Home Depot Faces Age Discrimination Lawsuit Filed in Missouri Federal Court

A civil complaint filed March 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri accuses Home Depot of age discrimination, alleging the company terminated a worker for tardiness while younger employees who committed the same infraction kept their jobs.

The case, Thomas v. Home Depot USA, Inc., names three defendants: The Home Depot, and two individuals identified as Shawn Scott and Greg Stevens. The complaint invokes the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634, the federal statute that prohibits employment discrimination against workers 40 and older.

According to documents attached to the complaint, the alleged discriminatory conduct occurred on February 24, 2016. The plaintiff contends he was terminated for tardiness while younger coworkers were neither fired nor disciplined for the same behavior. He further alleges he was passed over for full-time employment in favor of younger workers. On his charge of discrimination form, the plaintiff checked boxes indicating that the terms and conditions of his employment differed from those of similar employees and that he was subject to harassment. He listed his immediate supervisor as Sean Scott, a name that appears in the complaint caption as Shawn Scott.

The plaintiff filed right-to-sue letters from two agencies before bringing the federal case: the EEOC issued its letter on October 24, 2016, and the Missouri Commission on Human Rights issued its notice of right to sue on December 15, 2016. Those documents, both attached to the complaint, reflect that the plaintiff exhausted the required administrative process before proceeding to court. For relief, the plaintiff states he feels he should be compensated.

The nearly decade-long gap between the alleged February 2016 conduct and the March 2026 federal filing is among the details a court will likely scrutinize as the case moves through its early procedural stages. No docket number was available in the initial filing record.

Home Depot has faced federal employment litigation on multiple fronts in recent years. In 2017, the EEOC sued the company in the Northern District of Illinois, Civil Action No. 17-cv-06990, over its alleged failure to provide an emergency restroom break to a worker at its Peru, Illinois store who suffered from irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia. The company instead fired the employee for leaving her post unattended. That case settled, with Home Depot paying $100,000 to the former employee and agreeing under a consent decree to provide ADA training to managers and supervisors, maintain two years of records on all accommodation requests and disability-related complaints at the Peru store, and submit semiannual compliance reports to the EEOC.

The Thomas complaint adds to the record of federal employment claims against the company and will advance to an initial review phase in the Western District of Missouri.