Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05339/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05339-0/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 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 16, 2008 Decided March 17, 2009 

No. 07-5339 

FREDERICK C. DOUGLAS, JR., 

APPELLANT

v. 

SHAUN DONOVAN, SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN 

DEVELOPMENT, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 04cv00847) 

Robert C. Seldon argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs was Molly E. Buie. 

Jane M. Lyons, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. On the brief were Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. 

Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence and Charlotte A. Abel, 

Assistant U.S. Attorneys. 

Before: GINSBURG, TATEL and BROWN, Circuit 

Judges. 

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Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

BROWN, Circuit Judge: Frederick Douglas, an employee 

of the Department of Housing and Urban Development 

(HUD), argues he was discriminated against when his 

department head failed to recommend him for a highly 

coveted award. Because this is not an adverse employment 

action, we AFFIRM summary judgment in favor of HUD. 

I. 

A Presidential Rank Award, as measured by purse and 

prestige, is the highest recognition given to federal “senior 

executives”—high-level career employees. See 5 U.S.C. 

§ 4507; 5 C.F.R. § 451.301. There are two types of 

Presidential Rank Awards: “(1) Meritorious Executive, for 

sustained accomplishment, or (2) Distinguished Executive, for 

sustained extraordinary accomplishment.” 5 U.S.C. 

§ 4507(c). The number of awards given annually is tightly 

restricted,1

 and the financial benefits are substantial.2

The Presidential Rank Award process is labyrinthine, 

with numerous ways to fail, but only one to succeed. An 

 

1 See 5 U.S.C. § 4507(d) (“During any fiscal year . . . the number of 

career appointees awarded the rank of Meritorious Executive may 

not exceed 5 percent of the Senior Executive Service,” and “the 

number of career appointees awarded the rank of Distinguished 

Executive may not exceed 1 percent.”). 

2 See id. § 4507(e) (“Receipt . . . of the rank of Meritorious 

Executive [includes] a lump-sum payment of an amount equal to 20 

percent of annual basic pay,” and “[r]eceipt . . . of the rank of 

Distinguished Executive [inlcudes] a lump-sum payment of . . . 35 

percent of annual basic pay.”). 

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eligible executive must be recommended by his agency; 

within HUD, department heads recommend employees to 

HUD’s Performance Review Board (“PRB”), which evaluates 

the candidates and then forwards a slate of prospective 

nominations to HUD’s Deputy Secretary and Secretary, 

who—at least formally—decide which candidates will be 

recommended to the Office of Personnel Management 

(“OPM”). OPM “review[s] such recommendations and 

provide[s] to the President recommendations as to which of 

the agency recommended appointees should receive such 

rank.” Id. § 4507(b). The President of the United States 

makes the final call. 

In 1999, Douglas, a black male, became HUD’s Deputy 

Assistant Secretary for Single Family Housing, a “senior 

executive” position. In November 2002, Assistant Secretary 

for Housing John Weicher, Douglas’s department head, 

transferred him to a different department. In December 2002, 

Douglas learned that Weicher had not recommended him for a 

Presidential Rank Award. Instead, Weicher recommended 

Margaret Young, a white female, who received an award. 

After HUD denied relief, Douglas sued under Title VII, 

alleging he was discriminated against on the basis of race 

when Weicher failed to recommend him for a Presidential 

Rank Award. The district court granted summary judgment to 

HUD, ruling that Douglas did not suffer an adverse 

employment action. Douglas appeals; our review is de novo, 

“applying the same standards as the district court.” Tao v. 

Freeh, 27 F.3d 635, 638 (D.C. Cir. 1994). 

II. 

 

In order to present a viable claim of employment 

discrimination under Title VII, a plaintiff must show he 

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suffered an adverse employment action. See, e.g., Ginger v. 

Dist. of Columbia, 527 F.3d 1340, 1343 (D.C. Cir. 2008). An 

“adverse employment action” is “‘a significant change in 

employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, 

reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a 

decision causing significant change in benefits.’” Taylor v. 

Small, 350 F.3d 1286, 1293 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (quoting 

Burlington Indus., Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 761 (1998)). 

An employee must “experience[] materially adverse 

consequences affecting the terms, conditions, or privileges of 

employment or future employment opportunities such that a 

reasonable trier of fact could find objectively tangible harm.” 

