well proceed to the next case on the argument counter this morning crass co versus the san ramon valley united unified school district  case i would like to go hopefully emphasize some points that were made in the briefs and hopefully not repeat things but perhaps emphasize or help the court look at things  now and perhaps a different different light if i mean first of all i think very important in those cases of course in any of these cases all context and everything happens within a context and i  allegations of misconduct which ultimately resulted in their terminations and and i think the district court got that big picture right that her termination question but the district court in my opinion took a very narrow view of number one the context in which this petition was made and number two language in the petition from which i you're investigating mary glenn for taking gifts and maybe she didn't say mary glenn is an african american woman but everybody knew that certainly the employer knew it and i believe the teachings who mary glen was and they knew she was an african american woman and they also knew that that she and mary glenn had made a complaint of not being fairly paid comparable to other managers who were whites or males similar not sure of his ancestry who is the custodian before the layoff so in her complaint in this petition and i will get to the issue about the district saying what we did and some of some of us didn't know about that that craft go was connected to this petition but i will get to that issue but which the district court rejected your argument that there just was no nexus between the circulation of the petition and the disciplinary act to the to determination that are you reading that i'm looking at line eight on page seven seventy two were were just talking about her terminations november of two thousand and three  does not support a reason for the terminations was caused even in part by plaintiffs march two thousand and three complained about discriminatory treatment rather than as part of the ongoing pattern of very related and i want to talk to that while they're very related and so there was that was there wasn't a problem that the district court found between the argument that you're advancing here yes right i believe he saw nexus problem but they identify two men who are engaging in the same conduct who are who are also except in gifts from custodians are not being investigated i submit that that can be read within the context and again it's a it's a fairly high in french alleve just looking at the cold record now and the context of the particular school might be different indeed i understand that if it's i'm not going to win this battle let me move on to some other battles all right employer in seeing this petition could it be inferred that this could be interpreted as is the complaint about discrimination as well as a complaint about generally about other  and the gender of the men mention in it and i forgot what your fourth point was that would be sufficient as a matter of law to support the jury's conclusion that there was but you didn't go and tell your employer i wrote it and they circulated it but almost immediately efficient it's presented to the school board and the school officials you start getting hit r allowing her son to work overtime on a holiday weekend or not not overtime that but filling in for somebody and over time we get we trivial events that all of a sudden she's a target now i would argue that is that they have no other reason to explain all of a sudden a model employee after this petition has been circulated is now being targeted and the fact that they say i don't know is  who is also mexican american and she is and she's complaining about the fact that now she's being written up and she's about to be investigated or or disciplined because she spent it's not very articulate this woman doesn't speak very going to english but she gets the point in the end the crust of that letter is it appears to me that we are being singled out and treated differently because we're mexican americans and we're mexican sixth letter and he's thought that it ended that it was complaining about discrimination because of her association with mary going so it seems to me for at least two reasons the march twenty third complaint is is protected by title seven and also i think it's interesting that if she was terminated from awful reason it must have been the petition and this march twenty sixth letter didn't really change the fact that if if there was an illegitimate reason for the terminations it was the petition not the march twenty sixth letter and which i think raises the whole mixed motives issue and and let me at this way it seems to me under mixed mode of and let's assume for just very hypothetically the district school district decides to say their defense is going to be listen we have all these legitimate reasons to terminate or chris so that i come back and say listen in eight years and ninety seven in two thousand and five you only terminated two other employees and what did you terminate them for you know that they have to drugs and not shown up for work and you know you haven't fired anybody else or anything even approaching you know the trivial twenty sixth that was a motivating factor and if the jury finds that that doesn't have to be the factor the primary factor if the jury finds that's a motivating factor that that was one of the reasons they terminated context they just asked her to agree voluntarily choose them out and she didn't and i submit in this would be my argument to a jury if she had agreed to the motion and just quietly shut her mouth stop complaining taking the demotion and just show up for work keep your mouth shut be happy you have a job she would have been fired she made that complaint on march twenty sixth in the context of saying no i'm not going to accept your demotion and guess what i'm going to keep complaining and because she didn't accept the demotion and she told them i'm going to keep complaining that escalated the adversarial relationship between them and what did the district do when response to her saying i'm not going to accept the demotion and i'm going to keep complaining and here's my complaint they fired  o is into the disciplinary process with the district the district court found that there was no causal relationship between the march twenty sixth ladder and the terminations for a variety of reasons and those reasons are that by march twenty sixth two thousand and three the disciplinary process has been going on going for at least six months for two months before that letter was presented by mi quit harassing this employee she would not abide by the rules that were set down regarding her relationship with this employee and they just seemed to be nothing to do to get her to do her job involved drop related matters i mean this was whether or not the trash got picked up by this particular employee and after being informed in