Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—1st Cir.: Jury verdict for city upheld in firefighters’ race and religious bias claims, (Sep 17, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The district did not err in handling a jury question during deliberations or in its instructions to the jury.

Affirming a jury verdict finding in favor of the City of Springfield, Massachusetts, on the race and religious discrimination claims of two Black firefighters, the First Circuit found the district court did not, as the firefighters argued, make multiple errors that misled and misinformed the jury. Specifically, the district court did not err when it failed to answer a question posed by the jury during deliberations or when it failed to provide certain limiting instructions. Nor did it improperly instruct the jury on employer liability under state law for harassment committed by supervisors (Savage v. City of Springfield, No. 24-1720 (1st Cir. Sept. 16, 2026)).

The firefighters, one a Muslim and the other a Jehovah’s Witness, alleged that they faced unrelenting harassment by supervisors and coworkers because of their race and religion. According to one of the plaintiffs, he was one of two firefighters who sat for a promotional exam for the position of deputy fire chief in 2014. Because the other, a white resident of a different city, was not eligible to apply for the position, he was the only applicant. Three months later, however, the fire commissioner requested that the exam be invalidated.

The other firefighter also claimed he was passed over for a promotion to captain in favor of a white nonresident who was not required to fulfill certain civil service requirements for promotion, including interviews. Both filed various complaints alleging discrimination and retaliation.

Social media posts. Both also alleged that the fire department had a hostile work environment where “racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric” was common and that they were the subject of numerous social medial posts by department employees and supervisors containing derogatory comments and threats of violence. These posts included an illustration of a father shooting his daughter, captioned “Muslim family values”; a manifesto-like explanation on why “racism in America is good”; a meme stating that because there are no more slaves or slaveowners in the United States, people should “GET OVER IT”; and a picture of a pickup truck painted in blood captioned “[c]heck out the new Ram ‘protester edition.’” Another online post written by an anonymous firefighter referenced the plaintiffs’ formal complaints, used various slurs in describing them, and called for violence against them.

Lower court proceedings. The firefighters sued the city and a former and current fire commissioner alleging racial and religious discrimination in violation of federal and state law. Ultimately, only their claims of discrimination, retaliation, and hostile work environment under state law against the city based on its vicarious liability for the actions of various supervisors went to trial. After a nine-day trial, the jury found in favor of the city on all counts.

Failure to answer jury question. On appeal, the firefighters first argued that the district court erred when it failed to answer a jury question during deliberations asking what year one of the plaintiffs was second on the captain’s exam to a nonresident. The trial judge, after finding nothing in his notes regarding that testimony, told the jury they had to rely on their collective memory concerning the timing of that event and plaintiffs’ counsel did not object. According to the firefighters, the court’s instruction to the jury to rely on its collective memory was prejudicial.

Disagreeing, the First Circuit explained that while the district court appeared to have erroneously recalled that there was no testimony concerning the timing of the firefighter’s pursuit of a promotion to captain, it did not suggest the record lacked evidence on the timing. Rather, the court simply told the jurors that their memory of the evidence would have to control. Finding no basis for disturbing the verdict, the appeals court also noted that the plaintiffs acquiesced to the court’s approach.

Limiting instruction on civil service decisions. The firefighters next argued that the district court failed to provide a limiting instruction regarding the admission into evidence of decisions by the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission on complaints submitted by one of the firefighters challenging as retaliatory certain disciplinary actions taken against him. The city sought to introduce these decisions while the firefighters sought to exclude them. During trial, the firefighters asked the court to provide a limiting jury instruction stating that the civil service decisions did not address the hostile work environment questions before the jury and did not preclude the jury from issuing a verdict on the questions before them.

Declining to give their proposed instruction, the court explained that it would tell the jury they could consider the decisions, but it was up to them to determine whether the discipline was retaliatory. The plaintiffs’ counsel objected to this wording. During closing argument, however, plaintiffs’ counsel did not object when defense counsel accused the firefighter of a “lack of credibility” by referencing inconsistencies between his testimony at trial concerning the events leading to the disciplinary actions against him and his testimony to the Civil Service Commission regarding those events as described in the civil service decisions.