Forkkio v. Powell, 306 F.3d 1127, 1131 (D.C. Cir. 2002); see 

also Holcomb v. Powell, 433 F.3d 889, 902 (D.C. Cir. 2006) 

(distinguishing between “purely subjective injuries” which are 

not actionable, and “objectively tangible harm,” which is). 

Further, “[a] tangible employment action in most cases 

inflicts direct economic harm.” Burlington Indus., Inc., 524 

U.S. at 762 (emphasis added). Thus, “not everything that 

makes an employee unhappy is an actionable adverse action.” 

Russell v. Principi, 257 F.3d 815, 818 (D.C. Cir. 2001). 

Because “significant” and “objectively tangible” harm is 

required, performance evaluations ordinarily are not 

actionable under Title VII; “[t]he result of an evaluation is 

often speculative, making it difficult to remedy. For example, 

a single poor evaluation may drastically limit an employee’s 

chances for advancement, or it may be outweighed by later 

evaluations and be of no real consequence.” Id. See also 

Taylor, 350 F.3d at 1293 (“[F]ormal criticism or poor 

performance evaluations are not necessarily adverse actions 

and they should not be considered such if they did not affect 

the employee’s grade or salary.”). On the other hand, “a 

bonus is a tangible, quantifiable award, more analogous to 

one’s salary or to a benefit of one’s employment than to a 

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performance evaluation. It has a more direct, measurable, and 

immediate effect,” meaning the denial of even a purely 

discretionary bonus can be actionable. Russell, 257 F.3d at 

819. At the same time, however, if an employee is denied the 

opportunity to compete for a promotion, she has suffered an 

adverse employment action; we do not inquire whether she 

would have received the position but for the discrimination. 

See Cones v. Shalala, 199 F.3d 512 (D.C. Cir. 2000). Thus, 

under our precedent, in some cases we consider whether any 

alleged harm is speculative, but we do not always do so. 

The distinction between cases in which, to establish an 

adverse employment action, we consider the speculativeness 

of the harm and those in which we do not reflects the 

difference between a categorical presumption and a causation 

requirement. Although “we do not categorically reject a 

particular personnel action as nonadverse simply because it 

does not fall into a cognizable type,” Holcomb, 433 F.3d at 

902, we have described an adverse employment action as “‘a 

significant change in employment status, such as hiring, 

firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly 

different responsibilities, or a decision causing significant 

change in benefits.’” Taylor, 350 F.3d at 1293 (quoting 

Burlington Indus., Inc., 524 U.S. at 761) (emphasis added). 

The first four examples—“hiring, firing, failing to promote, 

[and] reassignment with significantly different 

responsibilities”—all relate to one’s work responsibilities and 

position, and are categorically phrased. Although there may 

be subjective elements to all of these decisions, it is obvious 

that each significantly changes an employee’s status. 

Consequently, under our caselaw, employment decisions of 

this type are conclusively presumed to be adverse 

employment actions, even if any alleged harm is speculative. 

See, e.g., Cones, 199 F.3d at 521. 

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On the other hand, some actions do not obviously cause a 

significant change in employment status. The last example of 

an adverse employment action discussed in Taylor—“a 

decision causing significant change in benefits”—alone 

requires an employee to explain how the employer’s action 

harmed his employment status. For employment actions that 

do not obviously result in a significant change in employment 

status—such as giving a poor performance evaluation, 

reassigning office space and equipment, or, for that matter, 

fielding a company softball team—an employee must go the 

further step of demonstrating how the decision nonetheless 

caused such an objectively tangible harm. As Russell

indicates, this additional step (which, by the way, is not

“newly minted,” Dis. Op. at 3, as illustrated by Russell itself) 

requires us to consider whether the alleged harm is unduly 

speculative. Showing that harm is not speculative need not be 

a difficult task, and it often is not. For example, a benefit 

such as a bonus—or, by logical extension, a pay raise—is 

objectively tangible because it has a “direct, measurable, and 

immediate effect” upon the employee’s compensation. 

Russell, 257 F.3d at 818–19. By parity of reasoning, the loss 

of a bonus or of a raise likewise has such an effect. Other 

changes in benefits, however, do not have such a 

straightforward effect upon employment status. For example, 

under Russell, the effect of a poor evaluation is ordinarily too 

speculative to be actionable. See id. at 818. If, however, that 

evaluation determines the bonus, as in Russell, id. at 818–19, 

and Weber v. Battista, 494 F.3d 179, 184–85 (D.C. Cir. 2007), 

then the employee may show the evaluation caused an 

objectively tangible harm. 

