Suspended the same afternoon she flagged a supervisor's safety breach, her suit claims
A security firm handed a civil rights agency video labeled as a worker breaking safety rules. The lawsuit says it showed someone else.
That is the central claim in a lawsuit filed against Allied Universal in federal court in Colorado on July 2, 2026. A former security guard alleges the company fired her because of her race, sex, and disability, then retaliated after she reported safety problems on site. She is representing herself.
The worker, who is African American, joined a Denver-area post in July 2023 and was let go in November 2024, according to the filing. She says her record was clean until a workplace eye injury in August 2024 that required surgery and medical leave. She filed a workers' compensation claim, and the complaint says her managers were aware of both the injury and her medical status.
Events moved quickly that fall, the filing says. In late October 2024, she sent a written complaint objecting to being left to staff a post alone while colleagues were grouped together elsewhere. Weeks later, a manager wrote her up for an unauthorized break - on a day the complaint says was her scheduled day off, when she was not on site. A regional HR manager then emailed to confirm the write-up was invalid and withdrawn, according to the filing.
Hours later, the same manager confronted her about not wearing safety goggles inside the security post, the complaint says. She responded by pulling site security-camera footage that, according to the filing, showed a supervisor working in a high-risk outdoor yard with no protective gear. She emailed the video to HR. That same afternoon, the complaint says, she was suspended. Three days later she was fired, without an interview about the incident.
Then comes the part HR teams will want to sit with. In July 2025, the complaint says, the company's lawyers sent the civil rights agency a position statement with video labeled as showing the worker failing to follow safety protocols. According to the filing, that footage did not show her - it was the same clip she had recorded of the supervisor. The company later acknowledged the "mistake" and retracted the video in March 2026, the complaint says.
The worker's charges, first filed in early 2025 with the Colorado Civil Rights Division and the EEOC, allege discrimination and retaliation under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, along with Colorado law. She also alleges the supervisor, who is described in the filing as Caucasian, was never disciplined for similar outdoor safety violations - the core of her claim that she was singled out because of her race and sex. A state unemployment review had already approved her benefits, the filing notes.
For HR professionals, the allegations map onto familiar pressure points: selective enforcement of PPE rules, discipline that is withdrawn and then quickly followed by termination, and tight timing between a protected complaint and an adverse action. Under employment law, that kind of sequence is what agencies and courts examine closely when weighing a retaliation claim. The complaint also raises a documentation issue - evidence sent to a government agency that, the filing says, identified the wrong employee. Under the law, the accuracy of a position statement matters, since it can itself become a point of exposure.
These are allegations. They have not been tested in court, and no judge has ruled.
