Sommers Schwartz attorneys Tad Roumayah and Alexis Amy filed a military service discrimination and retaliation lawsuit on behalf of a 42-year-old cybersecurity engineer and longtime member of the Michigan Air National Guard.
The plaintiff started working for his employer, a Metro Detroit manufacturer, in March 2025 as its global cybersecurity engineer. By all accounts, he performed well; the company never issued him a write-up, warning, or any form of discipline. He began his service in the United States military in 2010 and remained an active member of the Michigan Air National Guard.
In April 2025, the plaintiff told his employer he would need to attend military training during the first week of June. Then, in early May, the Air Force notified him that he would be deployed to active duty for six months beginning that September. He relayed the news to the company right away, on or about May 5.
According to the complaint, the treatment changed almost immediately. Managers who had regularly included him began leaving him out of meetings, and his director cut him out of internal communications related to his job. On May 27, the director criticized him for not answering a work issue that arose on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, a night the plaintiff had spent visiting his grandmother in the hospital. The company had never told him he was expected to be reachable around the clock. When he raised that, the director asserted for the first time that the role required 24/7 availability and later sent an email listing “concerns” and “expectations,” several of which, the plaintiff says, were never discussed and were simply untrue.
The plaintiff attended his military training as scheduled on June 2 and returned to work on June 9. One week later, on June 16, the director and a human resources specialist called him into a meeting and terminated him, citing only “poor performance.” When he asked what specifically was deficient, the complaint alleges, neither would say.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) prohibits employers from discriminating or retaliating against employees because of their military service or obligations. The lawsuit contends that the sudden scrutiny, the shifting expectations, and the firing all followed directly from the plaintiff’s disclosure of his training and deployment, and that the “poor performance” explanation was a pretext. Had he not been a service member, the complaint asserts, he would not have been treated the same way.
The plaintiff seeks lost past and future wages and benefits, liquidated damages, interest, costs, and attorney fees under USERRA.
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