 

The Presidential Rank Award recognizes extraordinary 

performance. It is not earned in the ordinary course of 

employment for adequate or even superior work or for 

meeting or exceeding established goals. Instead, it is intended 

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to reward outstanding leadership and innovation—indefinable 

star qualities that are by their very nature subjective. See 5 

U.S.C. § 4507(c) (Meritorious Executive Award for 

“sustained accomplishment” and Distinguished Executive 

Award for “sustained extraordinary accomplishment”). 

Failure to make the cut for such an award cannot be deemed a 

significant change in responsibilities; nor would elimination 

from the competition affect employment opportunities in an 

objectively tangible way. Therefore, unlike failure to be 

promoted, failure to be recommended for a Presidential Rank 

Award is not categorically an adverse employment action. 

Moreover, the inherent uncertainty in the Presidential 

Rank Award process means there can be no direct tie between 

a nomination and an award. A departmental recommendation 

is but a single point in the assessment, one cog in a complex 

machine. As observed by the district court, “of the thirty-two 

candidates nominated by their department heads in 1999–

2004, only sixteen ultimately received an award.” In fact, 

Douglas himself was recommended but not selected in 2001. 

Because of the many moving parts involved in selecting a 

Presidential Rank Award winner—including multiple rounds 

of independent evaluation both inside and outside of HUD, 

with a final decision by the President—even if Weicher had 

recommended Douglas, it is quite uncertain whether the 

President ultimately would have selected Douglas to receive 

an Award, rendering any harm from the failure to recommend 

“speculative” and “difficult to remedy.” Russell, 257 F.3d at 

818. Because a recommendation for a Presidential Rank 

Award does not automatically or even consistently lead to 

receipt of one, neither Russell nor Weber aids Douglas. 

In an attempt to escape this reasoning, Douglas cites 

Griffin v. Washington Convention Center, 142 F.3d 1308 

(D.C. Cir. 1998). But the adverse employment action in 

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Griffin was obvious: termination. The dispute on appeal was 

what evidence was appropriate to establish an inference of 

discrimination, id. at 1310–11 (discussing whether the bias of 

a decision maker’s subordinate is admissible in a suit 

challenging a decision to fire an employee), a wholly separate 

question than the one at issue here, namely, whether Douglas 

suffered an adverse employment action when Weicher did not 

recommend him for a Presidential Rank Award. Douglas also 

argues that whether Weicher’s failure to recommend him 

resulted in Douglas’s not receiving an award should be 

deemed a question of fact, not law (i.e., he contends the 

refusal to recommend was an adverse employment action, and 

a jury should decide if that action harmed Douglas). 

However, under Douglas’s logic, a performance evaluation 

alone could also be adverse employment action, with a jury 

deciding whether the evaluation, in fact, harmed the 

employee. We rejected that notion in Russell. 

Douglas finally cites Cones. There we held an employer’s 

refusal to allow an employee to compete for a job could be 

actionable because the refusal to advertise the position 

competitively was “tantamount to refusing to promote him,” 

and failure to promote can be an adverse employment action. 

Cones, 199 F.3d at 521. Douglas argues that Weicher’s nonrecommendation was tantamount to a denial of a bonus, and 

thus was also an adverse employment action. 

We disagree with this extension of Cones. Unlike being 

considered for a promotion, the question at issue in that case, 

being recommended for—much less receiving—the 

extraordinary distinction of a Presidential Rank Award is not 

an ordinary expectation of employment. Indeed, as explained 

above, under our precedent failure to be promoted 

categorically is an adverse employment action, meaning 

unlike with other types of employer decisions (such as giving 

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a negative performance evaluation), we do not consider 

whether any alleged harm is unduly speculative. With this 

distinction in mind, Cones should be understood as closing a 

potential loophole in Title VII. It established that agencies 

may not prevent minority employees from advancing to 

higher positions simply by refusing to open positions to 

competition and laterally transferring higher ranked nonminorities. But that unobjectionable proposition cannot be 

read to support Douglas’s much broader argument: that a Title 

VII plaintiff has an actionable claim whenever he was not 

selected to move to the next level of competition for any 

award accompanied by a prize, even if entitlement is not 

objectively ascertainable and the decisionmaking is 

unavoidably subjective. See Holcomb, 433 F.3d at 902 & n.2 

(explaining that although “employment actions need not fall 

into cognizable categories to be considered adverse,” Cones

does not abrogate the requirement that a plaintiff must show 

an action constituted objectively tangible harm). The mere 

failure to be nominated for such a lofty and rare distinction is 

insufficient to establish an adverse employment action under 

Title VII. 

