What Actually Happened

In August 2020, Home Depot hired Caro Linda Bo as a sales specialist at its store in New Brighton, Minnesota. Three months earlier, George Floyd had been murdered by Minneapolis police officers less than seven miles away. Bo, who identifies as Hispanic and a person of color, wrote “BLM” in black marker on the front of the orange Home Depot apron — the same apron the company actively encouraged employees to personalize with pins, illustrations, and messages.

Bo testified the letters were written “as a symbol of solidarity” against “prejudice and racism” and to be “approachable” to other employees and customers of color. Other employees at the same store also began displaying “BLM” on their aprons during this period.

The New Brighton store was not a calm environment. A white employee named Amy Gumm was repeatedly engaging in racially discriminatory conduct toward both customers and coworkers. Employees filed multiple complaints. Management received those complaints and did essentially nothing visible in response for months. Gumm continued her behavior until Home Depot finally fired her in late February 2021.

The Vandalism Nobody Wanted to Talk About

In February 2021, someone vandalized the Black History Month display in the employee breakroom. They tore down a poster of prominent Black historical figures, ripped up educational flash cards, and threw the entire display in the trash. An assistant store manager repaired it and sent an email. Bo told that manager directly that an email was not enough, and called for a storewide conversation so coworkers of color could feel safe.

The Black History Month display was vandalized a second time. Bo again pushed for a storewide meeting, stating in writing that employees were feeling “uncomfortable and disrespected,” that “Home Depot needs to acknowledge that these actions will not be condoned,” and that “our fellow coworkers of color need to feel the support from the store they work for.”

Management’s response was to schedule a meeting with Bo. During that meeting, a store manager noticed the “BLM” on Bo’s apron and told Bo to remove it. The manager said that allowing “BLM” would mean also having to permit a swastika. The manager told Bo they believed “Black lives matter” but that Bo could not return to work until the lettering was gone.

The Apron They Let You Customize — Until You Did

Home Depot’s own company policy did more than allow apron personalization. It actively encouraged it. Employees regularly wore pins, drew illustrations, and wrote messages. The company permitted LGBTQ-pride displays. Management itself suggested that Bo replace “BLM” with a DEI pin or a Black History Month pin.

Bo refused the substitutes, pointing out that the Black History Month display in the breakroom had just been vandalized twice while management sent emails. The alternatives had already been proven toothless. Bo told the district manager: “I put it on as a signal to show that I support Black people; I support people of color. And I think that what happened over the course of the summer, I think that needs to be addressed and how we need to continue to support Black people.”

The district manager told Bo to go home and not come back wearing the message. Bo resigned the next day.

The NLRB Said: Home Depot Broke the Law

Bo filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board shortly after resigning. After a four-day hearing, the NLRB’s administrative law judge dismissed the complaint, ruling that Bo’s BLM display was not “concerted activity” because Bo had written it before the store’s racial conflicts fully escalated, and the display had “at best, an extremely attenuated and indirect relationship to any workplace issue.”

The Board’s general counsel appealed that decision. In February 2024, the full NLRB reversed the judge in a 3-1 decision. The Board ruled that Bo’s refusal to remove the BLM marking — during a meeting where Bo was actively voicing group concerns about discriminatory working conditions — was protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. The Board ordered Home Depot to stop interfering with workers’ NLRA rights, to reinstate Bo with back pay, and to post a remedial notice at the store.

The Board’s majority explained: “The BLM symbol accumulated meaning relevant to working conditions” at the New Brighton store specifically. This was not an abstract political statement. It grew from six months of documented racial incidents inside that building.

Home Depot Ran to Federal Court

Home Depot immediately petitioned the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals for review. The company brought along a powerful roster of allies: the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the Cato Institute, the Retail Litigation Center, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, and five other employer associations all filed briefs supporting Home Depot’s position. The AFL-CIO filed a brief supporting Bo and the NLRB.

In November 2025, the appeals court vacated the NLRB’s order and sent the case back for further proceedings. The court did not rule that Bo’s actions were definitively unprotected. Instead, it ruled that Home Depot had established a “special circumstances” defense — that the specific environment around the New Brighton store after George Floyd’s murder justified the company’s decision to silence the message.

The Non-Financial Ledger

Caro Linda Bo did not write “BLM” on an apron in a vacuum. Bo walked into a store six and a half miles from where a man had just been murdered by police in one of the most televised, publicly reckoning moments in modern American history. Bo was a person of color. Bo’s coworkers were people of color. The store had a racist employee — Amy Gumm — who spent months targeting both customers and coworkers of color while management watched and waited.

Three letters on an apron. That is what Bo had. No union behind them, no lawyer on speed dial, no corporate communications department. Just a black marker and the decision to make visible something that management was working very hard to keep invisible. When the Black History Month display was vandalized the first time, management sent an email. When it was vandalized a second time, management sent another email. Bo stood up in a meeting and said the email was insufficient. Bo wrote down in formal communication that “employees are feeling uncomfortable and disrespected” and that “Home Depot needs to acknowledge that these actions will not be condoned.” This is what organizing looks like before it has a name.

