CRA Labor & Employment expert Valentin Estevez, Ph.D. was retained in class action matters involving allegations that employees who had taken military leave were allegedly treated less favorably than similarly situated employees in promotions, performance reviews, terminations, compensation, and other employment outcomes. Plaintiffs claimed that the alleged adverse actions violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA).
Working with large and complex employment data, Dr. Estevez and CRA consultants, including Holly Brackin, evaluated the plaintiffs’ statistical analyses and identified significant flaws in their data preparation, calculations, and statistical modeling. Once these flaws were corrected, the data demonstrated that employees who took military leave progressed at comparable rates to other employees and were not evaluated differently based on their military leave status.
The analyses also addressed the plaintiffs’ broader theories regarding termination and other employment outcomes, explaining that employee departures can occur for many voluntary reasons and that the data did not support Plaintiffs’ allegations that military leave adversely affected employees’ employment status. The assessment of these claims required organizing complex datasets, evaluating the allegations against the underlying data, and presenting the findings to the court in a clear and accessible manner.
The court denied plaintiffs’ motion for class certification and cited Dr. Estevez’s findings favorably, recognizing the importance of careful data preparation and statistical analyses in evaluating employment claims.