In any event, Cones is inapposite because the decision 

whether to promote an employee is made by an employer 

subject—in the most part—to objective criteria, see Aka v. 

Wash. Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 1298 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en 

banc) (acknowledging limited role for an employer’s 

“subjective considerations” but also noting “jury could 

reasonably find that the plaintiff was otherwise significantly 

better qualified than the successful applicant” notwithstanding 

use of subjective criteria); it is therefore unremarkable that an 

employer’s decision to foreclose competition for a promotion 

may be actionable. Here, by contrast, HUD never decides 

who receives a Presidential Rank Award—the President does, 

based on subjective criteria. Douglas, however, cannot sue 

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the President under Title VII because he is not Douglas’s 

employer. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c). On the other hand, 

in Cones, the same entity, Cones’s employer, decided whom 

to hire, as well as whom to interview, and how the hiring 

process would be conducted, making it unremarkable that 

Cones could bootstrap the agency’s failure to allow him to 

compete to the agency’s failure to promote him. Not so with 

the Presidential Rank Award, where Congress, by statute, has 

created a decisionmaking process that includes both those 

inside and outside of an agency, with the final decision being 

made by the President. Thus Cones tells us nothing about the 

loss of opportunity to compete for consideration by the 

President, whose unfettered discretion in selecting 

Presidential Rank Award recipients would not be subject to 

review under Title VII. Because the ultimate decision to give 

a Presidential Rank Award is unconstrained by objective 

criteria and beyond the reach of Title VII, Weicher’s decision 

to not recommend Douglas is also beyond that reach.3

 

 

3

 To be sure, Weicher’s decision guaranteed that Douglas would not 

receive an award. But, given the lack of ascertainable criteria and 

the boundless discretion of the President, a fact-finder could not 

determine whether Douglas suffered “objectively tangible harm.” 

Forkkio, 306 F.3d at 1131. Indeed, Douglas’s lost “chances for a 

substantial monetary award,” Dis. Op. at 2, were so speculative 

that, with the obvious exception of Young and those few others that 

were recommended by their respective department heads, any 

senior executive at HUD with a high annual performance rating 

(which is to say, every senior executive rated by Weicher), could 

have brought the exact same claim as Douglas. Just as a poor 

performance evaluation—which obviously might cause harm—is 

not itself actionable because of inherent speculativeness, failing to 

recommend a worker for a Presidential Rank Award—which also 

might cause harm—is not actionable, and for the same reason. The 

dissent quarrels with our causation analysis, arguing it is unclear 

“what level of certainty the court expects plaintiffs like Douglas to 

establish.” Dis. Op. at 7. The simple answer is that Douglas’s 

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Finally, a few words about the dissent. Though we share 

his revulsion for racial animus, the secret memo scenario, 

apparently consequential to our colleague, is not unique to 

Douglas’s case, but could be offered in any case where the 

requirement of an adverse employment action has not been 

satisfied. If, for example, discovery unearthed a memo stating 

a supervisor would never give a black person a positive 

performance evaluation (and if the administrative conciliation 

process failed to offer relief), our precedent holds that such an 

evaluation would not be deemed an adverse employment 

action unless it “affect[ed] the employee’s grade or salary.” 

Taylor, 350 F.3d at 1293. In this regard, our colleague’s 

quarrel is not with us, but with the adverse employment action 

requirement itself. We’ll let him fight that battle alone. 

Likewise, while conceding that some non-subjective 

“harms” are not adverse employment actions, “such as those 

threatened by negative performance evaluations,” the dissent 

seems to suggest (without saying so directly) that Russell was 

wrongly decided, or at least that it should be read narrowly, 

more as a statistical blip than a doctrinal principle. Dis. Op. 

at 2. We think the court in Russell was correct. Just as the 

harm resulting from a single performance evaluation viewed 

in isolation is speculative, cf. Weber, 494 F.3d at 184–85, so 

too is it speculative whether Douglas would have received a 

Presidential Rank Award had he been recommended. 

