A Father’s Fight Against GEICO’s Corporate Greed

One Job. One License. One Man Paying for a Company’s Mistake.

On June 8, 2020, GEICO hired Dion Plump as a sales representative in Lenexa, Kansas. His job: sell insurance over the phone to customers across the United States. Three days after starting, Plump applied for a New York insurance license — a license the company told him was critical because New York was the second most frequent state from which customers called GEICO’s sales lines, accounting for 9.98% of all incoming calls.

What happened next set a trap that would close on Plump more than a year later. In February 2021, New York’s Department of Financial Services wrote to Plump asking him to clarify an issue with a prior North Dakota license. Plump did not respond. A follow-up letter in July 2021 went unanswered. In August 2021, New York formally denied Plump’s application, finding he had demonstrated “untrustworthiness” under New York insurance law. Plump had until August 24, 2021, to appeal. He did not appeal. Because the window closed, he was barred from reapplying until August 9, 2022 — a full year away.

Here is the part the company would prefer you forget: New York’s denial letter was sent to GEICO’s Dallas Licensing Team. The Dallas team failed to upload it to Plump’s file. This failure was so serious, so emblematic of wider systemic rot, that GEICO terminated the Dallas Licensing Supervisor and dismantled the entire team — creating a new Kansas City Licensing Team to replace it. The company’s own infrastructure had collapsed. But the man left holding the bag was Plump.

The Audit That Targeted One Man

On November 17, 2021, GEICO management requested a performance report on Plump from his direct supervisor, Allison Selg. The report described Plump’s overall performance as generally “good.” That same day, GEICO ran an audit of the Sales Department’s calls. The audit found Plump’s call transfer percentage was high and his “quote to call” percentage was low. The audit also noted he was the only representative in the department with licensing problems. Management meeting notes from December 7, 2021, reveal that fifty percent of Plump’s transfers were due to his licensing issues — the very issues GEICO’s own Dallas team had fumbled.

After that December meeting, GEICO management was instructed to investigate Plump for “call avoidance” and to proceed with the intention to terminate him — either on that basis or on the licensing issue. The company was building a case. The question for any reasonable person is why that case-building accelerated at exactly the same moment Plump began raising concerns about his treatment.

On December 10, 2021, Plump emailed GEICO’s Human Resources department. He raised concerns about the handling of his New York license, his failed interview for a service department transfer, and his working relationship with supervisor Selg. HR met with him the same day. Five days later, Plump contacted HR to ask about FMLA leave. On December 16, 2021, he messaged Selg and told her he was going to check into a hospital. He did not. He was absent from work for the next forty-two days.

GEICO approved Plump for FMLA intermittent leave on January 21, 2022 — retroactively covering absences from December 17, 2021, forward. The approved leave was limited to one-day episodes, up to twice a month, with two doctor appointments per year. The court noted that Plump’s continuous 42-day absence far exceeded what was approved, and that on multiple occasions he told supervisors he was in the hospital when he was not.

The Termination

On February 3, 2022, GEICO’s manager Meghan Beaver formally requested HR approval to terminate Plump’s employment. The stated reasons: failure to obtain a New York license, failure to inform his supervisor the license was denied, and failure to appeal the denial in time. On February 10, 2022, after Plump failed to answer a termination call the previous day — having his emergency contact tell management he was unavailable because he was in the hospital, a claim the court found to be false — GEICO sent Plump a letter confirming his employment was terminated.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Case Number Can’t Capture

Dion Plump walked into GEICO on June 8, 2020, as a new hire trying to build something. He was three days into the job when he applied for the New York license his employer told him he needed. Three days. That is the behavior of a person who takes their work seriously. That is the behavior of someone trying to succeed.

What the court documents reveal, stripped of legalese, is a man who spent the better part of two years navigating a bureaucratic maze that his own employer helped construct. GEICO’s Dallas Licensing Team received the denial letter from New York state regulators and failed to put it in Plump’s file. The company fired the Dallas Licensing Supervisor for exactly these kinds of failures and created an entirely new team in Kansas City. That admission is buried in the procedural record like it’s a footnote. It is not a footnote. A company’s licensing infrastructure collapsed badly enough to warrant dismantling and rebuilding — and the man whose career was derailed by that collapse lost his job while the company moved on to the next chapter.

