Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-14-01349/USCOURTS-ca8-14-01349-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 14-1349

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Cynthia Thomas,

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.

Heartland Employment Services LLC; HCR Manorcare Medical Services of

Florida, LLC; In Home Health, LLC; G. Dean Hagen,

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendants - Appellees.

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Western District of Missouri - Kansas City

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 Submitted: February 11, 2015

 Filed: August 13, 2015

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Before LOKEN, SMITH, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

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COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

Cynthia Thomas sued Heartland Employment Services LLC, Heartland

employee G. Dean Hagen, and others, alleging that the defendants terminated

Thomas’s employment based on her age, in violation of the Missouri Human Rights

Act (MHRA), Mo. Rev. Stat. § 213.010 et seq. The district court granted summary

judgment for the defendants. We conclude that there is a genuine issue of material

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fact for trial as to whether age was a contributing factor in Thomas’s discharge by

Heartland and Hagen. We therefore reverse the judgment and remand for further

proceedings on the claim against those defendants.

I.

Heartland employed Thomas as an account liaison from May 2010 until she

was terminated on June 24, 2011, at age fifty-three. Thomas’s claim of employment

discrimination centers on the role of alleged age-based animus of Hagen, a hospice

administrator for Heartland, in Thomas’s termination.

According to a Heartland employee, Hagen stated in June or July 2011 “that

older people didn’t work as fast or were as productive as younger people,” and made

“comments about having fresh blood, younger employees.” Hagen referred to

Thomas as “the old short blond girl,” and soon after Thomas’s discharge, Hagen told

a Heartland client who expressed concern about Thomas’s departure that “he likes to

keep himself surrounded with young people.” Although Hagen denies that he

supervised Thomas or had authority to discharge her, the regional human resources

manager for Heartland testified that Hagen was “an indirect supervisor” of the

account liaison personnel, and would have been “perfectly within his rights to have

input on whether or not Cynthia Thomas was terminated.”

Thomas’s position as an account liaison included traveling to establish and

maintain relationships with Heartland clients. Heartland permitted Thomas to claim

reimbursement for the resulting mileage.

Toni Duncan, Heartland’s regional manager of business development, and

another Heartland employee audited three weeks of Thomas’s mileage reimbursement

claims after hearing that Thomas may not have visited two clients that she claimed

to have visited. They evaluated Thomas’s claims and compared them to weekly call

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plans that Thomas prepared to describe her projected travel for an upcoming week. 

The reviewers determined that Thomas had claimed reimbursement for more miles

than the distance between the callslisted on the call plans for each of the three weeks. 

Duncan thus concluded that Thomas had falsified her reimbursement claims, and

believed that Thomas’s termination was required.

Duncan testified thatshe informed Hagen of the audit’s results after it had been

completed. Duncan also said that she told Hagen they “were going to need to”

discharge Thomas, and he responded that “he would just sit in as a witness.” 

Heartland employee Laura Cassidy, however, testified that before the termination

meeting with Thomas, Hagen stated “he was going to let her go.”

Three Heartland employees—Duncan, Hagen, and Robyn Stoy—met with

Thomas to discharge her. Duncan informed Thomas that her employment was being

terminated due to falsification of mileage claims. Thomas maintains she then

responded that she kept records that would explain discrepancies between the claimed

mileage and the weekly call plans. According to Thomas, she took additional trips

that were not included as projected travel in the call plans, and her mileage claims

were truthful and accurate.

Although Duncan testified thatshe could have brought exculpatory information

to the attention of the regional human resources manager to see what could be done,

Thomas testified that Duncan rejected her explanation in the meeting. According to

Thomas, Hagen dismissed her response by stating that termination “was a decision

they had made,” and “that this was their decision.” When Thomas was asked if the

three Heartland employees at the meeting told her who had decided to discharge her,

she responded “[n]o,” and that “they just used ‘we.’” Thomas understood that Hagen

participated in the decision because he was at the meeting, and because Stoy, as the

newest employee, “was considered the witness.”

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Thomasfiled suit in Missouri court, alleging asrelevant on appeal thatshe was

discharged due to her age, in violation of the MHRA; the defendants removed the

case to federal court. The district court granted summary judgment for the

defendants, reasoning that Thomas had adduced no direct evidence of discrimination. 

The court concluded that Hagen was not a decisionmaker or closely involved in the

termination decision, and that his age-related comments were thus considered “stray

remarks.” The court also ruled that indirect evidence did not support an inference of

discrimination.

We review the district court’s grant ofsummary judgment de novo, viewing the

evidence in the light most favorable to Thomas as the nonmoving party, and drawing

all reasonable inferencesin her favor. Holland v. Sam’s Club, 487 F.3d 641, 643 (8th

Cir. 2007). Summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine issue of material

fact, and Thomas is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

II.

