A Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel will hear arguments Wednesday in San Francisco in an employment discrimination case filed by Robert Hwang against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor for Sandia National Laboratories in California.
Hwang is appealing an August 2022 ruling by a U.S. Magistrate judge who rejected the scientist’s contention that he was effectively fired by Honeywell-led National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia in December 2019. Hwang contends the action was racially motivated. The hearing is set for 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
The plaintiff was born in Macau, which later became part of the People’s Republic of China, and Hwang is now a U.S. citizen, according to court papers. He began working at Sanda, which is overseen by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in October 1991.
Over time Hwang rose to become director of the Center 8300 research facility at Sandia. But in mid-2019, the plaintiff received a poor job review that said, among other things, that he abdicated his managerial role and relied too much on subordinates.
In December, Hwang’s bosses gave him 24 hours to decide whether to undergo a 60-day performance improvement program, retire or resign with no assurance of rehire. This came six months after Hwang rejected a demotion to a senior scientist job.
In early 2020, Hwang unsuccessfully sought to rescind the retirement decision. He had also filed a wrongful discharge complaint with the government.
The contractor denies that Hwang was “constructively discharged” but “Hwang’s announcement to retire was voluntary.” Hwang has argued in legal briefs he was being forced out, treated differently than his non-East Asian peers, and made an “involuntary” early retirement to avoid being ousted and losing retirement benefits.
“To save his decades of accumulated retirement benefits, he [Hwang] scratched out “resign,” on his separation papers and wrote in “retire,” according to a court filing in May.
