A federal judge from the Middle District of Alabama has granted summary judgment to a school board, which was sued for race discrimination by a candidate for a coaching position on a high school football team.
In short, the court agreed with the school board that the decision to hire another candidate was nondiscriminatory in nature.
Plaintiff Ronnie Parker began working for the Chilton County Board of Education, the defendant, as an Agriscience teacher at Jemison High School in 1997. At the time Parker began working for Jemison, he had a bachelor’s degree, as well as his teaching certificate, in agribusiness education from Alabama A&M University. During his time as a teacher at Jemison, Parker coached boys’ basketball, fast-pitch softball, boys’ and girls’ track, powerlifting, and football. From 1997 until 2007, Parker coached football as linebackers coach, assistant offensive coordinator, and assistant defensive coordinator. Parker was defensive coordinator of the football team from 2007 until 2011.
The employment actions Parker claims were racially motivated occurred during the 2010-2011 school year, according to the court. During the 2010-2011 football season, Brad Abbott was the head football coach, Parker was defensive coordinator, and Kelly Smitherman was offensive coordinator. Jeremy Carter was the defensive line coach, and Daryl Lowery, Jason Easterling, and John Clements were also assistant coaches. All of the coaches except Parker were white. Parker is African American.
The Jemison High School football team made the playoffs in the 2010 season. In November of 2010, during Jemison’s first playoff game, Jemison scored to take the lead in the fourth quarter. Another coach instructed Parker to tell Jemison’s kicker not to kick the ball to a certain player on the opposing team on the ensuing kickoff. When Parker relayed the instructions to Jemison’s kicker, Smitherman, the special teams coach, intervened to tell Parker that Smitherman would talk to the kicker. In doing so, Smitherman placed his hand on Parker, and Parker subsequently became angry and told Smitherman not to put his hands on him. Both coaches then engaged in a heated argument on the sideline that was so loud it could be heard from the bleachers, where parents were seated, and as far up as the coach’s booth above the field. During halftime, Parker went into the coaches’ office and moved chairs out of the way in preparation for a fight with Smitherman. Carter and Clements convinced Parker to leave the office before Smitherman entered in order to avoid a fight, and the game ended without further incident. Afterwards, Abbott sent an e-mail to all the coaches warning them that fights between coaches during games in view of the parents would not be tolerated and that, if such an incident occurred again, the coaches would be escorted off the field by the police.
Shortly after the season, head coach Abbott resigned. Alan Thompson, principal of Jemison High School, formed a committee to select an interim head coach in preparation for spring training. The committee consisted of Brad Jackson, Glenn McGriff, and Neal Clements. Jackson and McGriff were both members of the Jemison Quarterback Club, a group of boosters who raised money and volunteered time to the Jemison football team. Neal Clements was a retired principal with longstanding ties to the community. Thompson and all three members of the committee were white. Thompson contacted the committee members and told them to meet him at the high school shortly after Abbott resigned to discuss the selection of an interim head coach. When the committee members met with Thompson, Thompson informed them that he had decided Carter would be the interim coach. It was clear to the committee members that Thompson had already made the decision to hire Carter when the committee met, but that they did not disagree with his choice. McGriff assumed Thompson chose Carter because Carter was the only candidate with head coaching experience.
On November 22, 2010, Thompson called a meeting of all the coaches to announce who would serve as interim head coach and athletic director. Thompson announced that Carter would serve as interim head coach because, among other things, he had previous head coaching experience. Parker objected to Thompson’s use of a committee to select the interim head coach and to the fact that the committee consisted mostly of members of the Quarterback Club, which he felt should not have a role in choosing a head football coach. Parker also argued that Carter had been a coach at Jemison for only four months and that his head coaching experience was from a private school and was not comparable to coaching a public school football program. Parker also stated that Thompson had not observed Parker in the classroom or the weight room and did not give him an interview.
It was at this point in the meeting that Parker stated that Thompson did not appoint him interim head coach because of his skin color. Thompson replied that Parker’s defense gave up too many points. In his deposition, Parker stated that he felt this comment was motivated by racial animus because Thompson criticized Parker’s defensive coaching, but did not criticize Smitherman’s offensive coaching.
Despite Parker’s objections, Carter became interim coach. He might have become the permanent head coach had he not failed to pass the required exam to acquire a teaching certificate. This left the search for the permanent head coach position wide open.