In rejecting the firefighters’ assertion that the district court failed to explicitly state that the civil service decisions did not consider their claims of discriminatory or retaliatory harassment, the appeals court noted that a 2018 arbitration decision and a 2022 determination each referenced the firefighters’ allegations that the department’s discipline against them was retaliatory and both rejected this contention. By telling the jury it was up to them to decide if the department’s actions were retaliatory, even though the Civil Service Commission made its own determinations on retaliation, the district court “accomplished the plaintiffs’ goal: to inform the jury that the Civil Service Commission decisions should not color the jury’s interpretation of the trial evidence.” Thus, the appeals court found no abuse of discretion in the district court’s approach to this issue.

Limiting instruction on First Amendment events at trial. Both before and during trial, the firefighters sought to foreclose any argument by the department that the constitutional right to free speech encompasses the right to post racist social media comments for which the city could not discipline the employees. Plaintiffs’ counsel did concede, however, that it would be fair for the department to suggest that First Amendment concerns affected the way it responded to the social media posts.

The court told the parties it would neither instruct the jury nor permit the department to tell the jury that the social media posts were constitutionally protected free speech “as a matter of law,” but added that defense counsel might be permitted to mention certain “constraints” in disciplining the employees who posted social media comments based on First Amendment considerations. During closing argument, plaintiffs’ counsel did not object when defense counsel stated that “There's no clearcut answers on how we deal with people's private speech in a public or semipublic forum. We're all living through the experiment with social media colliding with the First Amendment colliding with hate speech. It's an issue, perhaps the issue of our time.”

Finding no plain error in the lower court’s handling of the First Amendment issue, the First Circuit explained that defense counsel’s reference to the First Amendment in the closing argument aligned with the firefighters’ concession that it would be “fair” for the department to suggest that First Amendment concerns “went into [their] thought process” as they considered how to respond to the social media posts.

Jury instruction on vicarious liability. Finally, the firefighters requested a jury instruction that “A supervisor or manager need not be the plaintiffs’ direct supervisor or exercise supervisory authority over the plaintiff to hold the City liable for retaliatory or discriminatory conduct.” The court declined to adopt this language and instead issued an instruction that explained vicarious liability in two places, stating in part that “employees who have no supervisory authority over the [p]laintiffs are treated as any other coworker.”

The firefighters argued that by excluding their proposed jury instruction that strict liability can apply to indirect supervisory relationships, the court conflated the supervisor standard of vicarious liability and the negligence standard that applies to coworkers. They pointed to the court’s statement that the city's liability arises if “the supervisor knew or should have known about the discriminatory conduct” of others, which, they asserted, states the negligence standard for non-supervisors rather than the strict liability responsibility of supervisors.

The appeals court, however, found they took this portion of the instruction out of context as the sentences immediately preceding that language laid out the strict liability standard for supervisors. Although the district court incorrectly set forth the negligence standard for nonsupervisory employees when it stated that the city was liable “for discriminatory acts done by others where the supervisor knew or should have known about the discriminatory conduct but failed to take prompt remedial action,” the court found that “given the immediately preceding statement clearly setting forth the strict liability standard for supervisors and the later instruction on vicarious liability,” it could not conclude that the court's mistaken reference to supervisor knowledge, rather than employer knowledge, in this portion of the instructions misled the jury about the city's strict liability for the conduct of supervisors.

“Importantly,” said the court, the instructions in the section labeled “Agency or Vicarious Liability of the City” expressly defined the scope of supervisory authority needed to trigger vicarious liability. Because the instructions properly stated the law and did not impose any additional burden of proof on the firefighters, the court rejected their claim of error on this issue.

The case is No. 24-1720.

Judge: Lipez, K.

Companies: Jacques A. Dessin (Dessin Law Office) for Marc Savage and Randolph Blake. James H. Brown, City of Springfield, for City of Springfield

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