Sarco v. 5 Star Financial, LLC

Joshua Sarco (plaintiff) worked as a customer-service representative for 5 Star Financial, LLC (Star) (defendant), a life-insurance company serving military families. Sarco’s responsibilities included verifying benefit applications and answering customers’ questions by phone. Sarco’s first performance review was positive. However, his performance declined. In 2017 and 2018, Sarco’s supervisors, Tad Shuey and Amy Wenger, met with Sarco multiple times to discuss complaints. He was making mistakes, failing to timely complete verifications, and not returning customers’ calls. He was also watching YouTube videos during work. Despite the conversations with Shuey and Wenger, Sarco’s performance remained poor, and he was terminated. Sarco, who was openly homosexual and had self-proclaimed effeminate mannerisms and a high-pitched voice, sued Star for gender-nonconformity discrimination and sexual-orientation discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). He claimed that Shuey’s and Wenger’s Christian beliefs motivated them to denigrate him. In support of his gender-nonconformity claim, Sarco alleged that Shuey and Wenger singled him out by banning colorful bandanas that only he wore and that when a coworker told Shuey and Wenger about a customer mistaking Sarco’s voice for a woman’s voice, others overheard and laughed. In support of the sexual-orientation claim, Sarco pointed to Shuey’s and Wenger’s refusal to interview Sarco’s boyfriend for an open role and an alleged statement by Shuey that Sarco did not care about soldiers and airmen, which Sarco believed was based on Shuey’s negative assumptions about homosexual persons. Sarco also claimed policies were applied differently to him. For example, he was required to keep his window closed and double-check his work. Star moved for summary judgment, arguing that the facts were insufficient to support Sarco’s claims.