The Eighth Circuit revives the discrimination suit of a hotel front desk clerk who claimed she was terminated by the operations director because of her “tomboyish” appearance.

According to the suit, the operations director consistently indicated that female front desk workers must be “pretty,” and that she criticized the complainant’s lack of the “Midwestern girl look.”

The Court says that the evidence indicates the reasons the company used to terminate the clerk were pretextual: she had a history of good performance at the company, had no prior disciplinary record and had received two merit based pay raises. “The two individuals who supervised her during the majority of her employment at [the hotel] both stated that they had no problem with her appearance, and at least one customer had never seen customer service like [she] had provided. On this record, a factfinder could infer a discriminatory motive in the company’s actions to remove [her],” the Court holds. Lewis v. Heartland Inns of America, LLC