Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—SEX—E.D. Mich.: Fired Amazon worker, allegedly called homophobic slurs, gets trial on retaliation claim, (May 21, 2026)

By Jason Albright, J.D.

She alleged that Flex Drivers would call her homophobic slurs “maybe once or twice a week” and make other threats to her.

An Amazon fulfillment center associate, fired for alleged insubordination after reporting three incidents of homophobic harassment by Amazon Flex drivers, may proceed to trial with her Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act retaliation claim, but not her allegations of disparate treatment or a hostile work environment, a federal district court in Michigan found. She met with managers about the alleged harassment and filed a formal ethics complaint about a month and a half before her termination, she testified that managers treated her differently after she raised her complaints, and a manager who disciplined her for insubordination may have intentionally omitted relevant information from the discipline report. The associate failed, however, to identify appropriate comparators for any of her disparate treatment claims, and the fact that Amazon actively worked to minimize or eliminate harassment warranted summary judgment against her HWE claim (Williams v. Amazon.com Services LLC, No. 23-cv-11944 (E.D. Mich. May 19, 2026)).

SSD associate. The plaintiff, according to the court, joined Amazon at its Sub Same-Day (SSD) fulfillment center in Hazel Park, Michigan as an SSD associate in May 2021. She referred to herself more informally as a “warehouse worker.”

Flex drivers. As part of its operations, Amazon contracts with third-party delivery partners, called Flex drivers, to make regional and local deliveries. Flex drivers can sign up through a smartphone app to deliver packages from the fulfillment center. Once a Flex driver accepts a delivery, the driver will use his or her personal vehicle to pick up packages from the fulfillment center and deliver them to customers. Amazon considers Flex drivers independent contractors.

Verification role. Sometime in 2022, the fulfillment center made employees at dispatch responsible for verifying that Flex drivers were leaving with the packages that were assigned to them. The employee at dispatch would verify the information by confirming that the code on the Flex driver’s phone matched that of the packages with which the Flex driver was leaving.

Alleged homophobic harassment. The associate testified that, while working in dispatch, she suffered “intense” harassment from Flex drivers. The drivers would allegedly call her homophobic slurs “maybe once or twice a week” and make other threats to her. She did not formally report most instances of discriminatory conduct and instead opted to record them in her phone’s notes app.

Three incidents. Amazon stated, however, that it was aware of three different incidents of harassment against her. The first occurred when a driver tried to park in front of a ramp outside the fulfillment center. The associate was pulling carts onto the ramp, and after she told the driver he could not park there, he followed her into the warehouse, cursed at her, and called her a “dyke bitch.”

In the second incident, the associate asked another driver to take his assigned packages outside. At the time, he had them spread all over the fulfillment center’s floor. The driver responded by calling the associate a “dyke,” “bulldaggers,” saying he thought she was a man, and even threatening to kill her. The associate never saw that driver again after a supervisor reported the incident to the loss prevention department.

The third incident, in October 2022, involved a female driver who, as the associate reported in a written statement to Amazon, started cursing at her and “repeated offensive homophobic derogatory words” to her for “no real reason.” The associate testified that she engaged with the driver and called her a “bitch.” Management became involved, and though the associate never saw that driver again thereafter, the associate was issued a written warning for engaging with her.

“[B]ag policy.” Beyond these three incidents, the associate believed that Amazon discriminated against her in its enforcement of its “bag policy.” Amazon’s bag policy requires that employees use only transparent personal bags while working on the floor. To effectuate the policy, Amazon provided each employee with a transparent backpack upon their start. According to the associate, however, managers at Amazon routinely stopped and prevented her, and not others, from bringing her opaque backpack to work. And even when she “specifically bought a backpack that was see through” from Amazon’s website, the discriminatory treatment allegedly continued to occur. She opined that she was singled out because of her sexuality, but an HR representative testified that the bag policy was “impacting other employees” and “not something targeted and directed towards [[the associate]].” Amazon purportedly knew the policy was inconsistently applied across the warehouse and was taking steps to remedy the problem.

Contentious meeting. The associate made several direct complaints to the ethics committee about the discriminatory treatment she allegedly faced. Before one such complaint, submitted in October 2022, she met with a second HR representative and her supervisor to express frustration with their failure to address the harassment. She told them that “neither one of you guys have did anything to help me.”

During the same pre-complaint meeting, the HR representative suggested that she move from dispatch to the “count” department to avoid Flex drivers. She, in turn, objected to being moved as a consequence of other people’s inappropriate behavior. Despite these objections, “[[The supervisor]] sent [[the associate]] to the corner of the warehouse to do meaningless work” in count. She testified that the supervisor moved her “directly after... filing that complaint.”

Ethics committee complaint and aftermath. The associate then allegedly went to the ethics committee, and afterward, she believed that the two managers’ “whole attitude changed” toward her. They became “very rude to [[her]]” and she felt that she now had a “target on [her] back” from the “point on when [she] went to the ethics committee.”

