The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a district court’s ruling dismissing the claim of a girls’ basketball coach, who claimed that the school district fired her from her job in retaliation for her past Title IX complaints.
Like the lower court, the panel of judges found that the employee did not establish a retaliation claim through direct evidence because inferences were needed to conclude that she was unlawfully retaliated against.
Plaintiff Geraldine Fuhr filed her first lawsuit in October 1999.alleging in federal court that she suffered discrimination because of her gender — in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act — when the school district failed to hire her as the head coach of the high school boys’ varsity basketball team. In August 2001, a jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, and in October 2001 the court ordered that she be instated into this position. For the next five years, Fuhr worked as the coach for both the boys’ and the girls’ varsity basketball teams.
That harmonious period ended abruptly on June 1, 2006 when the school district removed the plaintiff as the coach of the girls’ varsity basketball team. Fuhr sued, alleging that the school district’s mistreatment of her was in retaliation for her current and prior lawsuits. Elements of her claim centered on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
The defendant moved for summary judgment, which a district judge granted in the fall of 2011. The plaintiff appealed.
In its analysis, the panel reasoned that it would rely upon the standards set first in cases involving Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to determine whether the plaintiff had made a viable claim.
“Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 contains a potent anti-retaliation provision,” the panel noted. “The statute provides in relevant part: ‘It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against any of his employees . . . because [the employee] has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice by this subchapter.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). A retaliation claim can be established either through direct evidence of retaliation or circumstantial evidence that would support an inference of retaliation. Spengler v. Worthington Cylinders, 615 F.3d 481, 491 (6th Cir. 2010).”
It elaborated on the direct evidence phrase, which “requires no inferences to conclude that unlawful retaliation was a motivating factor in the employer’s action.” Imwalle v. Reliance Med. Prods., Inc., 515 F.3d 531, 544 (6th Cir. 2008).
Fuhr points the following statement by the principal of Hazel Park High, Don Vogt, from a November 2005 conversation as direct evidence. “She recalls him telling her: ‘this is a good old boys network. They are doing this to you to get even, you know. . . They are doing this to you to get even because you stood up for your rights. They are doing this to you to get back at you for winning the lawsuit.’”
The panel was unpersuaded. “Though the statement clearly refers to a good old boys network, it is unclear who is a part of that network. Nor is it clear what acts Vogt refers to as retaliatory. He could be referring to all of the collective acts that occurred prior to her removal as the varsity girls coach or only some of those acts or only her removal as varsity girls coach or her removal and some combination of the other acts. These ambiguities do not require a conclusion that these unspecified acts by unspecified people were based on unlawfully retaliatory motives. See Minadeo v. ICI Paints, 398 F.3d 751, 764 (6th Cir. 2005) (holding that plaintiff failed to offer direct evidence where “we could not possibly conclude that the comments and circumstances pointed to by [plaintiff] show a discriminatory motive on the part of [defendant] without drawing undue inferences”).
“Accordingly, Fuhr cannot prevail unless she presents circumstantial evidence of unlawful retaliation,” it wrote.
The “fatal” flaw in the plaintiff’s claim on this point was the gap between her filing her Title IX complaint and the alleged retaliation. “Where an adverse employment action occurs very close in time after an employer learns of a protected activity, such temporal proximity between the events is significant enough to constitute evidence of a causal connection for the purposes of satisfying a prima facie case of retaliation. But where some time elapses between when the employer learns of a protected activity and the subsequent adverse employment action, the employee must couple temporal proximity with other evidence of retaliatory conduct to establish causality.”
Mickey v. Zeidler Tool & Die Co., 516 F.3d 516, 525 (6th Cir. 2008).
In addition to this, the panel found that the school district articulated legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons for the actions against the plaintiff
Geraldine A. Fuhr v. Hazel Park School District; 6th Cir.; No. 11-2288; 3/19/13
Attorneys of Record: (for appellant) Mark Granzotto, MARK GRANZOTTO, P.C., Royal Oak, Michigan. (for Appellee) Timothy J. Mullins, John L. Miller, GIARMARCO, MULLINS & HORTON, P.C., Troy, Michigan, Lawrence J. Joseph, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae.