Think about the specific cruelty of this sequence. GEICO management met with Plump on November 3, 2021, to tell him he could not stay in his sales position without a New York license. They simultaneously told him they would explore transferring him to the Service Department. Plump interviewed for that position on December 1, 2021. Shortly after, GEICO told him he did not get it. The company offered him a lifeline with one hand and pulled it away with the other. Meanwhile, the internal record shows management had already been instructed to “proceed with the intention to terminate him” before the transfer process even concluded. The transfer process was not a genuine opportunity; it was a clock running down.

On December 10, 2021, Plump reached out to Human Resources with real, documented concerns: the handling of his licensing situation, the failure of the transfer process, and the nature of his working relationship with his direct supervisor. Five days later, he asked about FMLA leave. The court record shows GEICO had been building its termination case since at least December 7, three days before Plump filed his HR complaint. The proximity of those dates — the complaint, the FMLA request, and the already-in-motion termination track — paints a picture that demands a jury, not a summary judgment ruling. Plump never got that jury.

The appeals court affirmed the lower court’s ruling on December 16, 2025, and the opinion acknowledged explicitly that the district court made a legal error in its race discrimination analysis. The court found that the district court had incorrectly concluded that Plump’s sales position remaining open after his termination did not create an inference of race discrimination. The Tenth Circuit stated plainly: the district court erred. But that error was ruled “harmless,” because the court decided other issues settled the outcome. For Plump, it was not harmless. The legal system found an error in his favor, and still ruled against him.

There is a cost to this kind of experience that does not appear on any balance sheet. A man applied for a license three days into his job. His employer’s own department lost his paperwork. His employer fired the person responsible. His employer told him he could transfer to another role. His employer took that role away. His employer built a written case for his termination while simultaneously conducting an HR investigation into his complaints. His employer acknowledged in court documents that his position stayed open after he left. He lost his job, spent years in federal litigation, and the system called it clean. That is the ledger that does not get filed with the clerk of the court.

Legal Receipts: The Most Damning Lines in the Record

“Beaver was instructed to investigate Plump’s call avoidance and proceed with the intention to terminate him on that basis or for the licensing issue.”

— Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion, December 16, 2025, describing the December 7, 2021 management meeting — three days before Plump filed his HR complaint

“This error, among others, resulted in GEICO firing the Dallas Licensing Supervisor and creating a new Kansas City Licensing Team to resolve local deficiencies and outstanding applications.”

— Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion, December 16, 2025, on the systemic failure of GEICO’s internal licensing infrastructure

“[T]he district court erred in concluding the fact Plump’s insurance-sales position remained open after his discharge did not create an inference of discrimination.”

— Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion, December 16, 2025, explicitly finding legal error in the lower court’s race discrimination analysis — yet affirming the ruling anyway

“GEICO approved Plump for intermittent leave, which included two, one-day episodes per month. Yet, Plump did not report to work for 42 consecutive days between December 2021 and January 2022.”

— District Court ruling, quoted in the Tenth Circuit Opinion, describing the gap between Plump’s approved leave and his actual absence — a key factor in the court’s rejection of his FMLA retaliation claim

“[A] plaintiff alleging wrongful termination may raise an inference of unlawful discrimination by showing that (1) she is a member of a protected class, (2) she was qualified for her job, (3) she was fired, and (4) the job was not eliminated.”

— Tenth Circuit, quoting Walkingstick Dixon v. Oklahoma, summarizing the legal standard the district court failed to properly apply to Plump’s case

“GEICO concluded Plump was held to the same standard as all Sales Representatives.”

— Tenth Circuit recounting GEICO’s internal HR investigation conclusion — an investigation that did not find any racial discrimination despite the documented institutional failures unique to Plump’s licensing situation

Societal Impact: Who This Happens To, and Why It Keeps Happening

Economic Inequality: When the System Breaks, Black Workers Pay

Dion Plump is a Black man who filed suit under some of the most foundational civil rights laws in U.S. employment history: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. These are not obscure statutes. They are the legislative response to decades of documented, systemic discrimination in American workplaces. They exist precisely for situations like the one Plump described.

