A U.S. District Court judge in Georgia has declined to partially dismiss a former store manager’s discrimination and retaliation claims against Sephora. Nixaliz Mestre, who is Latina, was terminated from the high-end beauty chain after refusing to prioritize white job applicants over applicants of other races. The judge ruled that Mestre’s allegations were sufficiently detailed to avoid dismissal prior to the start of discovery.
Sephora claimed that Mestre had failed to prove in her complaint that the company knew she was engaging in protected activity or that she opposed the hiring policy as discriminatory. However, the judge found that the only standard was whether Mestre’s allegations “give rise to a plausible theory of recovery,” not whether her allegations have legal merit. Furthermore, the judge ruled that since Sephora’s professional improvement plan (PIP) alleged that she failed to follow its hiring policy, the company was on notice of Mestre’s stance on the issue.
According to Mestre’s complaint, Sephora’s hiring policy was to match store employees with the customer demographics of each store’s location. As a result, when Mestre became manager of the Alpharetta, GA, store, Mestre was encouraged to primarily hire white applicants since the store’s clientele was 96% white.
When Mestre opted to utilize merit-based hiring practices over one based on race, a district manager reserved the right to veto Mestre’s hiring decisions. Sephora executives also passed over Mestre in favor of white applicants for two training manager positions. Furthermore, Sephora gave Mestre a negative evaluation in February 2023, even though her store was one of the most successful in Atlanta.
Following her poor evaluation, Sephora placed Mestre on a PIP due to her failure to hire white employees, even though she had nine white employees and 17 non-white employees. In May 2023, Sephora fired Mestre over her alleged failure to discipline an employee who had violated the company’s policy on shoplifters. The firing was unusual because Sephora rarely fires managers over a single incident.
The case is Mestre v. Sephora USA Inc., case number 1:24-cv-01908, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
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