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The world's largest HR organization just paid $11.5 million for violating its own rules.

SHRM—the Society for Human Resource Management—literally writes the certification exams, publishes the best practices, and trains HR professionals worldwide on how to handle workplace discrimination complaints. Then they got sued for racial discrimination and retaliation by one of their own employees. And lost. Badly.

In this episode, Arta and Ryan break down Muhammad v. Society for Human Resource Management, a federal case out of Colorado where a jury awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages and slapped on $10 million in punitives after deliberating for just four and a half hours.

The facts read like a checklist of what not to do:

• Complaints escalated through proper channels while the company's response became evidence against them
• The "investigator" had never conducted a discrimination investigation before and couldn't recall his training
• That same investigator was simultaneously ghostwriting emails for the accused supervisor
• A Black employee who raised similar complaints was terminated 17 days later
• The plaintiff was suddenly hit with "non-negotiable" deadlines for the first time—right after complaining
• The court found SHRM "produced no facts showing that it actually investigated"

We cover what employers should actually do when facing discrimination complaints, why company size matters for determining "reasonable" responses, how California's new intersectionality law changes the analysis, and the brutal irony of an HR company becoming a case study in exactly what they teach others to avoid.