The appeals court’s own ruling acknowledges that the district court made a legal error in analyzing Plump’s race discrimination claim. The job Plump was fired from stayed open after he left. Under established Tenth Circuit law — the same law that governs this very case — that fact raises an inference of race discrimination. The court found the error and still affirmed the dismissal. The legal doctrine of “harmless error” swallowed a civil rights claim whole. For the workers who look at cases like this and wonder whether the law will protect them, the answer delivered on December 16, 2025, is: maybe, but not today.

The economic stakes for Plump are real and personal. GEICO is one of the largest auto insurance companies in the United States, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway — a corporation that generated tens of billions in revenue the year Plump was fired. Plump was a phone sales rep in Lenexa, Kansas. The asymmetry of this fight is total. He retained law students from a university appellate advocacy clinic to argue his case. He lost. The company he sued is backed by one of the wealthiest corporate structures in the world.

Economic Inequality: The Institutional Failure That Only Hurt One Person

GEICO dismantled its Dallas Licensing Team. The company fired the Dallas Licensing Supervisor. The company rebuilt the team in Kansas City. These are institutional consequences with institutional scope. The people in Dallas who lost their jobs because of systemic failures were not fired for failing to get a license they needed to keep their jobs. They were fired for internal management failures — a categorically different kind of accountability.

Plump, by contrast, was fired for not having a license he applied for three days into the job — a license whose denial paperwork was swallowed by the same dysfunctional system that got those Dallas employees fired. The court record is explicit: GEICO told Plump the New York license was “important to his role.” GEICO’s own Dallas team received the denial notice and did nothing with it. When the new Kansas City team discovered the denial on October 27, 2021, GEICO reached out to New York to seek an extension. New York said the appeal window had already closed. The window closed in August 2021. GEICO’s team had the letter for months and did not act on it. Plump lost his job over a deadline that passed on someone else’s watch.

This kind of institutional failure tends to land hardest on workers who have the least power to absorb the blow. Plump had no HR department of his own. He had no legal team on retainer. He had one job and a license he needed to keep it. When the bureaucracy failed, the company’s response was to rebuild the bureaucracy and terminate the employee whose career that bureaucracy had damaged. That is not a neutral business decision. That is an economic outcome with a human face.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now: Where to Look, Who to Watch, and What to Do

The People Who Made This Decision

The individuals named in the court record as participants in the termination process include:

• Allison Selg — Plump’s direct supervisor, who provided the November 17, 2021 performance report and received Plump’s notice about his hospital stay
• Meghan Beaver — Selg’s supervisor, who met with AVP Lee Foskey on December 7, 2021, and later formally requested HR approval to terminate Plump on February 3, 2022
• Lee Foskey — Assistant Vice-President, whose approval was required to finalize Plump’s termination
• Megen Snyder — GEICO Leave Specialist, who administered Plump’s FMLA paperwork and approved his intermittent leave
• [REDACTED – Not in Source] — Dallas Licensing Supervisor, fired by GEICO for systemic failures including the mishandling of Plump’s New York denial letter

The Regulatory Bodies That Should Be Watching

• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): The federal agency responsible for enforcing Title VII, the ADA, and related anti-discrimination statutes in the workplace
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division: Enforces the Family and Medical Leave Act and investigates employer retaliation against workers who exercise FMLA rights
• New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS): The state regulator whose denial letter was mishandled by GEICO’s Dallas Licensing Team — a team GEICO subsequently fired
• Kansas Department of Labor: State-level labor enforcement with jurisdiction over employment practices in Kansas, where GEICO’s Lenexa office operates
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Relevant given GEICO’s position as a major financial services provider with direct consumer impact

The Path Forward Is Collective

Cases like Plump’s are won and lost one at a time, but the conditions that produce them are systemic and widespread. If you work for a large corporation and face retaliation for requesting medical leave, filing an HR complaint, or simply being a Black man in a workplace that keeps records selectively, the most important first step is documentation. Write everything down. Date it. Send yourself emails. Build your own file.

Mutual aid networks and worker centers in your city can connect you with employment attorneys who take civil rights cases on contingency — meaning you pay nothing unless you win. Organizations like the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and your regional ACLU chapter can point you toward local legal resources. If you are covered under a union contract, your shop steward has tools that an individual worker simply does not. If you are not covered by a union, the fight to change that is the long game worth playing.

The story of Dion Plump is not exceptional. It is common. The only way to change common outcomes is to build common power.