9th Circuit rules on postmaster’s claim that USPS protected the male

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to all California employers) had to decide whether there was enough evidence that a demoted local postmaster was treated differently from similarly situated younger Caucasian or male employees. Along the way, the court gave a primer on burdens of proof in discrimination cases.

Was the criticism the result of bias?

Dawn Lui, a longtime employee of the United States Postal Service (USPS), is a woman of Chinese ethnicity in her late fifties. She has worked for USPS since 1992 and has been a postmaster since 2004. In 2014, she was appointed as postmaster of the post office in Shelton, Washington.

With the supportive testimony of her supervisor Charles Roberts, Lui claims employees in the Shelton Post Office began targeting her with a series of false complaints and grievances after her appointment as Shelton Postmaster because of her race, sex, and national origin. She claims white male managers at the Shelton Post Office were not similarly targeted.

A Shelton Post Office employee stated that he heard “more than once . . . the complaint/rumor that [Lui] can’t read or speak English and doesn’t understand it.” Lui stated in a declaration that during the investigation of one of the submitted grievances, she was “subjected to a humiliating interview.” She was asked if she “had some personal or intimate relationship with . . . Roberts,” which Lui attributed to the investigator’s knowledge that Roberts was married to an Asian woman.