I'm positive the company would have evidence that the terminated individuals were late by 1 minute on two separate occasions. But the company might also have evidence that other employees were also late and not terminated.
You can pretty easily create an evidentiary trail that "Person X did thing Y, and was then terminated". What's harder is creating an evidentiary trail that "Other people at the company are also regularly terminated for thing Y".
If the company really does fire every employee that has two 1-minute tardiness', then it's going to be a real struggle to claim the firing was pretextual. If this firing is the first time the company has fired someone for those reasons, the company is in real trouble.