Employment Law Update: Seventh Circuit Rejects Title VII Claim
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a district court’s order granting defendant’s Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law regarding a Title VII gender discrimination claim in Greene v. Potter, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 5035 (7th Cir. 2009). Judgment as a matter of law was entered prior to the completion of plaintiff’s case-in-chief. The plaintiff appealed claiming the District Court had acted prematurely and incorrectly in entering judgment as a matter of law without allowing plaintiff to finish her case-in-chief.
Plaintiff was a mail processing clerk for a post office in Carbondale, Illinois. Postal employees were scheduled to work five days a week and were allowed to volunteer for overtime on the days that they were not scheduled to work. Plaintiff preferred to work overtime on her Sunday off-days, however, this request was rarely granted by her supervisor. After completing the required EEOC procedures, plaintiff filed suit against her employer for gender discrimination claiming that she was denied Sunday overtime shifts because she was a woman. Plaintiff further claimed that her supervisor favored male employees when scheduling the Sunday overtime shift.
At trial, plaintiff and one witness testified. Plaintiff intended to call three additional witnesses during her case-in-chief to testify regarding their employment with the post office. However, this action was precluded when the district court granted the defendant’s Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law.
Plaintiff appealed the district court’s granting of the defendant’s motion for judgment as a matter of law as well as its denial of Plaintiff’s motion to reconsider the judgment and grant a new trial. The court of appeals reviewed the district court’s order granting judgment in favor of the defendant de novo and its denial of plaintiff’s motion for a new trial for abuse of discretion.
With regards to the district court’s granting of judgment as a matter of law, the court of appeals first analyzed the terms and provisions of Rule 50. Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a)(1). The court found that Rule 50 allows for entry of judgment as a matter of law as soon as it becomes apparent that a plaintiff cannot establish an essential element of her claim. Further, Rule 50 provides that “a motion for judgment as a matter of law may be made at any time before the case is submitted to the jury.” Accordingly, judgment can be entered prior to the completion of a plaintiff’s case-in-chief. Therefore, the underlying question with regards to plaintiff’s appeal was whether it was apparent that plaintiff would not be able to prove her claim when the district court granted the defendant’s motion for judgment as a matter of law.
The court of appeals then turned to an analysis of the elements of a Title VII claim under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under Title VII, a plaintiff can prove illegal discrimination either directly or indirectly. The court found that, in the present case, the plaintiff relied on the indirect burden shifting method of proof which requires plaintiff to prove that: 1) she is a member of a protected class; 2) she was performing her job satisfactorily; 3) she suffered an adverse employment action; and 4) similar situated employees outside of her protected class were treated more favorably. Once a plaintiff establishes these elements, the burden shifts to the employer to articulate some legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the adverse employment action. If such a reason is established the plaintiff then must prove that the stated reason is merely pretext for unlawful discrimination.
For the purposes of its review, the court of appeals assumed that plaintiff could have presented sufficient evidence to establish the four requirements for a gender discrimination claim. The court then analyzed defendant’s stated reason for the adverse employment action (the failure to grant plaintiff Sunday overtime) and whether this reason was simply pretext for discrimination. The defendant stated that the Sunday overtime request list was significantly longer than the weekday overtime request lists. Therefore, for business reasons, plaintiff was not scheduled for Sunday overtime despite her requests.
Plaintiff disputed this contention as a mere pretext for gender discrimination. The court held that the precise question when examining a defendant’s justification for an adverse action is whether it is a pretext for the sort of discrimination prohibited by Title VII. Therefore, a plaintiff must prove that an employer’s stated justification for an adverse employment action is not only false, but that the true reason for the adverse employment action is illegal discrimination. Therefore, in the present case, the plaintiff needed to establish that the motive for defendant’s failure to assign her to Sunday overtime was gender discrimination.
Plaintiff testified at trial that she believed her supervisor passed her over for Sunday overtime in favor of two male employees. Plaintiff further testified that her supervisor manipulated the scheduled in favor of two male employees which were his personal friends. One of plaintiff’s male co-workers testified and concurred with her testimony regarding their supervisor’s manipulation of the Sunday overtime schedule. Plaintiff argued that this testimony established that her supervisor violated the overtime scheduling policy and that she suffered an adverse employment action due to gender discrimination.
The district court stated that even if they agreed that plaintiff’s supervisor had manipulated the overtime procedures in order to benefit a few of his friends, this did not establish that the plaintiff had suffered gender discrimination. The court found that the testimony presented suggested that plaintiff’s supervisor violated the overtime procedures to the detriment of both male and female employees. Moreover, plaintiff’s supervisor was motivated by a desire to provide benefits to his personal friends, not by a desire to discriminate against female employees. Therefore, plaintiff had disproved her intentional discrimination claim because her own evidence conclusively revealed some other non-discriminatory reason for defendant’s decision.
Accordingly, the court of appeals found that the district court had properly granted judgment as a matter of law because plaintiff had presented testimony which established that she would not be able to prove her claim for gender discrimination. The court of appeals held that the district court had properly granted judgment as a matter of law despite the fact that the plaintiff had not completed her case-in-chief. For that reason, the court of appeals affirmed the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law and the denial for plaintiff’s motion for a new trial.
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Matthew Byrne, an associate in our Chicago office, concentrates his practice in liability litigation and often defends municipalities in Title VII claims. Matt served as a law clerk at Querrey & Harrow during his second and third years of law school, which has prepared him well to assume his role as an associate with the firm. While attending law school, Mr. Byrne was a member of The John Marshall Law Review and was a member of the Family Law Society and the Health Law Society.
If you have any questions regarding this article, please contact Matt via mbyrne@querrey.com or via 312-540-7644.