The Missouri Human Rights Act prohibits employers from discharging an

employee if the employee’s age was a “contributing factor” in the decision. Fleshner

v. Pepose Vision Inst., P.C., 304 S.W.3d 81, 94 (Mo. 2010); see Mo. Rev. Stat.

§ 213.055.1(1)(a). Unlike the federal age discrimination statute, which requires a

plaintiff to show that age was a but-for cause of an adverse action, see Gross v. FBL

Fin. Servs., Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 176-77 (2009), Missouri law does not require “a

plaintiff to prove that discrimination was a substantial or determining factor” in a

discharge. Daugherty v. City of Maryland Heights, 231 S.W.3d 814, 819 (Mo. 2007). 

The statute’s prohibition on “‘any unfair treatment based on . . . age’” means that “if

consideration of age . . . contributed to the unfair treatment, that is sufficient.” Id.

(quoting Mo. Rev. Stat. § 213.010(5)).

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A plaintiff can survive a motion for summary judgment by adducing direct

evidence of “a specific link between the alleged discriminatory animus and the

challenged decision,” including “evidence of conduct or statements by persons

involved in the decision-making process that may be viewed as directly reflecting the

alleged discriminatory attitude.” Id. at 818 n.4, 820-21. By contrast, “statements by

nondecisionmakers, or statements by decisionmakers unrelated to the decisional

process” do not constitute direct evidence. Elam v. Regions Fin. Corp., 601 F.3d 873,

878 (8th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation mark omitted); see Daugherty, 231 S.W.3d at

818 n.4. Thomas contendsthatshe has presented sufficient direct evidence for a jury

to infer that Hagen was involved in the decision to terminate her, and that his

discriminatory animus likely was a contributing factor.

We conclude that a reasonable jury could infer that Hagen was a

decisionmaker, or was closely involved in the decisionmaking process. See

Daugherty, 231 S.W.3d at 818 n.4; cf. Torgerson v. City of Rochester, 643 F.3d 1031,

1044-45 (8th Cir. 2011). According to Heartland’s regional human resources

manager, Hagen was an “indirect supervisor” of Thomas and had authority to

contribute to the decision to discharge her. By Thomas’s account, Hagen said at the

termination meeting that the discharge “was a decision they had made,” and that “this

was their decision.” Heartland’s representatives at the meeting said that “we”—i.e.,

a group that included Hagen—made the decision. Hagen himself told another

Heartland employee before meeting with Thomas “he was going to let her go.” A

jury could construe these statements as admissions by Hagen or his colleagues at

Heartland that Hagen participated in the decisionmaking process. While there is also

evidence that Hagen said he would attend the meeting as a witness, “[c]redibility

determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate

inferences from the facts are jury functions.” Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods.,

Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 150 (2000) (internal quotation mark omitted).

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The district court thought Hagen was not a decisionmaker or closely involved

in the decision because Duncan informed Hagen about the decision after it was made,

and Hagen spoke only sparingly at the termination meeting. We think this is one

reasonable inference from the evidence, but not the only one. A reasonable jury also

could credit Duncan’s testimony but infer from the facts that Hagen, as one with

authority to contribute to the decision, adopted and affirmed the decision to terminate

Thomas after he was informed about the mileage investigation and the prospective

discharge. The record further supports a reasonable inference that Hagen participated

in the decision to refuse revisiting the termination decision after Thomas attempted

to rebut the allegations of falsification during the meeting.

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Thomas, we also conclude

that the age-related comments that Hagen made in the workplace were sufficiently

related to Thomas and to the decisional process to constitute direct evidence of

discrimination. Hagen described Thomas as an “old short blond girl.” In the same

two-month period in which Thomas was discharged, Hagen stated “that older people

didn’t work as fast or were as productive as younger people,” and he “made some

comments about having fresh blood, younger employees.” “Right after” the

termination, Hagen explained to a Heartland client who was concerned about

Thomas’s absence that “he likes to keep himself surrounded with young people.” A

reasonable jury thus could infer that Hagen affirmed and took part in Thomas’s

discharge, that he was motivated by age-based animus, and that his bias was a

contributing factor to the adverse employment action. See Denesha v. Farmers Ins.

Exch., 161 F.3d 491, 500-01 (8th Cir. 1998); Fast v. S. Union Co., 149 F.3d 885, 891

(8th Cir. 1998).

* * *

For the reasons stated, the judgment ofthe district court asto defendants Hagen

and Heartland is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings. The

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judgment dismissing claims against HCR Manorcare Medical Services of Florida,

LLC and In Home Health, LLC, is affirmed, because Thomas has presented

insufficient evidence that either entity was her employer.

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