A decade-old email did what the employer's lawyers needed - and the bias claims were never heard
A mass Teams-call firing at Fannie Mae won't reach a courtroom. A federal court sent 44 former employees to arbitration - and dismissed their case.
When Fannie Mae, formally the Federal National Mortgage Association, fired dozens of workers on a single Microsoft Teams call last year, the group hit back with a lawsuit. On July 24, 2026, a federal court granted the company's motion to compel arbitration, dismissed the case, and denied the workers' request for a hearing - pointing them toward private arbitration instead of a courtroom.
The 44 former employees alleged they were let go all at once on an April 3, 2025 video call attended by more than 80 people. The workers said they were told they were being terminated "for cause for violating Fannie Mae's Charitable Giving program for fraud."
According to the filing, everyone dropped from the call was of Indian national origin, most spoke Telugu, and "all but a handful were over the age of 40." The former employees alleged discrimination under Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, plus breach of contract.
They never got to argue those claims. Fannie Mae moved to compel arbitration, pointing to a 2015 update to its arbitration program that covered "any employment-related disputes." The company backed the motion with sworn declarations - including one from an associate in its legal department and one from a director in its HR division - and electronic records showing each employee had confirmed receipt of the updated agreement and its terms.
The employees countered that the 2015 agreement was never a binding contract. They said they had only acknowledged receiving an email, not agreed to be bound by it. But they produced no declarations, exhibits, or other evidence, and asked instead for a hearing.
The court was not persuaded. Applying a summary judgment standard, it found the employees had shown no genuine dispute over whether they had agreed to arbitrate. Citing a 2024 DC Circuit ruling, the court held that clicking to acknowledge such an agreement is an "objective manifestation" of intent to be bound. Eight of the plaintiffs had also accepted the same terms when they signed internal transfer offer letters.
For HR teams, the takeaway is how durable a well-documented arbitration rollout can be. An email agreement confirmed with a click in 2015 was enough, a decade later, to steer a mass-termination fight out of the courts - as long as the employer kept the records to prove it.