Douglas cannot show he suffered an objectively tangible harm 

because he cannot show that losing the opportunity to 

 

chance at winning a Presidential Rank Award was entirely 

uncertain. That is enough to dispose of this case. Cf. Weber, 494 

F.3d at 184–85 (pattern of receipt of bonuses based upon prior 

positive evaluations established causal link); Russell, 257 F.3d at 

818–19 (causal link established by showing bonus followed 

automatically from positive evaluation). 

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compete significantly changed his employment status. The 

same cannot be said of the loss of opportunity to compete for 

a promotion; under our caselaw decisions relating to one’s 

work responsibilities and position like “‘hiring, firing, failing 

to promote, [and] reassignment with significantly different 

responsibilities’” categorically are adverse employment 

actions. Taylor, 350 F.3d at 1293 (quoting Burlington Indus., 

Inc., 524 U.S. at 761). Hence, the dissent just gets it wrong: 

in both precedent and principle, there is a meaningful 

distinction between eliminating an employee from 

consideration for the Presidential Rank Award and 

eliminating her from consideration for a promotion or job 

opening. 

As Douglas cannot show he suffered an adverse 

employment action, we AFFIRM the grant of summary 

judgment.4

So ordered. 

 

4

 Because the exhaustion requirement, though mandatory, is not 

jurisdictional, see Munsell v. Dep’t of Agriculture, 509 F.3d 572, 

581 (D.C. Cir. 2007); In re James, 444 F.3d 643, 647–48 (D.C. Cir. 

2006), we do not decide whether Douglas adequately exhausted his 

administrative remedies. 

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TATEL, Circuit Judge, dissenting: Imagine that discovery 

in this case had turned up a memo from Frederick Douglas’s 

former supervisor, John Weicher, expressly stating that he 

would never nominate a black person for the Presidential Rank 

Award. Under this court’s holding—that disqualification 

from competing for a lucrative employment award is not an 

adverse employment action—Douglas would have no recourse 

to Title VII even in the face of such direct evidence of 

discriminatory intent. Because this result cannot be squared 

with Title VII, and because there is no principled difference 

between the hypothetical case and Douglas’s with respect to 

the only issue we address today—whether Weicher’s rejection 

of Douglas qualifies as an adverse employment action—I 

respectfully dissent. 

It is true that “‘not everything that makes an employee 

unhappy’” is actionable under Title VII. Maj. Op. at 4 

(quoting Russell v. Principi, 257 F.3d 815, 818 (D.C. Cir. 

2001)). Indeed, even given an openly discriminatory memo, 

Douglas would be unable to sustain a Title VII discrimination 

claim for a “[p]urely subjective injur[y], such as dissatisfaction 

with a reassignment, or public humiliation or loss of 

reputation,” Forkkio v. Powell, 306 F.3d 1127, 1130–31 (D.C. 

Cir. 2002) (citation omitted), or for a negative performance 

evaluation unconnected to a financial or other benefit, Maj. Op. 

at 4. But Weicher’s rejection of Douglas as a contender for 

the Presidential Rank Award was far more tangible than any of 

these merely ego-bruising actions—it definitively closed 

Douglas’s only available door to an award equal to 35 percent 

of his salary. Thus when Douglas lost the opportunity to 

compete for this valuable employment-related award, he 

experienced “materially adverse consequences affecting the 

terms, conditions, or privileges of employment . . . such that a 

reasonable trier of fact could find objectively tangible harm,” 

Forkkio, 306 F.3d at 1131. 

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To be sure, we have recognized that some harms, such as 

those threatened by negative performance evaluations standing 

alone, may be too speculative to constitute adverse 

employment actions. See Maj. Op. at 4 (citing Russell, 257 

F.3d at 818). The reasoning underlying that principle, though 

entirely correct where applicable, has nothing to do with this 

case. As we explained in Russell v. Principi: “The result of an 

evaluation is often speculative, making it difficult to remedy. 

