SHRM Update: Court Upholds $11.5M Discrimination and Retaliation Verdict

A federal court in Colorado rejected SHRM’s attempt to overturn an $11.5 million verdict for race discrimination and retaliation against a former employee. 

The decision offers three lessons for HR professionals.  

Case Overview: What Led to the Lawsuit Against SHRM

In 2016, Rehab Mohamed started working at SHRM as an instructional designer. During her employment, she said a new supervisor treated her less favorably than white colleagues, excluded her from meetings and subjected her to stricter scrutiny. After she complained internally, she claimed she faced retaliation, including shifting performance expectations and isolation at work. 

As the situation worsened, Mohamed said she continued to escalate her complaint through the ranks, meeting with HR reps and the Vice President of Education. After a fifth meeting with no resolution, Mohamed said she reached out to SHRM’s CEO, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., before she was fired in 2020. 

Mohamed filed a lawsuit in 2022, raising race discrimination and retaliation claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1981.

In October 2024, a federal court in Colorado denied SHRM’s motion for summary judgment, which allowed the case to proceed. 

Before trial, SHRM asked the court to prevent Mohamed from highlighting SHRM’s status as an HR authority, arguing that it would unfairly hold the organization to a higher standard than other employers. The judge denied that motion, finding that SHRM’s asserted HR expertise was central to the case and could not reasonably be kept out of evidence.

After a five-day trial in December, a Colorado jury sided with Mohamed, awarding $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

SHRM then filed post-trial motions asking the court to set aside the jury verdict. It refused.

1. Manager Mistakes Escalate the Conflict

We’ve said it before: Lawsuits rarely start with malicious intent. In many cases, companies end up in court because managers make avoidable mistakes that escalate – rather than defuse – tension with employees. 

Here, the conflict worsened after Mohamed filed the initial complaint alleging her new supervisor micromanaged her – treatment she said was not applied to white employees on the team. 

The supervisor wasn’t happy about the complaint – she wrote that she wanted Mohamed to be “held accountable” for her race-related complaints, the court pointed out. And after making that comment, the supervisor imposed new – and stricter – deadlines on Mohamed. 

In turn, Mohamed filed a second complaint alleging the new deadlines were retaliatory.

At trial, a white employee who worked in the same role as Mohamed and reported to the same supervisor gave testimony that corroborated Mohamed’s claim that the supervisor treated white employees differently. Specifically, the colleague testified that the supervisor came into her office in a panic and retroactively imposed the same deadlines on her that she had previously imposed on Mohamed.  

The colleague also testified that the supervisor said she “would face career repercussions at SHRM” if the deadline wasn’t met and that “there was a larger context and reason she could not share” for the deadline change.

Moreover, the colleague said the supervisor “had never been this strict about a deadline up until this point … it was very inflexible. It was unlike … it was just the way she spoke to me, that prescriptive, that directive, no jovialness to it.”

In the court’s view, a reasonable jury could “infer that management knew that they were going to be in a pickle because Mohamed had seen through their termination scheme and sought to concoct some evidence for SHRM’s benefit in a ham-fisted manner.”

Notably, the colleague didn’t meet the deadline – and she kept her job. By contrast, Mohamed was fired.

The court said the evidence supported the jury’s finding in Mohamed’s favor. 

The takeaway for HR: Manager training should go further than preventing discrimination. Clear guidance on how to respond after an employee files a complaint can help avoid even the appearance of retaliation.  

2. HR Expertise May Raise the Bar

In the early stages of this case, SHRM drew significant attention for its pre-trial effort to prevent its HR authority from being used against the organization. 

Throughout the trial, SHRM insisted it was wrong to suggest the organization “should be held to a higher standard than other employers based on its expertise in human resources.” 

The court addressed the issue in its decision. “SHRM’s knowledge of human resource laws and proper processes was relevant to issues in the trial,” the court wrote, noting, for example, that one of its pre-trial efforts on the admissibility of evidence could be viewed as an attempt to use its “knowledge of discrimination law to craft a pretext.” 

Moreover, when the court reached the punitive damages analysis, it returned to SHRM’s knowledge of HR compliance. As part of this analysis, one question is whether SHRM “had reasonable notice that its [conduct] could result in such a large punitive award.”

The court’s answer leaned directly on SHRM’s expertise: “If anyone knew the possibility of high potential punitive damages for employment discrimination and malicious retaliation, it was SHRM, which trains businesses on related issues, including potential liability.”

According to employment attorney Eric Meyer, that reasoning could potentially have wider implications. In his view, some employers (like those with formal HR infrastructure or professional credentials in the employment law space) could face higher punitive damages after egregious mistakes.  

3. Negative Culture Shift Supported Verdict

In this ruling, one issue the court looked at was whether the compensatory damages award was so excessive that it “shocks the judicial conscience.” Was it shocking to the court? 

The court said it was not, as the damages were supported by the evidence. Specifically, Mohamed testified about her emotional suffering after she started being treated differently in a work environment where she had “previously excelled and was open to sharing herself, including her race and cultural background.” She said things got worse as she was “systematically disregarded … and told, in effect, that she was the problem.” 

In the court’s view, one incident highlighted the culture shift for Mohamed: After the supervisor “imposed rigid deadlines on Mohamed in the wake of her discrimination complaints,” Mohamed asked for resources to do the work – the kinds of resources “she had previously expected and received.” But this time, “instead of being assisted by her team, she was informed in no uncertain terms that no assistance whatsoever was provided, and she was harshly criticized by senior management essentially for seeking assistance,” according to court records. 

Based on this culture shift, “a jury can reasonably understand the devastating effects of such actions in context,” the court concluded. As such, the $1.5 million compensatory damages were not excessive.

In sum, the court denied SHRM’s motion, so the verdict stands — at least for now. SHRM is expected to appeal the decision to the Tenth Circuit.

Regardless of what comes next, this case is a reminder that manager missteps after a complaint can fuel retaliation claims, that HR expertise could raise the bar courts hold you to, and that a culture shift during an active dispute can be just as damaging as the original misconduct.

Mohamed v. Society for Human Resource Management, No. 22-cv-01625-GPG-KAS (D. Colo. 4/15/26).