Key Points

  • The Eighth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Remington Ammunition on Canary Reed's Title VII and Arkansas Civil Rights Act claims of discrimination, retaliation and hostile work environment.
  • A white co-worker with the same job title and shift was not a valid comparator because Reed showed no conduct of comparable seriousness, no similar disciplinary history, and no evidence that a supervisor saw him asleep.
  • A supervisor's possible failure to escalate a harassment complaint to human resources, without more evidence of pretext, did not support an inference of discrimination.
  • A six-month gap between Reed's complaint and her firing, with intervening reprimands and withdrawn discipline, did not support a causal link for retaliation.
  • A co-worker's testimony about a racial expletive and racist T-shirts could not satisfy the subjective component of Reed's hostile work environment claim.

A federal appeals court on Oct. 8 upheld the dismissal of a race and sex discrimination lawsuit brought by a Black woman fired from Remington Ammunition's shotgun-shell plant in Lonoke, Arkansas, holding that a supervisor's possible failure to follow a policy on escalating complaints was not enough, by itself, to let a jury infer bias.

Circuit Judge Grasz wrote for a three-judge Eighth Circuit panel that included Chief Judge Colloton and Circuit Judge Erickson. The panel affirmed summary judgment for The Kinetic Group Inc., which does business as Remington Ammunition, on every claim Canary Reed brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Arkansas Civil Rights Act. No judge wrote separately.

The decision ends Reed's discrimination, retaliation and hostile-environment claims without a trial. The court also held that a co-worker offered for comparison must have committed misconduct of similar seriousness, that six months between a complaint and a firing is too long to suggest retaliation on timing alone, and that another employee's account of a racial expletive and racist T-shirts cannot stand in for the plaintiff's own experience of a hostile workplace.

Reed, hired in May 2021, worked the night shift as a Body Form Technician in the plant's Rotary Cam Department, running heavy machinery that makes shotgun shells and sorting cutoff rings for recycling. Reed worked mostly with white men who, she alleged, shut down her machines before her shifts, threw away a handmade tool she had built, called a "slug guide," and wrongly logged her as absent.

In April 2023, after an email she tried to send to human resources never reached its recipients, Reed told her supervisor, Conrad Yekel, and another supervisor, Christina Beauman, that the disposal of the slug guide was a "racial move." Neither recorded the complaint. Yekel testified that he consulted a local human resources representative, investigated on his own and found no discrimination.

Discipline followed. Reed received a written reprimand on April 12, 2023, after Beauman reported her sleeping on the job, and a second on Oct. 12 for failing to repair a machine and to run the required number of machines. The same day, Yekel said, he saw Reed yell at another supervisor, Travis Zeman, and invade his personal space. Remington told Reed on Oct. 20, 2023, that she was fired. She sued in July 2024, and U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. of the Eastern District of Arkansas granted Remington summary judgment.

On appeal, Reed pointed to a white co-worker, Nathan Reichel, who held the same job title, worked the same shift and testified that he had fallen asleep on the job several times. The panel held that he was not a fair comparison. Reed "did not present evidence demonstrating Reichel engaged in conduct of comparable seriousness or had a similar disciplinary history," Grasz wrote, and "she failed to produce evidence as to whether any supervisor actually saw Reichel asleep on the job." Nothing in the record showed that Reichel had argued with a supervisor, the court added.

Reed also argued that Yekel broke a company policy requiring supervisors to send harassment complaints to human resources. Grasz wrote that "it is unclear if Yekel precisely followed Remington's internal policy." But the panel, quoting its 2017 decision in Edwards v. Hiland Roberts Dairy, held that "a shortcoming in an internal investigation alone, without additional evidence of pretext, [does] not suffice to support an inference of discrimination on the part of the employer."

The court also held that Reed had not shown that Remington's stated reasons for firing her, at least three procedural lapses and aggressive behavior toward a supervisor, were a pretext, meaning a cover for discrimination. Reed disputed parts of her disciplinary record, but the panel, repeating the district court's quotation of a 2009 precedent, said the question is "not whether the employee actually engaged in the conduct for which he was terminated, but whether the employer in good faith believed that the employee was guilty of the conduct justifying discharge." Reed "does not seriously contest that Remington believed she engaged in misconduct," Grasz wrote.

The retaliation claim failed for lack of a causal link. Reed's April 2023 complaint was protected activity, but she was fired about six months later. The panel noted that Reed had signed the April reprimand, which stated that she made a mistake that would not happen again, and that she acknowledged some of the events in the October reprimand. Yekel had also withdrawn at least four written reprimands after her complaint, and the court wrote that his restraint "weakens any purported connection between Reed's eventual termination and the protected activity." Quoting a 2014 decision, the panel said temporal proximity "'must be very close' for timing alone to be sufficient."

On the hostile-environment claim, the court said Reed's evidence, including the shut-off machines, the logbook entries and the discarded tool, fell short. "Our precedent requires far more hostile and abusive circumstances," Grasz wrote. Reichel had testified that he heard a racial expletive and saw racist T-shirts at the plant. But a hostile-environment plaintiff must show both that the workplace was objectively abusive and that she herself perceived it that way, and the panel held that "Reichel's experience is irrelevant to Reed's subjective experience." Even if Reed had experienced the same conduct, the court said, a few such occurrences would not establish an objectively hostile environment.

The panel added that Reed offered no evidence tying her treatment to her race or sex. Yekel testified that machines were shut off as standard practice and for safety, and that the slug guide, which he called "a cardboard scrap," was likely thrown away by accident. Reed presented nothing to contradict him, the court said. Because the Eighth Circuit analyzes Arkansas Civil Rights Act claims the same way as Title VII claims, the state-law claim fell with the federal ones.

The case was submitted to the panel on June 10, 2026. The affirmance leaves in place the district court's final judgment dismissing all four of Reed's causes of action, and the opinion returns no part of the case to the trial court.