Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—NATIONAL ORIGIN—11th Cir.: Black supervisor’s anti-African animus not sufficient to support nurses’ bias, retaliation claims, (Jun 16, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The nurses alleged the supervisor said, among other things, that there were too many African employees and that it was time to “dilute some of the Nigerians out.”

Despite acknowledging evidence of a Black supervisor’s generalized discriminatory animus against people born in African or of African origin, the Eleventh Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, found a Black nurse born in Sierra Leone failed to show she was fired, not because of substandard patient care, but instead because of national origin discrimination. Nor was her coworker, a Black nurse born in the United States, able to show she was reprimanded and constructively discharged because she had complained about the supervisor’s national origin discrimination. Accordingly, the court affirmed summary judgment against the nurses’ Title VII claims (Sanusi v. Grady Memorial Hospital Corp., No. 23-13376 (11th Cir. Jun. 12, 2025, unpublished)).

Clinical staff manager. Both nurses worked in the mother/baby unit of Grady Memorial Hospital, one as a clinical staff manager and the other as a charge nurse. In April 2020, the clinical staff manager, who was born in Georgia, met with the supervisor and the supervisor’s supervisor to discuss complaints made by other nurses about her performance. After the meeting, the clinical staff manager contacted two of those nurses. When the supervisors found out, they reprimanded her for being insubordinate. The clinical staff manager refused to sign the reprimand and resigned.

Charge nurse. The charge nurse, who was from Sierra Leone, and who had worked at the hospital since 2017, was suspended and then fired in October 2020 after the hospital received two reports of her substandard patient care.

Lower court proceedings. Both nurses then sued the hospital alleging that the supervisor, as a “Black American, African-American” woman born in Florida discriminated against nurses born in Africa or of African origin. They claimed that the supervisor made statements that expressly reflected discriminatory animus against persons born in Africa; that they complained about her national origin discrimination; and that she retaliated against them because of those complaints. The district court granted summary judgment to the hospital on all claims.

Troubling statements. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit first acknowledged evidence of “troubling statements” by the supervisor reflecting a generalized discriminatory animus against people born in Africa or of African origin. Not only did she allegedly make negative generalizations about African nurses, she purportedly stated that she would not hire any more African nurses and would reject resumes with African-sounding names. She also allegedly created a pie chart representing the different national origins and ethnicities of the unit and said there were too many African employees and that it was time to “dilute some of the Nigerians out.” The court made clear, however, that it took into account and fully considered her statements and actions in its analysis.

Retaliation claims. Addressing the clinical staff manager’s retaliation claim, the court assumed for purposes of her appeal that her reprimand for contacting the nurse complainants after she was told not to was an adverse employment action. She did not dispute that she contacted one of the complainants and another nurse in the unit. She argued instead that she was told only to refrain from contacting a specific complainant but did not remember being told not to contact anyone else.

But even assuming she was not told the specific names of any complainants other than the one she was told not to contact, her testimony that she did not remember being told not to talk to anyone about the allegations was not inconsistent with the testimony of the supervisors that she was told not to approach “any of the associates that came forward[,]”—a directive, said the court, that would have applied whether or not she was told the names of all the complainants.

Reasonable belief. Further, the court observed, the evidence showed the supervisors reasonably believed in good faith that the clinical staff manager was insubordinate by contacting the other nurses. Not only did both supervisors testify that the supervisor’s supervisor told the clinical staff manager not to contact any of the nurse complainants, that supervisor’s contemporaneously recorded notes from the meeting indicated that she asked the clinical staff manager to promise not to “approach any of the associates that came forward and question them.”

Finally, the court pointed out, the clinical staff manager could not show a close temporal proximity between her protected activity and the meeting about the other nurses’ complaints or the subsequent reprimand as five months elapsed between her most recent complaint and the meeting, which too long to establish a causal connection. For all these reasons, the court affirmed summary judgment against her retaliation claim.

Constructive discharge. Affirming as well summary judgment against her constructive discharge claim, the court explained that while she could not have been promoted or transferred for a year because of the reprimand, she still had the opportunity to continue working in her same position and the conditions imposed by the reprimand were not so intolerable as to compel her to resign.

Discrimination claim. Turning to the charge nurse’s discrimination claim, the court found the evidence supporting the reasons for her termination was substantial and largely undisputed. In September 2020, a doctor reported that two patients did not have their blood pressure taken for 12 hours. At that time, the charge nurse was supervising a new hire and an investigation into the incident revealed that the charge nurse completed shift assessments showing each patient’s physical condition even though computer records indicated that no blood pressure was ever taken. Nor did she dispute that their blood pressure was not taken for 12 hours.

Then in October, a new patient experienced a spike in blood pressure, which the charge nurse did not immediately report to the presiding doctor. Instead, she joked and laughed with the patient. Again, the court noted that the charge nurse did not dispute that the blood pressure “was in a very critical state” and that she did not promptly report it to the doctor. This evidence, said the court, was sufficient to support the hospital’s explanation that it terminated the charge nurse because of her deficient patient care.

The case is No. 23-13376.

Judge: Hull, F.

Attorneys: Justin Michael Scott (Radford Scott) for Amy Sanusi. Leslie Kali Eason (Barnes & Thornburg) for Grady Memorial Hospital Corp.

Companies: Grady Memorial Hospital Corp.

Cases: NationalOrigin Discrimination Retaliation Discharge AlabamaNews FloridaNews GeorgiaNews