as required to prove unlawful retaliation, there was enough evidence for a jury to find that he did engage in protected activity when he complained about the way leads were being distributed.

Cite: Hill v. Educ. Management Corp.

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Tags: Art Institute of Pittsburgh, employment, gender discrimination, race discrimination