Muslim lawyer can't sue over revoked BigLaw job offer based on this theory, federal judge rules
A federal judge in Chicago has tossed a promissory estoppel claim in a Muslim lawyer’s lawsuit against Foley & Lardner for revoking her associate job offer after learning of her comments about Israel and Gaza. (Image from Shutterstock)
A federal judge in Chicago has tossed a promissory estoppel claim in a Muslim lawyer’s lawsuit against Foley & Lardner for revoking her associate job offer after learning of her comments about Israel and Gaza.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman of the Northern District of Illinois, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, granted the law firm’s partial motion to dismiss in a Dec. 3 opinion.
Chicago-area lawyer Jinan Chehade had based the promissory estoppel claim on her discussion with the firm’s director of diversity and inclusion. According to Chehade, the director indicated that the firm valued and supported Chehade’s Arab Muslim heritage and perspective and embraced her history and values.
But that statement did not amount to an unambiguous promise that Chehade would not be penalized for actions that she thought were in support of her heritage, Coleman said.
The diversity and inclusion director’s comments indicated support for Chehade as an Arab Muslim woman and did not amount to a promise that Chehade “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,” Coleman said.
“To conclude otherwise,” Coleman wrote, would mean that Chehade “would have a ‘get out of jail free card’ for any action that she took, even if it violated defendant’s values and policies, due to her status as an Arab Muslim woman.”
Foley & Lardner had revoked Chehade’s offer to begin employment in October 2023 after Chehade opposed Israel’s bombing of civilians in Gaza on her social media accounts and at a meeting at the Chicago City Hall, she said in her suit.
In a meeting before her firing, Chehade alleged in her suit, the firm’s Chicago managing partner and litigation chair “proceeded to interrogate” her about those comments, as well as her student activism and her past leadership role in the Students for Justice in Palestine organization while she was a student at the Georgetown University Law Center.
During the meeting, Chehade was asked about a statement in her city hall speech in which she said the Hamas attacks was not “unprovoked” and was instead the “natural result of 75 years of occupation and violence by Israeli forces.” Chehade said she explained that she was providing historical and political context. Asked whether she condemned the Hamas attacks, she responded that she condemned loss of human life, the suit says.
Foley & Lardner said in a statement in December 2023 it revoked Chehade’s job offer because of “public statements that were inconsistent with our core values.”
Coleman’s dismissal allows Chehade to replead her claim “if she has a good-faith basis for believing she can cure the pleading deficiencies.”
The opinion did not discuss Chehade’s remaining claims for alleged discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion and association under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and under the Illinois Human Rights Act.
The Volokh Conspiracy and Bloomberg Law noted the opinion.
