An appellate court has ruled in Brookdale Senior Living’s favor to compel arbitration in a former employee’s discrimination lawsuit.
Kevin Shelby, a former executive chef at a Brookdale senior living community in Chandler, AZ, claims racial discrimination, a hostile work environment and retaliation in a civil rights suit. Shelby, hired as a line cook in 2009 and ultimately promoted to executive chef, was fired in 2015.
May 25, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Shelby’s request for a jury trial and sent the case back to arbitration, upholding a 2021 U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona ruling. In that ruling, Brookdale won a motion to dismiss and compel arbitration under its binding arbitration agreement for employment.
Shelby had sought a jury trial, alleging that the arbitration agreement was unenforceable because, among other things, the company representative’s signature on the agreement was indecipherable, and that the agreement did not apply to his workplace. The courts disagreed, finding that the agreement not only was a condition of employment but that it covered employees of Brookdale affiliated communities, which included the Chandler, AZ, campus.
In his lawsuit, Shelby contends that he was passed over for a promotion by a new director of dining services, who hired another applicant whose skills were “substantially lower.” When that individual was fired six months later for “substandard skills and poor leadership,” Shelby again indicated his interest in the position, which he received in 2015 along with a salary increase.
In the lawsuit, Shelby alleges he was subjected to a “racially hostile work environment” and that his concerns were ignored by the community’s executive director and calls to a company complaint line. After his request to transfer to another Brookdale senior living community was denied, Shelby alleged that the dining services director initiated a negative campaign against him that eventually led to his employment termination in 2015.
In his 2015 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint and in his subsequent lawsuit filed in April 2020, Shelby accused Brookdale of “rejecting his superior skills,” failing to address his discrimination concerns, denying his transfer request and creating a hostile work environment.
Shelby alleged that the actions resulted in “malicious disregard” for his rights, reflecting an “evil hand guided by an evil mind.”
A Brookdale spokeswoman told McKnight’s Senior Living that the company does not comment on ongoing litigation.