Parker applied for the position. He ultimately was ranked as the fourth best candidate. After the top candidate declined to take the position, the next candidate in the list, Merritt Bowden, accepted the offer. Bowden had seven years of head coaching experience and five years of coaching at the collegiate level. Other than Parker, all of the coaches who were interviewed were white.
“Parker believed that he was more qualified than Bowden and that he did not get the head coach position because of his race,” wrote the court. “Parker believed he was more qualified because of his long history with Jemison, the number of winning seasons he had, and his involvement with the community.”
On December 7, 2011, Parker filed an EEOC charge alleging race discrimination based on the hiring of Carter for the interim coach position and Bowden for the head coach position. He ultimately filed race discrimination claims against the School Board under Title VII (Count I) and § 1981 via § 1983 (Count III), based on the School Board’s failure to promote him to interim head coach in November 2010 and head coach in June 2011.
The court began its analysis by reviewing the McDonnell Douglas framework for circumstantial evidence of discrimination. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S. Ct. 1817, 36 L. Ed. 2d 668 (1973). “To establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination under the McDonnell Douglas framework in the context of a failure to promote, a plaintiff must show that: (1) he belongs to a protected class; (2) he was qualified for and applied for a position that the employer was seeking to fill; (3) despite qualifications, he was rejected; and (4) the position was filled with an individual outside the protected class. Vessels v. Atlanta Indep. Sch. Sys., 408 F.3d 763, 768 (11th Cir. 2005). The same analysis applies to claims of race discrimination under § 1981 based on a failure to promote. Standard v. A.B.E.L. Servs., Inc., 161 F.3d 1318, 1330 (11th Cir. 1998).
“Once the employee has established a prima facie case of disparate treatment, the burden of production, but not of persuasion, shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the adverse employment action. Vessels, 408 F.3d at 770-71. This burden involves no credibility determination and is ‘exceedingly light,’ but it does require the employer to articulate a ‘clear and reasonably specific’ non-discriminatory basis for its decision. Id. at 770 (quoting Tex. Dep. of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 258, 101 S. Ct. 1089, 67 L. Ed. 2d 207 (1981)).
“After the employer meets its burden to produce a non-discriminatory reason for its actions, the presumption of discrimination is eliminated. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 142-43, 120 S. Ct. 2097, 147 L. Ed. 2d 105 (2000). The burden then shifts to the employee to prove the employer’s proffered reason was a pretext for discrimination. Id.”
This is where the plaintiff fell short.
Looking first at the interim head coach position, the court noted that Parker’s grounds for pretext “are that Thompson used a largely advisory committee, Carter had been on the coaching staff for only four months at the time of the promotion, Carter’s head coaching experience had been at a private school, and Parker’s subjective feeling that Thompson’s claim that Parker’s defense gave up too many points was racially motivated. These allegedly pretextual reasons fall far short of the evidence required to permit a reasonable fact-finder to conclude that these reasons were not the basis for the hiring decision and that discrimination was the real reason.” See Vessels, 408 F.3d at 771; Hicks, 509 U.S. at 515.
Next, the court examined the facts around the head coach position.
“Once again, Parker fails to present evidence of pretext sufficient to permit a rational fact-finder to conclude that the School Board’s reasons for hiring Bowden were pretext for discrimination,” wrote the court. “Parker’s reasons for pretext are that Thompson used a largely advisory committee to make the selection, that Parker was more qualified due to his long history with Jemison, and that Parker had a large number of winning seasons and extensive involvement with the community. These reasons are another attempt to substitute Parker’s business judgment for that of the School Board, which the Court will not permit.” See Chapman, 229 F.3d at 1030.
Thus, the court granted summary judgment to the school board.
Ronnie Richardson Parker v. Chilton County Board Of Education; M.D. Ala.; CASE NO. 2:12-cv-0650-MEF, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5904; 1/13/14
Attorneys of Record: (for plaintiff) Henry Wallace Blizzard, III, LEAD ATTORNEY, Wiggins Childs Quinn & Pantanzis, PC, Birmingham, AL. (for defendant) Elizabeth Dianne Gamble, Mark Seymour Boardman, LEAD ATTORNEYS, Boardman Carr Hutcheson & Bennett PC, Chelsea, AL.