And the HR representative who was involved ultimately served as the “HR Case Owner” for the associate’s October 2022 complaint. As part of the investigation, the HR representative interviewed the associate about her complaint, and because the associate did not raise any new instances of misconduct in her complaint or at the meeting, the HR representative believed the situation was resolved and closed the complaint for lack of evidence.

Second ethics complaint. About a month later, in December 2022, the associate submitted another ethics line complaint. She alleged that neither the supervisor nor the HR representative had done anything to address the harassment she faced by Flex drivers because of her sexuality. She updated her complaint later the same month to request that she be removed from working under the supervisor as soon as possible. She said he was bullying and intimidating her.

“[S]eek-to-understand” conversations and second written warning. Shortly thereafter, on December 15, 2022, the supervisor had two “seek-to-understand” conversations with the associate based on her alleged failure to properly check drivers’ routes. The supervisor testified that she nonetheless still refused to check driver routes, and she thus entered a written warning for insubordination. In her deposition, however, the supervisor admitted that her notes documenting the meetings were “not completely” accurate and failed to reflect the supervisor’s instruction to the associate to let go of the Flex drivers who ignore her requests.

Discharge. The HR representative reviewed the supervisor’s written warning as well as time-stamped video and photo evidence of the incident and believed the evidence confirmed the associate’s insubordination. The associate, the HR representative found, did not check the Flex drivers’ routes as required, nor did she correct her behavior even after multiple conversations with the supervisor. Two other managers concurred with the HR representative’s decision based on their own review of the footage, and ultimately, the HR representative and a site leader decided to terminate the associate, effective December 19, 2022.

The site leader involved was unaware of the associate’s sexual orientation or the fact that she had filed any ethics complaints at the time of her termination, and the HR representative and supervisor both claimed that they did not know of her December 2022 ethics complaint at the time of her termination.

Testimony of former coworker. In contrast, a former coworker of the associate reviewed the video of her supposedly not checking routes and testified that she did nothing wrong. All she had to do was check the driver’s phone for the route number, which the coworker saw her do. He also testified that Amazon retaliated “immediately” against employees who made complaints.

Appeal, discharge, and lawsuit. The associate appealed her termination. Amazon thereafter conducted an appeal hearing that lasted five-to-ten minutes, at which it did not allow her to present witnesses, and it denied her appeal.

She sued, alleging disparate treatment, a hostile work environment, and retaliation, all in violation of the Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), and following removal of the case to federal district court, Amazon moved for summary judgment against all claims.

Disparate treatment. The court first granted summary judgment against the associate’s disparate treatment claim. She argued that she suffered disparate treatment in the form of selective enforcement of Amazon’s bag policy, her first written warning, and her discharge, but the court was unpersuaded. Here, although the court found that it could analyze her reassignment and termination as adverse actions under the McDonnell-Douglas framework, she failed to identify appropriate comparators for any of her disparate treatment claims. She did not reference other non-protected employees who made complaints but were not reassigned, nor did she point to employees who failed to follow dispatch protocol but were not terminated.

Retaliation. However, the associate’s retaliation claim could go to trial. Amazon argued her termination was not retaliatory because (1) it had legitimate reasons for reassigning her; (2) the decisionmakers were unaware of her December complaint at the time of her termination; and (3) Amazon ultimately had cause to fire her, but she adduced sufficient evidence that its reasons were pretextual. Specifically, she met with her supervisor and the second HR representative about the alleged harassment and filed a formal ethics complaint about a month and a half before her termination, she testified that the two managers treated her differently after she raised her complaints, and afterward, the supervisor almost immediately moved her to the “count” department despite her preferences otherwise. When she thereafter returned to dispatch, the supervisor scrutinized her performance heavily, to the point of formally disciplining her for insubordination. Finally, the supervisor admitted in her deposition that she did, in fact, tell the associate to let go of drivers who ignore the associate’s requests, contrary to the supervisor’s insubordination report. That last fact, the court found, “suggests that [the supervisor] intentionally omitted relevant information to make the write-up more damning than it originally was,” in other words “clear evidence of a pretext designed to mask retaliation.”

Hostile work environment. Finally, the court granted summary judgment against the associate’s hostile work environment (HWE) claim. The fact that Amazon “actively worked to minimize or eliminate harassment,” the court found, warranted summary judgment in the employer’s favor. The supervisor, for instance, immediately filed a report seeking to ban the second harassing driver from the building after the associate informed her that he had threatened to kill her, and managers sought to ensure he never return. “Amazon evidently acted when presented with specifics regarding the discriminatory conduct,” said the court, and “[no] reasonable juror could infer Amazon wanted or was certain that [the associate] would face harassment. Instead, Amazon worked actively to find solutions.”

The case is No. 23-cv-11944.

Judge: White, R.

Attorneys: Nichole Ann Omilion (Marko Law) for Mollie Williams. Doriyon C. Glass (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius) for Amazon.com Services LLC.

Companies: Amazon.com Services LLC

Cases: SexDiscrimination Discrimination SexualHarassment Retaliation MichiganNews GCNNews