6th Circuit Revives GE Age-Discrimination Case

(CN) - The 6th Circuit revived an age-discrimination lawsuit against General Electric, ruling that the company's delay in firing an employee who filed a discrimination complaint did not make his termination legal.

Jarrett Hamilton claims GE fired him in retaliation for the age-discrimination complaint he filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

GE responded that it fired Hamilton for insubordination, but did not do so for two months. Thus, GE reasoned, there was no way the firing could be retaliatory.

The district court granted summary judgment to the company, ruling that Hamilton had not tied his firing to the EEOC complaint.

Judge Moore of the Cincinnati-based federal appeals court reversed the decision, ruling that Hamilton has made a prima facie case to survive summary judgment.

"Hamilton has testified that GE increased its scrutiny of him after he filed his EEOC complaint," Moore wrote. "The combination of this increased scrutiny with the temporal proximity of his termination occurring less than three months after his EEOC filing is sufficient to establish the causal nexus needed to establish a prima facie case."

Moore reversed and remanded the case.

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