An employer's personnel decisions do not always have to be
"correct" in order to avoid liability under most federal
and state anti-discrimination laws. If you decide to terminate an
employee for engaging in workplace misconduct, the fact the
employee was actually innocent of the alleged misconduct should be
deemed irrelevant in a subsequent discrimination lawsuit.
For example, in the 2009 case of Cervantez v. KMGP
Servs., the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said "a fired
employee's actual innocence of his employer's proffered
accusation is irrelevant as long as the employer reasonably
believed it and acted on it in good faith." This is because,
as the 5th Circuit said in the 2010 Moss v. BMC Software,
Inc. case, anti-discrimination laws do not protect
employees "from erroneous or even arbitrary personnel
decisions, but only from decisions which are unlawfully
motivated." As long as you genuinely believed the employee was
guilty of misconduct and relied on that belief