fact that this particular employee often couldn't pick up the trash because the principal was assigning the employee to do other tasks and that it was her job to make sure that any trash that remained and picked up that picked up so it went to the heart of what her job was as a custodian and she absolutely would not do that job she would not accept that directive so it was an ongoing problem of insubordination and disrespect both to the employee and to the to the job requirements i mean the odd thing on this and what happened in september of two thousand and two there was a restructuring of the janitorial staff and that created a lot of problems that there was a new woman who came in who supervised the janitors in two thousand which she found it very difficult to get her for her job so you know again and i think we end up to back to where the district court ended up on this issue if you think that she was terminated for trivial has signed last chance agreement she understands as of january two thousand and three two months before she wrote this letter and she put it in her own words the last chance agreement means if i screw up i am by so i don't see how you get there from the march twenty sixth platter because all of these things occurred before that letter there cannot be a cause a link between the march twenty sixth letter and the last chance agreement at which point she is already her and she understood she said if i die don't abide by this agreement i'm gone basically into the she understood exactly what it meant so i think the march twenty sixth letter you cannot simply cannot draw so the question is what inference is left if you can't say that march twenty sixth letter contributed to the if you're drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff reasonable inferences  what inference could be left by the fact that she was terminated after these if you want to characterize them as trivial violations of the last chance agreement well the inference that the district court said is laughed at most is that they were related to the well a couple of reasons one is that even prior to the march twenty sixth letter about a week prior in fact they had a meeting with her and said look you've been violating the last chance agreement here your options take a demotion and she understood the issues she said this is well i understood the demotion was my chance to save my job and i didn't take that demotion that's before the march twenty sixth letter but the other fact that you have is that so i think we end up again with the district court ended up which is back at the petition and then if you're going to get mixed motive the only possible other motive other than actual job infraction the other i think probably in the district's mind it was a complex set of issues that resulted in one fact that they could not get this cross code to do or job and follow their directions so so i guess if you the no i don't think it was anyone i mean well again i think i think again i don't think it was any one item that did it this all added up and amounted to basically the same thing and that is that she would not do her job and would not follow directives she was told for example  fically do not hire your son as a substitute she did she was told specifically told that for her she was told that after and then she did it again she was specifically told no one but district personnel certain district personnel can authorized overtime after she knew that she authorized overtime for herself she authorized overtime for five other employees she was told time and time again there were at violations of sv very specific instructions not to do something and then there was the whole complex of the problem with the other janitor mr cho of which was very frustrating as well for the district  because she would not leave that alone she would not leave the whole trash issue alone even after it was explained to her on multiple occasions what her job was in that particular piece of it so again it was the relationship between thirty something like that are five thirty to two and she worked i believe eight ten to ten to six thirty when mr otro because school personnel the principal and the night shift in her her shift intersected somewhat the night shift and so she was much more responsible for telling the night shift this is what needs to get done on your shift whereas with which that was her job to make sure people know what to do on their shift whereas with mr cho because the principal and vice principal were on the scene they would often assign job duties to him separate and apart from picking up the trash or things like that and so yes had t trash what's wrong with that that's fine ok so far so good it's just she didn't and then she complained that he wasn't getting the trash picked up well nancy complain later and he said the principal got me doing more look i've got him doing more important things right from my orders from yours and so if he doesn't get the trash picked up you know see to it it's part of your job and you know i mean it's you know that what happened so she continued to complain about the trash being picked up on several occasions they would collar and say why didn't x get done something unrelated to the trash and instead of responding she started in on the trash issue and how mr cho wasn't picking up the trash i wasn't picking up the trash i mean that's the other thing is it was his job he gets that he was prevented from doing his job especially by the by the by the principal she says well he needs to do his job and job necessarily i mean it was the job of the entire custodial staff to see that the trash got picked up that meant if one person got called away to do something else somebody else picks up the trash and so that's the way it  over discipline as a result of these problems and her other failures to follow directions and her failure to you know her failure to follow direction not to go can't talk to the cafeteria workers for failure to  directions not to sign over time all of those things that occurred before the march twenty sixth letter so i don't see how you draw any inference from the march twenty sixth latter about if you say those are trivial things well they were trivial before the march twenty six letter and those things led to a last chance agreement which they said your job's on the line over these things so i don't think staying there trivial whether you characterize them that way or not and anything to the discussion of whether you have  enforce these rules the question is if you start enforcing them differentially and there's a reasonable nexus to a protected activity then that's that's the question i think well again you know those rules if you say trivial so you have a subset of trivial things and then you have a big set of trivial things and i don't know if that matters particularly since you have the terminations occurring eight months after that letter was written i don't i don't see you seen i had custodian