Whole Foods Gets Ex-Worker’s Discrimination Claims Pared Back

Whole Foods Market Group Inc. partially defeated a former store worker’s race-based firing claim, but his sex-based firing and retaliation claims can move forward, a federal judge said.

The ex-employee, who is Black, didn’t tie a coworker’s use of a racial slur to his firing, but he sufficiently linked a supervisor’s repeated sexual advances to the grocery chain’s decision to terminate him during his probationary period, the US District Court for the District of Maryland said. He also included enough factual allegations to get his retaliation claim past the dismissal stage, the Tuesday opinion said.

Plaintiff Afnan Parker worked ...