Background
Jodi Asay, a former locomotive engineer, alleged she was fired in retaliation for reporting unsafe practices known as short turns to various entities including her union and the Federal Railroad Administration. She specifically reported these concerns at a safety meeting with Liberty Mutual Insurance in October 2016. Following this report, she faced disciplinary actions including a suspension for speeding and eventual termination for running a stop signal. She sued under the Federal Railroad Safety Act, claiming the employer retaliated against her for her protected activity.
The court’s reasoning
The court applied the burden-shifting framework of the Federal Railroad Safety Act, which requires a plaintiff to show that their protected activity was a contributing factor in the adverse employment action. The court emphasized that under existing precedent, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the individuals who actually influenced the decision to fire her knew of her protected activity. The record showed that the employees involved in Asay’s disciplinary process testified they did not know about the Liberty Mutual meeting or the identities of those who attended. The court found that mere temporal proximity between the report and the discipline was insufficient to infer that the decision-makers knew of the report.
Because Asay failed to adduce evidence that anyone who influenced the decision to fire her knew about her protected activity, we will affirm.
Opinion of the Court
What it means going forward
Employers are not liable for retaliation under the Federal Railroad Safety Act unless the specific individuals responsible for the adverse employment action had actual knowledge of the employee’s protected whistleblowing activity.