Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RACE—W.D. Tenn.: FedEx employee, fired after confessing to showing nude video at work, advances claims, (Apr 15, 2026)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

Although his proffered comparator denied committing a similar infraction and was disciplined by a different supervisor, the court found it was bound by Sixth Circuit precedent.

A former lead aviation maintenance technician for FedEx can move forward with his Title VII and Section 1981 race discrimination claims, ruled a federal district court in Tennessee. The employee was fired after a confrontation with a senior maintenance technician led to the discovery that he had shared a nude video with coworkers at some point in time. To support his claims, the employee pointed to the employment actions taken against another manager who allegedly shared inappropriate cellphone pictures with coworkers but, unlike the employee here, had denied doing so and was disciplined by different supervisors. The district court found, somewhat exasperatedly, that the common supervisor factor was irrelevant under Sixth Circuit precedent (Anderson v. Federal Express, No. 2:24-cv-02927-BCL-tmp (W.D. Tenn. Apr. 13, 2026)).

The plaintiff in this case is a Black man who was hired by FedEx on June 18, 1990, and worked for the company for more than 30 years. He eventually became a lead aviation maintenance technician.

Confrontation. On the morning of January 17, 2024, the employee was involved in a confrontation with a senior aviation maintenance technician. The incident was reported by another worker to his manager. According to the employee’s written statement, the senior technician walked toward him, bumped him in the chest, and said, “you f**k with my family…I will kill you.” According to the senior technician, the employee had made comments about the technician’s wife, and months earlier he had confronted the employee for showing, at work, videos or pictures of coworkers’ wives unclothed.

As part of the investigation, the employee admitted to showing “some guys” in the hangar a video of a naked woman. According to his written statement, he could not recall exactly when the incident occurred, stating, “I don’t remember exactly when it was I guess several months or year.”

Termination. Ultimately, FedEx opted to terminate the employee for showing inappropriate material at work. The employee filed a Guaranteed Fair Treatment Procedure (GFTP) appeal as part of the company’s internal appeals process, which was denied. In his appeal statement, the employee clarified that his initial written statement was given while he was facing constant questioning and that he had shared an inappropriate video with a coworker more than 10 years ago.

Subsequently, the employee filed this lawsuit, asserting claims for race discrimination under Title VII and Section 1981.

Comparator. In support of his claims, the employee compared his termination to FedEx’s employment actions against another manager, a white man. The manager was terminated for allegedly showing inappropriate pictures from his cellphone to his coworkers. It was also alleged that he hung a picture of a FedEx employee wearing a bikini in another manager’s office as a joke. The manager was initially terminated, a decision carried out by a decisionmaker other than the one who fired the employee in this action.

Like the employee, the manager challenged his termination under FedEx’s GFTP. When questioned about the allegations leading to his termination, the manager denied sharing inappropriate pictures. Based on the manager’s responses, the investigator had doubts about whether the alleged conduct ever occurred. As a result, the manager was reinstated to a different department and given a warning letter.

In response to the comparator evidence, FedEx argued that the manager was not similarly situated to the employee. In the alternative, it contended that, even if the employee could satisfy his prima facie case for race discrimination, he could not establish pretext. The court considered each argument in turn.

Bobo. The only element at issue concerning the employee’s prima facie case was whether he was treated differently than similarly situated employees outside of his protected class. To establish this element, explained the court, a plaintiff is “not required to demonstrate an exact correlation between himself and others similarly situated; rather, he [has] to show only that he and his proposed comparators were similar in all relevant respects, and that he and his proposed comparators engaged in acts of comparable seriousness.” Bobo v. United Parcel Serv., 665 F.3d 741, 751 (6th Cir. 2012).

In previous cases, the Sixth Circuit has considered several factors to determine whether employees are similarly situated, observed the court, including whether they share the same supervisor, are subject to the same standards, and have engaged in similar conduct.

Job responsibilities. Turning to the facts at hand, FedEx argued that the manager had different responsibilities, experience, and work record. However, FedEx failed to provide any citation in the record to these purportedly different job responsibilities. Thus, a reasonable jury could conclude that the managerial designation did not make the manager dissimilarly situated, said the court.

Different circumstances. Next, FedEx argued that the manager was not similarly situated because his case involved materially different circumstances: he had denied showing inappropriate videos to others at work while the employee had admitted to doing so.

“That difference—an admission on one hand and a denial on the other—as a matter of logic would seem to make two comparators fundamentally dissimilar, particularly in a case in which there are no recordings or physical evidence disproving the denial,” observed the court. However, in Bobo the Sixth Circuit held that “whether the other identified supervisors who did not admit misconduct are similarly situated to [the plaintiff] is a jury question.” As such, this consideration could not justify summary judgment, least of all on its own, said the court.

Different supervisors. FedEx’s final argument with regard to the comparator was that he and the employee were disciplined by different supervisors. The court noted that, based on the manager’s denial of his alleged infraction and the fact that he was subject to discipline by a different supervisor, it was “difficult to view him as a meaningful comparator here, such that his lack of termination suggests racial discrimination.” Nevertheless, the court found its “hands are tied by the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Bobo…”

In Bobo, the Sixth Circuit reversed a grant of summary judgment to an employer even where the comparators did not share a supervisor with the plaintiff—and without any explanation concerning why the lack of a shared supervisor did not matter on the facts of the case, observed the court. Further, the Sixth Circuit did so despite the comparator’s differing circumstances, including one’s refusal to admit liability.

Bobo’s “holding appears to be in tension with the very existence of factors for use in identifying relevant comparators,” said the court, going on to question why including a common supervisor as a factor matters if the existence of a comparator is going to be a jury question whenever there loosely exists arguable parallels between people of different classes who are disciplined differently.

“Respectfully, this might be an area warranting some cleanup by the Sixth Circuit,” said the court. Nevertheless, the court explained that it was bound by Bobo, which precluded summary judgment with regard to establishing the employee’s prima facie case.

Pretext. Turning to FedEx’s argument that even if the employee could establish his prima facie case, his case nonetheless fails at the pretext inquiry, it argued only that the employee’s “admission that he was guilty of the very conduct for which FedEx terminated his employment effectively ends the pretext inquiry.” However, the court noted that disparate treatment of a similarly situated comparator can be evidence of pretext and denied the motion for summary judgment on these grounds.

The case is No. 2:24-cv-02927-BCL-tmp.

Judge: Lea, B.

Attorneys: Darrell J. O'Neal (Law Office of Darrell J. O'Neal) for Patrick D. Anderson. Charles V. Holmes, Federal Express Corp., for Federal Express.

Companies: Federal Express

Cases: Discrimination RaceDiscrimination Discharge TennesseeNews GCNNews