Page:Cordúa Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB (19-60630) (2021) Opinion.pdf/13

 pretextual justifications for firing Ramirez. Cordúa makes various arguments against the Board’s finding. We discuss these arguments in turn.
 * 1.

Substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that Cordúa exhibited overt animus in its surveillance and questioning of Ramirez. Ambroa intentionally accessed Reichman’s personal cellphone, opened Reichman’s text conversation with Ramirez, scrolled through the texts, and photographed the conversation. Although, according to Ambroa’s testimony, Reichman had granted him general permission to access her personal cellphone to make calls, Ambroa did not provide a credible reason for reading, photographing, and forwarding Reichman’s private text messages. Ambroa claimed that he opened Reichman’s text conversation with Ramirez because he saw on the preview screen that two messages “were mentioning [his name].” However, the only message in Reichman and Ramirez’s conversation mentioning Ambroa’s name was not a recent message (the most recent text messages in the thread concerned an unrelated scheduling issue) and was too long for Ambroa’s name to have appeared on the preview screen.

The record indicates that after learning of Ramirez’s involvement in the collective action lawsuit, Ambroa singled out a text conversation between Ramirez and Reichman in which they appeared to be discussing wage-related issues, photographed the exchange, and sent the photographs to Cordúa’s chief operating officer. We have previously found that illicit surveillance of protected conduct “indicates an employer’s opposition to [that conduct], and the furtive nature of the snooping tends to demonstrate spectacularly the state of the employer’s anxiety.” ''Hendrix Mfg. Co. v. NLRB'', 321 F.2d 100, 104 n.7 (5th Cir. 1963).