Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—D. Mass.: Iranian employee, called ‘terrorist,’ criticized for ‘cultural’ attitude, advances national origin bias claim, (Jun 11, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The employee’s public policy wrongful discharge claim, based on his alleged whistleblowing activities, also survived the manufacturing company’s summary judgment motion.

Although a quality engineer for a medical products manufacturer failed to show he was terminated in retaliation for challenging discriminatory treatment based on his Iranian heritage, and thus his employer was entitled to summary judgment against that claim, a federal district court in Massachusetts allowed his state-law discrimination claim—based on his termination and the alleged cumulative treatment—to advance to trial. His claim that he was terminated in violation of public policy for raising regulatory compliance issues also advanced but grounded on federal rather than state regulations (Terani v. Allen Medical Systems, Inc., No. 23-12510-BEM (D. Mass. Jun. 9, 2025)).

Regulatory issues. As a supplier quality engineer for Allen Medical Systems, the employee was responsible for ensuring compliance with company policy and procedure related to procurement of manufacturing parts. According to the employee, he raised regulatory compliance issues with how Allen Medical sourced those parts, claiming they were sourced from unapproved vendors.

Entitled attitude. These accusations caused tension with the company’s sourcing team and one coworker complained that the employee had an “entitled attitude” that might have been “culturally based.” The employee also claimed that his supervisor made a similar comment and that other coworkers made derogatory comments about his ethnicity, including calling him a “terrorist.” Not only did he complain to HR, he also posted about his alleged mistreatment online.

Performance review. In September 2019, a little over two years after he was hired, his supervisor solicited feedback on the employee for his annual performance review, including from the coworker who made the “entitled attitude” comment. The supervisor ultimately gave the employee a “partially meets expectations” rating. While he credited the employee as hardworking and knowledgeable, he stated that he needed to work on “embodying a team-based, collaborative, and non-combative approach.”

Termination. A year later, the employee was fired, purportedly due to a workforce reduction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the company’s decision to retain another individual with the same title and responsibilities but who had received a higher rating in an unwritten evaluation.

National origin discrimination. In his subsequent lawsuit, the employee alleged that Allen Medical discriminated against him based on his national origin in violation of state law. Because the company assumed without conceding that the employee could satisfy his prima facie burden and he did not dispute that the purported reason for his firing—an overall reduction in workforce coupled with a negative performance review—would be a legitimate, nondiscriminatory basis for the adverse action, the court turned to pretext. Here, the court noted that the employee’s termination was based in substantial part on his “partially meets expectations” performance review, which in turn incorporated feedback from others, including the coworker who described the employee’s “entitled attitude” as culturally based.

Further, said the court, his supervisor’s inability to say that the coworker’s statement surprised him or made him uncomfortable was “hardly reassuring to the idea that it was appropriately cabined.” And while the supervisor claimed he could not recall making, as the employee alleged, a similar comment about him, he did not outright deny it. Moreover, the court observed, while the supervisor’s final evaluation of the employee, which commended his work ethic but docked his tone, did not directly invoke such sentiments, “it might reasonably be read to do so implicitly.”

The court also agreed with the employee’s contention that Allen Medical’s inconsistent position demonstrated pretext. The company consistently claimed the individual it had retained over the employee had received an overall rating of “meets expectations” on his annual performance evaluation but the supervisor testified that he never gave that individual a formal evaluation. While the company suggested that the supervisor could have given the individual an unwritten evaluation, the absence of a written evaluation, said the court, at least raises a genuine fact issue as to whether any evaluation ever occurred and whether the company’s stated justification for the employee’s termination was factually true.

Hostile workplace. As to the employee’s hostile workplace claim, the court, citing the invective nature of the alleged comments, declined to find that the employee could not establish he was subject to an abusive work environment. Accordingly, the court denied summary judgment on his discrimination claim.

Retaliation. Addressing the employee’s contention that he was terminated in retaliation for challenging the discriminatory treatment, the court found no evidence the supervisor, who recommended his termination, was aware that he complained to HR or that he posted negative comments about the company on job review websites. Finding that the employee was unable to establish a causal connection between his protected conduct and the adverse action, the court granted summary judgment against this claim.

Wrongful termination. Finally, the employee alleged his termination due his objections to Allen Medical’s sourcing of parts from unapproved vendors violated Massachusetts public policy. Noting that the public policy exception to the at-will employment rule protects workers who are terminated for, among other things, “performing important public deeds, even though the law does not absolutely require the performance of such a deed,” the court observed that nonmandatory whistleblowing generally falls within this category. It must, however, “be of a kind specifically encouraged by the legislature, rather than merely implicating internal policy or the general good,” said the court, and “the inquiry turns on the relationship between the at-issue reporting activity and the public policy of the Commonwealth, as intuited by the court.”

Federal law. While the court found that Massachusetts has a general interest in favor of healthcare-product safety, the employee failed to point to any state authority encouraging the specific kind of reporting activity he alleged as causally connected to his termination. But not only did his alleged reporting activities implicate federal regulations, the manufacturing of medical devices, the court observed, is governed by preemptive federal law. “Thus,” said the court, “while it is true that the Massachusetts legislature has not itself endorsed the safety standards [the employee] claims to have been upholding, that may reasonably be said to follow simply from the simple fact that the Massachusetts legislature is limited in its ability to do so.”

After reviewing Massachusetts case law, the court found that where Massachusetts law evinces a general statement of its public policy, federal authority can be referenced to fill in the details. This may be especially true, the court observed, where preemption limits the Massachusetts legislature’s ability to weigh in directly. Accordingly, the court found that “complaints of the type alleged here, violations of federal regulations governing the manufacturing of medical devices, would implicate the public policy exception to Massachusetts’s general at-will employment rule.”

And under that framework, said the court, the employee’s claim survived summary judgment. “At bottom, the parties dispute whether [the employee] was terminated for raising compliance issues or for the supposedly unprofessional way in which [he] went about raising those compliance issues. This is a fine distinction that requires weighing and interpreting the evidence,” the court concluded.

The case is No. 23-12510-BEM.

Judge: Murphy, B.

Attorneys: George C. Malonis (Law Offices of George C. Malonis) for Ryan Terani. Christopher B. Kaczmarek (Littler Mendelson) for Allen Medical Systems, Inc.

Companies: Allen Medical Systems, Inc.

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