Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—AGE—E.D. Va.: Age-based comments not enough to support DoD agency employee’s bias claim, (Aug 25, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The employee pointed to comments by a team lead and supervisor that he was “too old to be on deployment” and was unable to do his job because of his age.

A procurement advisor for the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) failed to show government officials discriminated against him based on his age when they removed him from his contracting duties, assigned him collateral duties, and prematurely ended his deployment to Afghanistan, a federal district court in Virginia ruled, granting summary judgment against his ADEA claim. Nor was the employee able to show the officials retaliated against him for his EEO activity by moving him to an unsafe working location or placing negative remarks about him on a shared drive or when they failed to make his travel arrangements to the United States (Chatman v. Hegseth, No. 1:24-cv-1585 (LMB/WEF) (E.D. Va. Aug. 22, 2025)).

Employed since 1991 by the DCMA, a defense department agency that provides contract administration services, the employee was accepted into the Ministry of Defense Advisors Program in 2017. That program paired senior defense department civilian experts with foreign counterparts in Afghanistan to train, advise, and assist foreign counterparts in developing their own processes.

Deployment. In April 2018, the employee was deployed to Afghanistan as a procurement advisor for the Combined Security Transition Command—Afghanistan, and then assigned, in May, to the Procurement Cell in the Resource Management-Defense Procurement Directorate at HQ Resolute Support. At some point prior to July 2018, his supervisor met with the team lead and another individual, who later became the employee’s supervisor, to advise that the employee had not been engaging with or training his Afghan counterparts, had fallen asleep during meetings, and had not improved his performance despite receiving constructive feedback on multiple occasions.

Performance plan. In June 2018, at the direction of his second-line supervisor, the employee was placed on an employee performance plan. At the end of one month, the team lead, in a two-page assessment, wrote that the employee was “not a good fit for this office.” During an IT maintenance period, he moved the written assessment from his desktop to an internal shared network drive and forgot to move it back after the completion of the maintenance until the employee notified him that he had discovered it there. The employee complained to his second-line supervisor who met with the employee and the team lead to stress the importance of ensuring that the file was properly stored.

Reassignment. In August 2018, the branch head and deputy branch head for resource management decided to move post-award contracting duties out of the Procurement Cell and assign them to another unit. As a result, the employee was assigned to advise two Afghan budget units on procurement issues and was also assigned various collateral duties such as delivering phone cards and mail. Around this same time, his request for an extension on his deployment was denied.

Age-related comments. In November, he was assigned to work on projects that required him to relocate to a compound closer to his Afghan counterparts. A day later, he contacted an EEO counselor to complain about age discrimination among other things. In December, he overheard the team lead and his supervisor say he was “too old to be on deployment” and was unable to do the job because of his age.

Travel arrangements. In February, he was directed to return to HQ but because he did not want to move again with less than a month left of his deployment, he decided to return home. Because his travel arrangements had not all been made, he had to sleep in a movie theater for four nights after he arrived at Bagram air base. He subsequently sued under the ADEA for age discrimination and retaliation.

Disparate treatment. In support of his disparate treatment claim, the employee, relying on the age-based comments of his supervisor and team lead, argued that they discriminated against him based on his age when they removed him from his post-award contracting duties. The undisputed evidence, however, showed that the branch head and deputy branch head for resource management made the decision to remove those duties from the employee’s entire unit. Thus, said the court, the supervisor’s and team lead’s comments could only be considered evidence of discriminatory intent if they had “singular influence” over the branch manager and deputy branch manager and used that influence to cause the adverse employment action. And here, there was no such evidence.

Nor was there any evidence the employee was treated less favorably than younger coworkers as the decision to move post-award contracting duties to another unit affected everyone in the employee’s unit, not just him. Thus, the court observed, the change in his duties was not based on age-related animus aimed at the employee but rather was a decision by senior leadership to restructure the procurement program.

Collateral duties, end of deployment. As to being assigned collateral duties such as delivering mail, there was evidence everyone in the Procurement Cell had collateral duties unrelated to their contracting work, which ranged from making copies, to delivering mail, to cleaning bathrooms. And while the employee also pointed to the premature end of his deployment, he admitted he chose to end his deployment three weeks early rather than return to HQ. Finding no evidence of age-related animus, the court granted summary judgment against this claim.

Retaliation. The employee next claimed he was retaliated against for his EEO activity when he was transferred to an unsafe working location and when the team lead “placed negative remarks [about him] in the Share [sic] Drive for all to see.” But he was informed of the transfer the day before he contacted an EEO counselor and thus there was no causal connection between his protected activity and the reassignment. Likewise, the team lead placed his critical assessment of the employee’s performance on the shared drive nearly two weeks before the employee’s meeting with the EEO counselor.

Regarding the employee’s assertion the defendants retaliated against him by not making his travel arrangements to the United States before he left for Bagram, which caused him to have to sleep in a movie theater for four nights, the “failure to make travel arrangements for one segment of a lengthy trip would not dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination,” said the court, finding this did not rise to the level of a materially adverse action.

Even if it were considered a materially adverse action, the employee did not identify who failed to make the arrangements or show that person had knowledge of his EEO complaint. Instead, he relied on the three-month lapse between his complaint and the failure to make his travel arrangements, which was simply too long, without more, to establish causation. Accordingly, the court also granted summary judgment against the employee’s various retaliation claims.

The case is No. 1:24-cv-1585 (LMB/WEF).

Judge: Brinkema, L.

Attorneys: Michael Chatman, pro se. Elizabeth Anne Spavins, U.S. Attorney's Office, for Christine E. Wormuth, Lt. Gen David G. Bassett, and Peter B. Hegseth.

Cases: AgeDiscrimination Discrimination PublicEmployees Retaliation VirginiaNews