For example, a single poor evaluation may drastically limit an 

employee’s chances for advancement, or it may be outweighed 

by later evaluations and be of no real consequence.” 257 F.3d 

at 818. In this case, by contrast, we needn’t speculate at all as 

to the negative consequences of Weicher’s rejection of 

Douglas’s candidacy. It represented the final word, 

irremediably foreclosing Douglas from competing for the 

award. See Appellee’s Br. 18 (conceding that the 

“non-nomination . . . took [Douglas] out of the running” for the 

award). Unlike a “single poor evaluation,” which merely adds 

to the overall mix of information in an employee’s personnel 

file, Russell, 257 F.3d at 818, Weicher’s rejection had the 

direct and immediate effect of terminating Douglas’s chances 

for a substantial monetary award. No future action could 

mitigate this adverse impact and render the rejection “of no real 

consequence,” id.

The proper analogy is thus not to a negative performance 

evaluation, but rather to excluding a candidate from the 

selection process for a promotion or a job opening, either of 

which would qualify as an adverse employment action. Like 

hiring and promotions, the Presidential Rank Award involves a 

formalized, multi-layered selection process for a specific, 

tangible employment benefit—a significant sum of money. 

This case is thus much like Cones v. Shalala, 199 F.3d 512, 

521 (D.C. Cir. 2000), where we held that refusing to allow an 

employee to compete for a job opening qualified as an adverse 

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employment action without regard to how likely it was that the 

employee would actually be hired. We neither asked how 

many other individuals would have applied for the job nor 

required the employee to show that he would automatically 

have been the successful candidate. We simply reasoned that 

“refusing to allow [an employee] to compete” for a benefit is 

“tantamount to refusing” to grant the benefit. Id. So too 

here. Refusing to allow Douglas to compete for the 

Presidential Rank Award was “tantamount to refusing” the 

award. 

Seeking to avoid the obvious implications of Cones for 

this case, the court attempts to distinguish the Presidential 

Rank Award selection process from selection processes for 

hiring and promotions. Relying on oft-quoted language in 

Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth—“a tangible employment 

action [for purposes of vicarious liability] constitutes a 

significant change in employment status, such as hiring, firing, 

failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different 

responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in 

benefits,” 524 U.S. 742, 761 (1998)—the court says there is a 

difference between actions “related to one’s work 

responsibilities and position” like hiring, firing, failing to 

promote, and reassignment, and “decisions causing [a] 

significant change in benefits.” Maj. Op. at 5–6. According 

to the court, actions in the first category—hiring, firing, failing 

to promote, and reassignment—“are conclusively presumed to 

be adverse employment actions, even if any alleged harm is 

speculative,” id. at 5, as are decisions relating to such actions, 

like the refusal to allow an employee to compete for a 

promotion in Cones, Maj. Op. at 12. For the second category, 

however, the court offers up a newly-minted strict “causation 

requirement” applicable only to employment benefits: “a 

decision causing [a] significant change in benefits . . . alone 

requires an employee to explain how the employer’s action 

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harmed his employment status,” id. at 6. Under this new 

rule, for decisions such as refusal to hire or promote that cause 

an employee to lose out on a better job, rejected candidates 

need show only that they were eliminated at some point in the 

process. By contrast, for decisions that cause an employee to 

lose out on an employment benefit, rejected candidates 

apparently must now prove that they would have ultimately 

received the benefit had they not been eliminated at an earlier 

stage of competition. Because receiving the Presidential 

Rank Award represents a change in benefits rather than a 

change in work responsibilities or position, id. at 6–7, the court 

concludes that denial of the opportunity to compete for the 

award doesn’t qualify as an adverse employment action unless 

the employee can show that he would have otherwise received 

the award, id. at 11–12. 

The distinction the court draws fails to hold up. The court 

nowhere explains why actions related to “one’s work 

responsibilities and position,” id. at 5, fall more squarely under 

Title VII’s ban on discrimination in “compensation, terms, 

conditions or privileges of employment,” 42 U.S.C. § 

2000e-2(a)(1), than do actions related to, for example, work 

hours, vacation time, bonuses, or any other employment 

benefit. See George v. Leavitt, 407 F.3d 405, 410–11 (D.C. 

Cir. 2005) (explaining that the Title VII provision governing 

federal employers, 42 U.S.C. §2000e-16(a), is construed in 

terms of the provision governing private employers, 42 U.S.C. 

