An appellate court upheld a federal judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a former BNY Mellon employee who alleged racial discrimination after she was fired for writing on social media that a man should have driven a bus through a group of protesters in Pittsburgh.
Lisa Ellis, of Mt. Lebanon, was a senior analyst for BNY Mellon’s wealth management department in Pittsburgh before she was fired July 3, 2018, two weeks after a white East Pittsburgh police officer shot and killed Antwon Rose II, an unarmed Black teenager, as he fled a traffic stop.
The comment was on a news article about a Bell Acres councilman who was charged after he drove through a group of protesters on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. “Total BS. Too bad he didn’t have a bus to plow thru,” she wrote.
Ellis, who is white, was fired for violating the company’s social media policy and code of conduct, attorneys for BNY Mellon wrote in response to the lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer dismissed the lawsuit in May 2020. Ellis appealed the ruling, though the Third Circuit Court agreed with the judge’s decision to toss the case.
Ellis had alleged in her lawsuit that BNY Mellon gave “conflicting reasons” for her firing, and noted that Ellis’ Facebook post “did not make any reference to race, either expressly or implied.” She alleged she was fired because she was a white woman and offended a Black human resources employee.
In appealing the case’s dismissal, Ellis pointed to two other BNY Mellon employees she said “shared controversial social media posts,” according to the court opinion. Those employees, she said, are Black, and they did not face termination.
“What matters most is that Ellis’ social media post was far more egregious – and far more likely to harm BNY Mellon’s reputation,” Judge Cheryl Ann Krause wrote, saying that “neither supposedly similar employee” wrote anything as extreme.
One expressed frustration with a white co-worker but “did not threaten that co-worker with violence, let along serious bodily harm or death,” Krause wrote. The other said that men who hurt women should kill themselves.
“Thought inappropriate and ill-advised,” Krause said, “neither post encouraged mass violence against protesters, as Ellis’ did.”
