Foley Summer Associate Fails to Show DEI Remarks Protected Job

Foley & Lardner LLP convinced a federal court that its job offer to a summer associate wasn’t unconditional because its diversity director told her that the firm supported her Arab Muslim heritage and “embraced her history and values.”

Jinan Chehade filed a promissory estoppel claim against the law firm after it rescinded the offer because of her vocal opposition to Israel’s 2023 bombing of civilians in Gaza.

But the director’s statements weren’t an “unambiguous promise that Plaintiff’s employment offer would not be rescinded for her activism and advocacy efforts that she viewed as supportive of her Arab Muslim heritage,” said Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman Tuesday in an opinion for the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. “To conclude otherwise would mean that Plaintiff would have a ‘get out of jail free card’ for any action she took, even if it violated Defendant’s values and policies, due to her status as an Arab Muslim woman,” Coleman said.

Chehade said that the firm was well aware of her activism because of comments on her resume and an essay she wrote. But Coleman said that the evidence Chehade offered didn’t reasonably impute knowledge of her activism to the director, much less the firm.

The director’s statements only concerned support for Chehade as an Arab Muslim woman, Coleman said. “There was no implicit promise that Plaintiff had total job protection no matter what she did or said so long as she believed those actions were related to her ethnicity, religion, or association,” the judge said.

Chehade’s promissory estoppel claim was dismissed without prejudice and she was given 21 days to cure the deficiencies in the pleadings.

Coleman’s opinion didn’t address Chehade’s federal and state claims for discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion, and association.

Vitale Vickrey Niro Solon & Gasey LLP and Kapitan Gomaa Law PC represent Chehade. Seyfarth Shaw LLP represents Foley & Lardner.

The case is Chehade v. Foley & Lardner LLP, 2024 BL 439920, N.D. Ill., No. 24-cv-04414, 12/3/24.