Then came the meeting. A manager looked Bo in the eye and said: allowing “BLM” on the apron would also require permitting a swastika. This comparison — placing a symbol of Black civil rights alongside a symbol of Nazi genocide — was not a slip of the tongue. It was the company’s official position, delivered to a person of color, in a building where coworkers had repeatedly experienced racial discrimination, where a display honoring Black historical figures had been torn apart twice. The district manager repeated the same logic, invoking the same swastika comparison. Bo’s response — “It seems like no one is listening” — was the most accurate thing said in any of those meetings.

The court record shows that Home Depot suggested Bo wear a DEI pin, a “respect for all” pin, or a Black History Month pin. Management framed these as equivalent alternatives. Bo had watched the Black History Month display get destroyed twice in the breakroom with minimal institutional consequence. The DEI pin was being offered as a substitute for accountability. Bo understood this. Bo said no. The company called that insubordination. The company sent Bo home. The next day, Bo quit. A worker who had spent six months quietly documenting the racial climate of their workplace, filing complaints, attending meetings, and advocating for coworkers of color was now unemployed — for writing three letters on an apron.

Legal Receipts

“The New Brighton store is located approximately six and a half miles from where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was murdered on May 25, 2020, by one or more officers of the Minneapolis Police Department. Floyd’s murder triggered protests in May and June 2020 by, among others, persons identifying themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement and persons engaging as counter protestors. In some instances the protests and counter protests led to civil unrest in Minneapolis. Some of this unrest was visible directly outside the New Brighton store. During the protests, another store in the same shopping center as the New Brighton store was looted. On two occasions, [Home Depot] found it necessary to close the New Brighton store as a result of protest-related disruptions.” — ALJ Summary, as quoted in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion, November 6, 2025

“The BLM symbol accumulated meaning relevant to working conditions there.” — NLRB Board Majority Explanation, Home Depot USA, Inc., 373 NLRB No. 25 (Feb. 21, 2024)

“Particularly given the proximity, temporally and geographically, of [Bo’s] display of ‘BLM’ to those events, a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts would have linked [Bo’s] display of ‘BLM’ with the Black Lives Matter movement and its goal of combating police violence against Black individuals — not with improving terms and conditions of employment of employees at the New Brighton store or otherwise improving their lot as employees.” — Board Member Marvin Kaplan, Dissenting Opinion, NLRB, Feb. 21, 2024

“[R]ightly or wrongly, Black Lives Matter was seen as a controversial message associated with a political movement advancing an array of policy proposals.” — Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, quoting Frith v. Whole Foods Mkt., Inc., 38 F.4th 263, 275 (1st Cir. 2022), in its November 6, 2025 opinion

“Bo refused to remove the BLM lettering on the apron, stating that ‘willing to be fired over this’ would be a ‘great example’ and was ‘going to make the biggest impact’ in the store.” — Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, summarizing facts from the record, November 6, 2025

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: The Trauma of Being Unprotected at Work

The source record documents a sustained, months-long period during which employees of color at the New Brighton store filed formal complaints about a coworker engaging in racially discriminatory conduct — and watched management absorb those complaints without meaningful visible action. Gumm’s behavior was not a single incident. It was a pattern that management acknowledged, ran “coaching and counseling” on quietly, and allowed to continue until late February 2021, roughly six months after the first elevated complaint.

Employees described feeling “uncomfortable and disrespected.” Bo stated in writing that “coworkers of color need to feel the support from the store they work for.” The repeated vandalism of a Black History Month display — physical destruction of images of Black historical figures, thrown in the trash — inside the shared employee breakroom represents a documented hostile work environment that management addressed with emails. The psychological weight of working in a space where your history is literally thrown in the garbage, twice, while your employer sends memos, is not a footnote. It is the story.

Bo’s decision to write “BLM” on the apron was an act of self-protection as much as solidarity. It was a signal to other employees of color that at least one person in that building saw them. When the company stripped that signal away, it did not just silence Bo. It sent a message to every person of color in that store about whose comfort the company prioritized.

Economic Inequality: Who Bears the Cost of “Special Circumstances”

Home Depot is one of the largest employers in the United States. Its market capitalization places it among the top American companies by value. Its workers — the people in the orange aprons — earn hourly wages. The gap between what this corporation earns and what its frontline workers take home is not incidental. It is structural.

The “special circumstances” doctrine, as applied here, creates a two-tier system: corporations get to invoke proximity to civil unrest as a reason to silence worker expression, while the workers who actually live in those communities — who were personally affected by George Floyd’s murder, who were coworkers of the people Gumm targeted, who watched their breakroom display get destroyed — are told their expression is too political for the workplace. The economic precarity of hourly retail work means workers like Bo cannot afford to wage lengthy legal battles without institutional support. Home Depot could afford the Chamber of Commerce, the Cato Institute, the Retail Litigation Center, and five additional employer associations filing on its behalf. Bo had the NLRB and the AFL-CIO.

The court’s ruling sets a precedent that effectively tells every retail worker in a divided American city: if there is civil unrest near your store, your employer gains an expanded legal right to police your expression. The workers who live through civil unrest — who are disproportionately workers of color — lose the most under this framework.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now?

Who Holds the Power Here

The court did not close this case. It vacated the NLRB’s order and remanded for further proceedings. The NLRB must now re-examine the “special circumstances” defense under the framework the Eighth Circuit laid out. The case is not over — but the corporation just got handed a roadmap for how to win it.

Regulatory Watchlist

• NLRB
• U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
• AFL-CIO
• EEOC
• U.S. Department of Labor

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