Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RACE—N.D. Ohio: Football coach can’t tie firing for retaliation-policy violation to university’s DEI efforts, (Sep 18, 2026)

By Mandavi Singh, LL.M.

The university’s DEI initiatives and an athletic director’s alleged “representative” hiring remark did not connect race to the decision to fire the white football coach.

A public university secured the dismissal of a former assistant football coach’s claims that race and age discrimination motivated his termination after an investigation found that he violated its nonretaliation policy, ruled a federal district court in Ohio. Although a factual dispute existed over whether a Black coach hired after his departure replaced him, the former coach could not show that the university’s stated reason for firing him was pretextual or that race was a motivating factor. The court also rejected his due process claim arising from publicity surrounding his firing, while sovereign immunity barred his ADEA claim (Kuligowski v. University of Toledo, No. 3:24 CV 626 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 14, 2026)).

Complaints and termination. The white employee joined the university’s football staff in 2020 as assistant head coach, co-defensive coordinator, and defensive line coach. In September 2022, the university received reports that he made a potentially inappropriate comment to a female graduate student athletic trainer, including telling her she had her “fancy pants on.”

Although the trainer declined to pursue a Title IX investigation, human resources investigated under the university’s nondiscrimination policy. The coach admitted making the remark but denied intending it to be sexual or offensive.

Before that investigation concluded, the football team traveled to Florida for a postseason bowl game. The coach initiated a conversation with the trainer and remarked that if his wife knew how close she was sitting to him, she would “want to kill” her. He then discussed the pending complaint, telling the trainer that human resources had said she pursued it. He later testified that he raised the subject because he believed she had been “lying the whole time.”

The university investigated the encounter. Although it found insufficient evidence that his original conduct violated the nondiscrimination policy, it concluded that the subsequent interaction violated its nonretaliation policy. After reviewing the report and consulting human resources, the athletic director decided to terminate him.

Possible replacement. The coach asserted race discrimination under Title VII and Title VI, age discrimination under the ADEA, and an equal protection claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, along with due process claims.

For his Title VII claim, the university disputed whether someone outside his protected class replaced him. Following his termination, an existing white coach assumed his co-defensive coordinator duties, the assistant head coach title was eliminated, and other responsibilities were redistributed. The university also hired a Black coach to coach the defensive line.

The new coach had fewer responsibilities and earned substantially less. Still, because some of the terminated coach’s duties went to the new hire while others were redistributed, the court found a factual dispute over whether the Black coach qualified as his replacement.

Assuming the coach had established a prima facie case, the court found the university had articulated a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the termination: its investigation found that the coach violated the nonretaliation policy.

Honest belief, pretext. The coach characterized the original investigation as baseless, emphasizing that it found no discrimination or harassment. He also argued that he could not have retaliated against the trainer because he lacked supervisory authority over her.

Neither contention established pretext. He was fired for the retaliation finding, not the original conduct. Moreover, the university’s policy contemplated intangible adverse actions, including verbal threats.

The court declined to sit as a “super-personnel department” and second-guess the university’s interpretation of its policies. Investigators interviewed several witnesses to the bowl-game encounter as well as the coach, who admitted initiating the conversation and discussing the complaint with the trainer.

Under the Sixth Circuit’s honest-belief doctrine, the relevant inquiry was whether the employer reasonably relied on the particularized facts before it when making its decision. The coach presented no evidence creating a factual dispute on that point.

DEI evidence. The coach also relied on the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Its strategic plan included a goal of recruiting and retaining underrepresented minorities, and employees were evaluated in part on their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

He further testified that the athletic director stated at a 2022 department meeting that the university intended to hire more coaches who were “representative” of its student-athletes. The athletic director did not recall making the statement.

Even accepting the coach’s account and his interpretation that the remark referred to hiring more younger Black coaches, it did not establish pretext. Applying Peters v. Lincoln Electric Co., 285 F.3d 456 (6th Cir. 2002), the court found that the statement occurred about seven months before the termination and was unrelated to the decision-making process. The athletic director also testified that he considered the coach, himself a former university student-athlete, “representative” of current student-athletes.

Nor did the university’s broader DEI initiatives supply the missing connection. General diversity efforts and a single vague statement about representative hiring did not permit an inference that race motivated the termination. The same deficiency defeated the coach’s mixed-motive theory. The court therefore granted summary judgment on the Title VII claim and, for substantially the same reasons, his Title VI and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 equal protection claims.

Other claims. The ADEA claim failed because the statute did not abrogate state sovereign immunity and Ohio had not consented to ADEA suits in federal court. The university had expressly asserted sovereign immunity in its answers, defeating the coach’s argument that it waived immunity through its litigation conduct.

His due process claim arose from a newspaper article published after his firing. The newspaper obtained his termination letter and personnel file through public-records requests and attributed additional information about the incident to three unidentified people familiar with the situation.

The coach believed those sources must have been university personnel, but he did not know their identities or what they actually told the reporter. The court found that speculation insufficient. The university’s disclosure of his termination letter pursuant to public-records law was not voluntary dissemination, while the athletic director’s quoted statement that the coach was no longer employed, and the fact that the university generally did not comment on personnel matters, was neither false nor stigmatizing.

Without evidence that university personnel voluntarily disseminated false, stigmatizing information, the coach could not establish entitlement to a name-clearing hearing. The court denied his partial summary judgment motion and granted the university and its HR official summary judgment on all claims.

The case is No. 3:24 CV 626.

Judge: Knepp, J., II.

Attorneys: Jared J. Roberts (Binnall Law) for Craig Kuligowski. Lorenzo Washington, Office of the Attorney General, for University of Toledo.

Cases: RaceDiscrimination AgeDiscrimination Discrimination CoverageLiability Discharge PublicEmployees OhioNews