Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—AGE—D. Mich.: ‘New blood’ remark keeps AT&T age bias claim alive, (Jul 9, 2026)

By George Basharis, J.D.

An employee may pursue a Michigan age discrimination claim after presenting evidence that a younger candidate with fewer years of experience and a disciplinary record received a promotion.

Evidence that a longtime employee may have been passed over for a promotion because of her age was sufficient to preserve her Michigan age discrimination claim against AT&T, but her other federal discrimination and retaliation claims will not move forward. A federal court in Michigan concluded that a reasonable jury could find the employee was at least as qualified as the successful candidate and that a manager’s statement explaining the promotion decision as a desire for “new blood” could support an inference that age played a role in the decision. At the same time, the court held that the employee’s federal age discrimination, race discrimination, and retaliation claims either were untimely or lacked sufficient evidence to proceed (Williams v. AT&T Services, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-10840 (D. Mich. July 8, 2026)).

Relative qualifications. The employee worked for AT&T’s Saginaw, Michigan, call center for more than 20 years as a service representative serving small business customers. Throughout her career, she repeatedly applied for promotions without success. In February 2022, at age 57, she applied for a sales coach position. AT&T interviewed only two candidates: the employee and a 27-year-old Hispanic man who had worked for AT&T in Florida.

According to the employee, she consistently ranked among the company’s top sales performers, completed leadership training, earned multiple certifications, and regularly trained coworkers while helping improve their sales performance. She also testified that she frequently reached her maximum commission levels and performed team lead responsibilities before formally applying for the promotion.

The successful candidate had approximately eight years of experience with AT&T and had previously served as a sales coach in Florida. Unlike the employee, however, he had worked with residential rather than business customers. He also had accumulated multiple attendance-related disciplinary actions and received a warning shortly before the promotion process for improperly transferring customers between departments. By contrast, the employee had never received performance-related discipline during her two decades with AT&T, and an earlier attendance-related discipline had been overturned.

The manager responsible for the hiring decision testified that she selected the Florida employee because of his interview performance, enthusiasm for sales, and experience selling mobility services, which she believed would strengthen the Saginaw office. The employee, however, testified that the manager later told her the “only reason” she was not selected was because the manager wanted “new blood.”

Age evidence. AT&T argued that its legitimate business reasons for selecting the successful candidate defeated the discrimination claims. Applying the burden-shifting framework used in indirect evidence employment discrimination cases, the court agreed that the employee had not produced sufficient evidence to establish race discrimination. However, it reached a different conclusion regarding her state-law age discrimination claim.

The court explained that comparative qualifications alone ordinarily do not establish pretext unless the unsuccessful candidate is so clearly superior that no reasonable employer would have selected someone else. Although the employee was not plainly superior under that demanding standard, the court found that a jury could reasonably conclude she was at least as qualified as the successful candidate. Considered together with the alleged “new blood” remark, that evidence was sufficient to allow the age discrimination claim under Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to proceed.

The court noted that one accepted meaning of “new blood” refers to people who are energetic and often young. Although the phrase did not constitute direct evidence of discrimination, it determined that a jury could reasonably interpret it as evidence tending to show age bias when viewed alongside the candidates’ relative qualifications.

AT&T contended that the Sixth Circuit had rejected similar “new blood” comments as evidence of age discrimination. The court distinguished those decisions, noting that they arose in different factual settings, including reductions in force, and involved comments that either were remote in time or lacked additional evidence of pretext. Here, by contrast, the alleged remark was made in direct connection with the challenged promotion decision and was accompanied by evidence that the employee may have been the stronger candidate.

The company also argued that the employee herself had testified that “new blood” referred to someone from outside the Saginaw call center rather than a younger individual. The court declined to resolve that factual dispute at the summary judgment stage, concluding that her testimony could reasonably support more than one interpretation and that a jury should determine the meaning of the phrase.

Federal claims. The employee’s federal discrimination claims failed primarily because they were filed too late. She submitted her EEOC charge on February 9, 2023. Because Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) required her to challenge discrete employment actions within 300 days of that filing, only actions occurring on or after April 15, 2022, were timely. The promotion decision preceded that date.

The employee argued that the promotion denials formed part of a continuing course of discrimination. The court rejected that argument. Failures to promote are discrete employment actions subject to their own filing deadlines, the court said. Because the challenged promotion decision occurred before the limitations period, the Title VII and ADEA claims were time-barred.

The employee also argued that her retirement effectively constituted a constructive discharge that extended the filing period. The court disagreed, finding no evidence that AT&T subjected her to working conditions so intolerable that a reasonable employee would have felt compelled to resign. Instead, the promotion decision simply left her in the same position she held before applying, which did not satisfy the demanding standard for constructive discharge.

Remaining claims. Likewise, the court dismissed the employee’s federal race discrimination claim under Section 1981 and her parallel Michigan race discrimination claim. Although the successful candidate was Hispanic and the employee asserted that she had been stereotyped as an “Angry Black woman,” the court found no evidence supporting that allegation or otherwise suggesting that racial bias influenced the promotion decision. Without evidence beyond the candidates’ relative qualifications, the race discrimination claims could not survive summary judgment.

The employee also alleged that AT&T retaliated against her because management believed she had participated in an anonymous equal employment investigation in 2018 and because she later filed internal human resources complaints. The court concluded that she failed to establish the necessary causal connection between those events and the 2022 promotion decision. The nearly four-year gap between the protected activity and the challenged employment action was too remote to support an inference of retaliation absent other evidence of retaliatory motive.

Finally, the court rejected the employee’s constructive discharge claim under Michigan law. Although she maintained that repeated promotion denials and performing some sales coach duties without the title forced her to retire, the court explained that denial of promotions alone does not create intolerable working conditions. The record also showed that she received additional compensation for performing team lead duties, further undermining her claim that the conditions were objectively unbearable.

The case is No. 2:24-cv-10840.

Attorneys: Brenda R. Williams (Brenda R. Williams, Attorney at Law) for Sonya Williams. Amy Ryder Wentz (Littler Mendelson) for AT&T Services, Inc.

Companies: AT&T Services, Inc.

Cases: AgeDiscrimination Discrimination Procedure Discharge StateLawClaims MichiganNews