Opinion ID: 2708751
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiffs’ Employment

Text: Plaintiffs Kendall Reid and Bradley Sears were hired as atwill employees by Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (“NACA”) in October 2007 and May 2010, respectively. They worked out of NACA’s Chicago office. NACA is a nationwide not-for-profit corporation that helps potential homeowners—especially those facing discriminatory or predatory lending—obtain mortgages to purchase homes. Reid and Sears worked as mortgage consultants and reported to an office manager in the Chicago office, Norma Martinez. Martinez answered to a regional operations director in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Donald Meadows. As mortgage consultants, plaintiffs were responsible for counseling potential homeowners, helping them assemble mortgage applications, and for forwarding the applications initially to underwriting and, eventually, to lenders. Mortgage consultants are required by federal law to hold a license in order to prepare mortgage applications. See 12 U.S.C. § 5103 (Supp. 2013). Reid and Don Meadows (the regional manager) were the only people tied to the Chicago office who held the appropriate licenses. Sears had held a license, but it had not been properly registered by NACA, so he was not appropriately licensed. As part of preparing the mortgage applications, mortgage consultants handle documents containing the private personal No. 13-1768 3 information of NACA’s clients. Accordingly, NACA had a Document Security Policy (the “paperless policy”) that required employees to scan documents into a secure digital system and shred the paper originals to protect the client’s information—paper files for clients were not to be kept. Evidence shows that the policy had been at least emailed to managers, but it had not been enforced in the Chicago office during the time plaintiffs worked there.