§2000e-2(a)). Nor is it clear whether the court means to 

include all employment benefits in its disfavored category now 

subject to the causation requirement. The court seems to 

place pay and bonuses in the benefits category. Maj. Op. at 6. 

But why? Surely pay directly “relate[s] to one’s . . . position,” 

so why wouldn’t pay decisions, just like promotion decisions, 

categorically qualify as adverse employment actions without 

regard to how speculative the ultimate harm? For that matter, 

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why doesn’t the Presidential Rank Award also “relate to one’s 

work responsibilities and position”? After all, the award is 

based on an employee’s achievements in carrying out his work 

responsibilities and is calculated as a percentage of the salary 

for his position. 

In any event, regardless of where the court draws the line, 

Burlington Industries provides no support for treating benefits 

differently from position and work responsibilities. Every 

item on Burlington Industries’ non-exhaustive list refers to the 

end result sought: a new job, retention of one’s job, a 

promotion, or a decision causing a significant change in 

benefits—here the President’s decision to award a substantial 

sum of money. If definitively barring a candidate from 

consideration for one of these desired outcomes constitutes an 

adverse employment action—as the court acknowledges with 

respect to promotions—then barring a candidate from 

consideration for any of them does. 

Not only does the court’s distinction find no support in 

Burlington Industries, but it makes no sense. For example, 

suppose an employer asks line supervisors to nominate 

candidates for one available high-level vacancy and separately 

for one available bonus. Now suppose a line supervisor 

refuses to nominate a minority employee for either the 

promotion or the bonus, and two white employees are 

ultimately chosen. Under the court’s “causation requirement” 

the minority employee has suffered an adverse employment 

action as to the promotion but not as to the bonus. The 

minority employee would now have a Title VII claim related to 

the bonus only if she could show that had the line supervisor 

not excluded her she would have received the bonus over any 

of the other nominees. Nothing in Title VII or in our Title VII 

cases even hints that the statute provides less protection for 

employees adversely affected by decisions involving money 

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than for those adversely affected by decisions involving 

promotions. 

The court does acknowledge that because bonuses and pay 

have “a ‘direct, measurable and immediate effect’” on 

compensation, the loss of a bonus qualifies as an adverse 

action. Maj. Op. at 6. Yet the court fails to explain what it 

means by “loss of a bonus.” Does “loss of a bonus” refer 

solely to the final decision such that a bonus is actionable only 

if an employee can show that she in fact lost the bonus, i.e. that 

she would have received it but for the employer’s action? If 

so, then it leads to the arbitrary result in the hypothetical above. 

Or does “loss of a bonus” include loss of the opportunity to 

compete for a bonus such that an employee eliminated from 

competition has suffered an adverse employment action 

regardless of how likely it was that she would actually receive 

the bonus? If so, the court’s reasoning defeats its conclusion 

in this very case—surely an employee who obtains an award 

worth 35 percent of his salary in recognition of his work 

accomplishments has experienced as direct, measurable, and 

immediate an effect on his compensation as does an employee 

who receives a less substantial bonus. “By parity of 

reasoning,” id., loss of the award through elimination from 

competition “likewise has such an effect,” id. 

Perhaps the court means to limit its causation requirement 

to employer actions, like the single performance evaluation, 

that on their face have no obvious connection to any particular 

selection process. But even for such actions, I see no basis for 

distinguishing between hiring, firing, failing to promote, and 

reassignment on the one hand, and other employment benefits 

on the other. Nothing in our negative performance evaluation 

cases indicates that the analysis of an evaluation’s impact 

differs when the employee is worried about her ability to get a 

future promotion rather than a future bonus or raise. Surely 

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7 

the court does not mean to suggest that the recipient of a 

negative performance evaluation need no longer show that the 

evaluation in fact played a role in taking her out of the running 

for a job or promotion. 

Not only is there no basis for requiring a different showing 

for employment benefits than for promotions, but the court’s 

causation analysis gets it backwards. We know from Cones

that the question isn’t whether absent the employer’s action the 

plaintiff would have gotten the benefit, but rather whether as a 

result of the employer’s action the plaintiff could not. Cf. 

Burke v. Gould, 286 F.3d 513, 522 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (negative 

performance evaluation constitutes adverse employment action 

when plaintiff received bonuses “nearly every year 

previously” (emphasis added)). Performance evaluations 

generally do not conclusively terminate an employment benefit 

selection process; Weicher’s elimination of Douglas from the 

Presidential Rank Award process did. 

