Fifth Circuit Affirms NLRB: Trader Joe’s Illegally Fired Employee Over COVID Complaints

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed an NLRB order finding Trader Joe’s unlawfully disciplined, suspended, and terminated Houston crew member Jill Groeschel for protesting COVID-19 safety conditions and filing unfair labor practice charges. The panel’s opinion in Case No. 24-60367 was filed Feb. 18, 2026 and upheld the Board’s finding that Trader Joe’s issued a written warning, suspended Groeschel on March 29, 2022, and terminated her on April 8, 2022 in retaliation for protected concerted activity.

The court reviewed the Board’s factual findings under the “limited and deferential review” standard and concluded the Board’s conclusions were “supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole.” The NLRB had found violations of Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act and awarded make-whole relief under the Board’s expanded Thryv remedy, which the Fifth Circuit quoted as covering “all direct and foreseeable pecuniary harms,” defining “‘direct harms’” and “foreseeable harms” in Thryv’s terms.

The factual record the Board credited, and the Fifth Circuit sustained, traces years of safety complaints and positive reviews. Hcamag reported Groeschel repeatedly raised COVID-19 safety concerns from 2020 through 2021 while described as a “model employee for 8 years.” Adverse actions, the Board found, began in October 2021 and escalated after federal complaints. The court relied on a sequence in early 2022: Groeschel filed a first NLRB charge roughly a month before her March 29 suspension, Trader Joe’s ran a two-day climate survey that company representative Hancock conceded produced no new reports, Groeschel filed a second charge on March 30, 2022, and the company terminated her on April 8, 2022, ten days after the second filing.

Trader Joe’s defenses faltered on timing and comparators. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the Board that the employer had animus toward Groeschel’s protected activity and rejected Trader Joe’s comparator evidence as meaningfully different. Bloomberg Law noted the panel was divided and that the NLRB “cited enough evidence to determine that Trader Joe’s didn’t prove it would have taken action against Jill Groeschel absent her protected activities.”

Trader Joe’s also asked the court to strike down the Thryv remedies, but the Fifth Circuit declined to reach that challenge because the company failed to preserve the objection before the Board; under Section 10(e) of the NLRA the court said it lacked jurisdiction. NLRB Edge observed, “They even affirmed the application of Thryv remedies on a technicality.” Law360 reported a scathing dissent that “impugned the National Labor Relations Board's fairness,” calling the Board’s motive test “an undertheorized byproduct of Chevron deference.”

The decision leaves two concrete takeaways for Trader Joe’s stores and HR: non-union employees remain protected when advocating for coworkers about health and safety, and inconsistent documentation, selective enforcement, and abrupt changes in record-keeping can be decisive evidence of retaliatory motive.