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Lack of evidence poor performance rating reflected bias

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No sanctions for deleted recordings, made-up quotations

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Plaintiff's lawyer not available for comment

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Amazon.com ( AMZN ) won

the dismissal on Tuesday of a lawsuit accusing the online

retailer of discriminating against a Black former employee by

reducing her duties and putting her on a performance improvement

plan.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian in Manhattan said

former Amazon Music event producer Keesha Anderson failed to

show Amazon gave her a poor performance rating as a pretext to

discriminate, or waited until Black and Hispanic women became

her supervisors before questioning her work.

Subramanian also said Amazon offered "legitimate,

nondiscriminatory reasons" for not promoting the Staten Island,

New York resident, including that it wanted a strategist with

skills she lacked.

The case had drawn attention among the first to apply an

April 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision that workers need not

show concrete injuries such as pay cuts, demotions or firings to

pursue federal employment discrimination claims.

Anderson's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests

for comment. Amazon and its lawyers did not immediately respond

to similar requests.

WARNING OVER DELETED RECORDINGS, FABRICATED QUOTATIONS

While Subramanian let the case proceed in May 2024, it ran

into trouble when Anderson acknowledged deleting conversations

with coworkers and managers that she had secretly recorded.

Moreover, an unnamed "whistleblower" who allegedly flagged

Seattle-based Amazon's ( AMZN ) effort to sideline Anderson turned out to

be the Hispanic manager, who was quoted in Anderson's complaint

as saying things she never said.

Subramanian rejected Amazon's ( AMZN ) request to sanction Anderson

and her lawyer, but said their conduct "toes the line on what

constitutes sanctionable conduct" and should not be repeated.

"Putting the now-discredited allegations concerning the

'whistleblower' to the side," Subramanian wrote, "the case

paints a picture of a run-of-the-mill workplace, maybe even one

with more positivity than usual."

Anderson claimed that Amazon excluded her from meetings and

events, rejected her ideas and limited her duties to

administrative tasks, before putting her on a performance

improvement plan based on minor, "trumped up" allegations.

She quit Amazon after 2-1/2 years in February 2022 for a

higher-paying job at Snapchat parent Snap.

The case is Anderson v. Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN ) et al, U.S. District

Court, Southern District of New York, 23-08347.