Nor is it clear what level of certainty the court expects 

plaintiffs like Douglas to establish. After all, Douglas’s hope 

for the Presidential Rank Award was hardly a pipe dream: in 

the year Weicher rejected him, two-thirds of those nominated 

received awards, Appellant’s Reply Br. 3–4. What greater 

showing is now required at the summary judgment stage to 

permit a reasonable jury to infer that Douglas would have 

received the award? 

In support of its conclusion that Douglas failed to meet its 

flawed causation requirement, the court focuses on the highly 

selective nature of the Presidential Rank Award, stating that 

“[u]nlike being considered for a promotion, . . . being 

recommended for . . . the extraordinary distinction of a 

Presidential Rank Award is not an ordinary expectation of 

employment.” Maj. Op. at 8. Yet much like promotion 

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8 

opportunities, the Presidential Rank Award is offered annually, 

and all career Senior Executive Service members with three or 

more years of service are eligible to compete. Appellee’s Br. 

2–3 (citing 5 C.F.R. § 451.301(b)). For eligible Senior 

Executive Service members, then, competing for a Presidential 

Rank Award is indeed an ordinary expectation of 

employment—or as the statute puts it, a “privilege[] of 

employment,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). Nor is it relevant 

that the Presidential Rank Award represents a “lofty” award, 

Maj. Op. at 9. If prestige determined the scope of Title VII, 

employers could refuse to hire or promote minorities into the 

most desirable elite positions, yet Title VII clearly covers such 

positions, see, e.g., Stewart v. Ashcroft, 352 F.3d 422, 426–27 

(D.C. Cir. 2003) (recognizing that non-selection as chief of 

section in the Department of Justice constitutes an adverse 

employment action). 

Further seeking to distinguish the Presidential Rank 

Award from other employment decisions that involve similar 

selection processes, the court emphasizes that the President, as 

the ultimate decision-maker, enjoys unfettered discretion and 

is immune from suit, Maj. Op. at 9–10. But Douglas is not 

suing the President for denying the award; he’s suing his 

employer, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, 

for terminating his candidacy for an award calculated as a 

percentage of his HUD salary and paid for with HUD funds, 

Appellant’s Opening Br. at 2. True, Weicher lacked ultimate 

authority to grant the award, but he did have authority to ensure 

that Douglas was excluded—a power he exercised to 

Douglas’s irreparable detriment. 

Finally, the court says that promotion decisions are 

“subject—in the most part—to objective criteria” while the 

Presidential Rank Award is based on subjective criteria. Maj. 

Op. at 9. Yet we have long recognized that promotion and 

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hiring decisions often turn on subjective criteria, see Aka v. 

Wash. Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 1298 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en 

banc) (“[E]mployers may of course take subjective 

considerations into account in their employment decisions . . . 

.”), and such decisions nonetheless remain subject to Title VII. 

Moreover, it is far from clear that the Presidential Rank Award 

process is in fact divorced from objective criteria. For 

example, “an exceptional record of achieving important 

program results,” Saul Ramirez Decl. Attach. B at 7, would 

likely involve objective accomplishments such as Douglas’s 

claim that he increased single family home ownership, 

Appellant’s Opening Br. at 11. But even were the award 

criteria entirely subjective, relying on such criteria to pick 

award recipients is no different from relying on subjective 

criteria to choose between two job candidates with 

indistinguishable objective qualifications, cf. Aka, 156 F.3d at 

1298 (hiring decision based on the purely subjective criteria of 

“enthusiasm” when objective criteria did not clearly favor 

selected candidate), or from hiring decisions for jobs such as 

speechwriter or graphic designer that by their nature are highly 

subjective. 

By focusing on the subjectivity of the award, the court 

exposes the fundamental flaw in its decision: it conflates the 

question of whether Weicher’s disqualification of Douglas was 

sufficiently adverse with the ultimate question of whether it 

was motivated by discriminatory animus. That the 

Presidential Rank Award recognizes subjective “star 

qualities,” Maj. Op. at 7, may make it more difficult for 

Douglas to show that Weicher rejected him because of race, 

but it has nothing to do with whether Weicher’s decision is the 

type of employment action Title VII seeks to rid of 

discrimination. 

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