Michigan Air National Guardsman Christopher Jones found out last year that he was going to be deployed. But when he told his employer about his military orders, it allegedly led to his termination. Now, he is suing them.
Jones, a cybersecurity engineer from Royal Oak, Mich., filed a lawsuit against ex-employer Electrical Components International (ECI) alleging violations of USERRA, the federal law that protects military members from job discrimination tied to their service. The lawsuit was filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan.
The lawsuit claims that Jones found out in May 2025 that the Air Force had ordered him into six months of active duty set to begin that September. But shortly after notifying ECI, he purportedly was cut out of company meetings and communications prior to receiving a “poor performance” warning from the former employer that led to his June 2025 firing.
Military.com contacted ECI for comment but received no response prior to publication.
Jones, 42, has been in the Air Force since 2010. He was on active duty at first before transitioning to the Air National Guard around 2014. He’s been a part of the Michigan Air National Guard ever since.
He told Military.com that his termination has been difficult not only for him, but also for his wife and son. He went from going into a deployment and uncertain situation, to learning his employment fate before even leaving the country.
“It’s had a huge impact,” Jones said. “There was additional stress on top of an already high workload and high-stress environment. When things in Iran occurred, I was directly affected by those things. I’m trying to go and protect myself, protect my people, dealing with the stress of missiles overhead.
“Also, I have that [thought] in the back of my head of, ‘If I live, am I even going to be able to make a living?'”
He said that to make matters worse, he was inadvertently injured while deployed and continues to recover from those injuries. Couple that reality with the fact that he hasn’t been able to find a new job in about a year, it’s spurred the lawsuit.
“Since being home, I still have yet to find employment,” Jones said. “The job market is not great right now, especially with tech, which is the field that I was in. So, it’s still a struggle to find employment. But luckily, I’m still on medical convalescence right now.”
What the Lawsuit Claims
Jones is represented in the litigation by Tad Roumayah of the Southfield, Mich.-based firm Sommers Schwartz. ECI is incorporated in Delaware and maintains its principal place of business in Southfield.
The lawsuit claims that Jones performed his work duties “in an exemplary manner” after he began working at ECI as a global cybersecurity engineer on March 31, 2025. It also contends that he never received any write-ups, warnings or disciplinary action.
In April 2025, Jones allegedly informed ECI that he would be required to attend military training from June 2 through June 6 of that year. During the first week of May 2025, the Air Force notified Jones that he would be deployed into active military service for six months, beginning in September 2025.
Jones “promptly” informed ECI on or around May 5, 2025, of his impending deployment. That was when things supposedly began to change at the workplace.
After informing ECI of his upcoming military service obligations, Jones and his defense counsel allege that members of ECI’s management stopped inviting him to meetings that he had previously attended on a regular basis. Jones also learned that Scott Loney, the IT infrastructure and operations director who Jones reported to, allegedly began excluding him from internal communications relevant to his position and job responsibilities.
That led to a May 27 meeting where Loney allegedly chastised Jones for his alleged failure to respond to a work-related issue that arose three days prior during Memorial Day weekend. The lawsuit claims that ECI had never before communicated to Jones that he was required to immediately address work-related matters during the weekend and with no prior notice.
Jones reportedly explained to Loney that ECI had not given him prior notice that he was expected to remain available to immediately respond to work matters over that weekend—one in which he was dealing with an ill grandmother.
Loney, per the lawsuit, allegedly told Jones that ECI required he be available “24/7” and that ECI had a concern with his responsiveness to work-related matters outside normal business hours. Jones said he was unaware of any such prior agreement.
That same day, Loney allegedly sent an email to Jones, titled “Cybersecurity Role Expectations,” to summarize the pair’s meeting. The email listed “concerns” and “expectations” about Jones’ position that the two purportedly never discussed in person.
On June 9, Jones returned to ECI following a week of military training. Fast-forward one week later, to June 16, and Jones was in a room with Loney and ECI human resources specialist Gabriella Biundo. That was when he found out he was being terminated for “poor performance,” even though the “poor” aspects of his performance were allegedly never disclosed.
Jones was fired on June 16, 2025.
USERRA Laws and Jones’ Legal Fight
Tad Roumayah told Military.com that Jones’ case is one of many he gets involved due to his work in the arena of employee rights, notably USERRA (Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act).
He said that he and his firm connected with Jones following his termination, realizing it was related to his military deployment.
“It was one of those types of cases that we viewed as being something that was actionable and that was not, frankly, not right how they treated him, especially a service member,” Roumayah said. “We filed this lawsuit just a couple of days before our nation’s 250th birthday, and so to see a service member who was trying to serve our country and do what he could in a selfless way be basically penalized for that at his workplace by getting fired—it was just not something that we thought we could ignore.”
He said he and his team have worked on multiple similar cases over the past few years, with one from 4-5 years ago now going to arbitration and leading to a substantial award for another service member. He called such legal challenges “fairly prevalent.”
Jones’ case “really stuck out to me,” Roumayah said, as his client’s termination followed his relaying of his anticipated deployment. That led to ECI “fabricating performance issues” that previously didn’t exist, he added. The lawsuit is being filed now due to Jones’ extended deployment.
“Some of the things that we’re seeking in the lawsuit are back pay, lost wages, lost benefits,” Roumayah said. “There’s liquidated damages under USERRA that we can pursue. There’s also mandatory reasonable attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses that we can be awarded if we are successful in this lawsuit, which we are also pursuing.
“There’s a state of damages under the statute that governs [it], like what an employee can obtain from a lawsuit like this that alleges violations of a service member’s rights under USERRA. We’re pursuing all of those.”
There is no current ballpark figure tied to Jones’ lawsuit, Roumayah added, saying only “that we’re going to be pursuing every remedy to the to the fullest.”
Jones’ Disposition Post-Job and Deployment
For Jones, the situation has been difficult.
He told Military.com that he found his former job “rewarding” and that he was “extremely pleased” by the work he was able to do. He was cautiously optimistic regarding his deployment and its effects on his employment.
“You’re always concerned about how a company is going to react because it can be an issue to have to finagle, or try and juggle losing somebody, especially when they just started,” Jones said. “But I wasn’t expecting this when I just discussed this with them. It was immediately after I got the the orders from my unit because I served in a drill status capacity on the weekend that we got notice that we were going to be activated, and gave us the timeline.
“That next day on Monday, when I got into the office, I wasted no time because I wanted to make sure that we had enough time to figure out how I can help them while I am gone, in whatever capacity that was prepared to do.”
Jones added that he “was very apologetic” to his direct supervisor, saying, “I knew it was going to put a lot of pressure on him, and he seemed to be OK with it at the time.”
That obviously didn’t transpire as he intended. Now, Jones—who questioned the motives for his termination during his HR meeting but received no valid responses—is leaning more heavily on his family as he tries to pick up the pieces.
“My wife has been very supportive of what has been going on with the process of this suit,” Jones said. “When I when I told her the news when I came home, she was very sympathetic, but she was also like, ‘We need to we need to go and fight this because she’s the kind of person that’s gonna stick up for me the most, even when I at first didn’t think I needed to.
“She was the one that was gonna convince me that, no, this is the wrong thing that they did to you, and you need to you need to go and attack this. My family’s been very supportive of the deployment. It was hard on them, but they were troopers on it and they’re both very, very happy that I’m home. And ultimately, we’re all optimistic that we’re gonna get out of this in a positive way.”
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