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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 January 15, 2013 Decided July 2, 2013

No. 12-5015

WAYNE L. BRIDGEFORTH,

APPELLANT

v.

SALLY JEWELL, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE 

INTERIOR,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:10-cv-00080)

Kyle G. Ingram, pro hac vice, argued the cause for 

appellant. On the briefs was Morris E. Fischer.

Michelle Lo, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for 

appellee. With her on the brief were Ronald C. Machen, Jr., 

U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: HENDERSON, BROWN, and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Wayne Bridgeforth appeals the 

district court’s grant of summary judgment against him on his

claim that workplace supervisors unlawfully denied him time-off 

awards in retaliation for his pursuit of a protected activity. For 

the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court. 

I

Bridgeforth has been a police officer with the United States 

Park Service, an agency within the Department of the Interior,

since 2002. In 2004, he filed an employment discrimination 

claim, which settled in May 2007. According to Bridgeforth,

once the suit settled, his supervisors retaliated by failing to 

nominate him for time-off awards (i.e., paid leave) on five 

occasions over the next three months. 

Bridgeforth’s retaliation claim is part of a suit that alleged 

workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 

of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq. The district 

court granted summary judgment to the Department of the 

Interior on all Bridgeforth’s claims, Bridgeforth v. Salazar, 831 

F. Supp. 2d 132, 136 (D.D.C. 2011), and he appealed. On June 

15, 2012, a special panel of this court granted the department’s

motion for summary affirmance on all but the retaliation claim,

Bridgeforth v. Salazar, No. 12-5015, 2012 WL 2371601 (D.C. 

Cir. June 15, 2012), which was assigned to this panel for oral 

argument. We exercise our jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.

§ 1291 and review the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment de novo. Salazar v. Washington Metro. Area Transit 

Auth., 401 F.3d 504, 507 (D.C. Cir. 2005). 

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II

During his time with the Park Service, Bridgeforth alleges 

that he received seven time-off awards: one in 2003, four in 

2005, and two in 2006. Bridgeforth argues that five acts he 

performed in the three months following the May 2007 

settlement of his discrimination claims merited time-off awards 

as well.

• On June 20, Bridgeforth arrested and helped identify a

suspect who had assaulted an intoxicated victim.

• On July 20, he volunteered to patrol a local park in 

plain clothes and, with the assistance of other officers, 

investigated and arrested two suspects for possession 

of cocaine and marijuana. 

• On August 17, Bridgeforth joined agents of the United 

States Secret Service in forming a human chain to pull 

a person out of an overturned car.

• On August 18, he arrested boaters in Washington 

Harbor “based on his knowledge of Washington 

trespass law” and prevented other officers from 

making unlawful arrests.

• On August 24, Bridgeforth assisted in a vehicle pursuit

and the subsequent arrest and investigation. 

Neither Bridgefoth nor any of the other Park Service officers 

involved was nominated for a time-off award, or any other form 

of recognition, for their roles in any of these incidents. 

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The dry spell soon ended. On September 6, 2007, the Park 

Service awarded Bridgeforth a written commendation for his 

work in recovering a stolen vehicle. On October 2, 2007, the 

Park Service again awarded him a written commendation, this 

time for assisting in the recovery of illegal weapons and drugs. 

III

To sustain a prima facie case of unlawful retaliation, 

Bridgeforth must show that the Park Service took materially 

adverse action against him because he participated in protected 

activity. See McGrath v. Clinton, 666 F.3d 1377, 1380 (D.C. 

Cir. 2012) (“To prove unlawful retaliation, a plaintiff must 

show: (1) that he opposed a practice made unlawful by Title VII; 

(2) that the employer took a materially adverse action against 

him; and (3) that the employer took the action ‘because’ the 

employee opposed the practice.”).

To be materially adverse, the employer’s action must be 

more than “those petty slights or minor annoyances that often 

take place at work and that all employees experience.” 

Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 68 

(2006). Stated another way, “not everything that makes an 

employee unhappy is an actionable adverse action. Minor and 

even trivial employment actions that an irritable, chip-on-theshoulder employee did not like would otherwise form the basis 

of a discrimination suit.” Russell v. Principi, 257 F.3d 815, 818 

(D.C. Cir. 2001) (quoting Smart v. Ball State Univ., 89 F.3d 437, 

441 (7th Cir. 1996)) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Materially adverse action would “dissuade[] a reasonable worker 

from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.” 

Burlington N., 548 U.S. at 68 (quoting Rochon v. Gonzales, 438 

F.3d 1211, 1219 (D.C. Cir. 2006)). Typically, a materially 

adverse action in the workplace involves “a significant change in 

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

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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)). Such actions 

demonstrate an “objectively tangible harm.” See Forkkio v. 

Powell, 306 F.3d 1127, 1131 (D.C. Cir. 2002).

Failure to nominate for time-off awards does not qualify as 

the type of objective, tangible harm akin to “firing” or “a 

significant change in benefits” that is obviously materially 

adverse.

∗ Of course, not all actionable harms are obvious, and a 

plaintiff alleging retaliation may rely on more subtle actions to 

make his case. For such alleged harms to be materially adverse, 

however, they must not be “unduly speculative.” Douglas v. 

Donovan, 559 F.3d 549, 553 (D.C. Cir. 2009). We have 

addressed this fact pattern before, in Douglas v. Donovan. Id.

In Douglas, we held that an employer’s failure to nominate 

an employee for a Presidential Rank Award did not constitute 

materially adverse action because the award process was fraught

with “inherent uncertainty.” Id. We noted that the plaintiff could 

not show a “direct tie between a nomination and an award.” Id.

 ∗ This retaliation claim alleges materially adverse action that is 

workplace-related. A retaliation claim need not be confined to 

workplace action, so long as “a reasonable employee would have found 

the challenged action materially adverse.” Burlington N., 548 U.S. at 

68. This distinguishes discrimination, which affects the “terms and 

conditions of employment,” id. at 64, from retaliation, which 

“encompass[es] a broader sweep of actions.” See Baloch v. 

Kempthorne, 550 F.3d 1191, 1198 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 2008). As the Court 

stated in Burlington Northern, “Title VII’s substantive provision and 

its antiretaliation provision are not coterminous. The scope of the 

antiretaliation provision extends beyond workplace-related or

employment-related retaliatory acts and harm.” 548 U.S. at 67.

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Douglas could not demonstrate that if he had been nominated for 

the award, he would have received it. The criteria for receipt of 

an award were exacting, and its grant was discretionary and 

involved many levels of approval. “The Presidential Rank 

Award process is labyrinthine, with numerous ways to fail, but 

only one to succeed.” Id. at 551. Even if Douglas had been 

nominated, we found that there were too many intervening 

factors in the selection process to render his receipt of the award 

likely. This distinguished Douglas from Weber v. Battista, 494 

F.3d 179 (D.C. Cir. 2007), on which Bridgeforth chiefly relies. 

In Weber, we held that lowering an employee’s performance 

evaluation could be materially adverse action if the lowered 

score resulted in the employee not receiving a cash award. The 

employee in Weber demonstrated that she had received the 

“optional” cash award in each of the preceding three years. Id. at 

185. The link between performance evaluation and award was so 

direct that the alleged harm was not speculative, and her claim 

survived summary judgment. As we stated, “though 

performance awards are indeed optional with the employer, the 

record shows [her employer] had opted to give Weber an award 

in each of the three years preceding 1998, the year in which she 

complained of discrimination and received no such award.” Id.

Weber had demonstrated that she had received similar positive 

performance evaluations, and similar cash awards, with a 

predictable regularity that ceased after she complained of 

discrimination. Because she could produce evidence of a pattern 

of receiving such awards that ceased when she engaged in 

protected activity, the harm she alleged was not speculative. 

But this case is more like Douglas, because the harm 

Bridgeforth has alleged istoo speculative to constitute materially 

adverse action. The path from Bridgeforth’s alleged acts of

bravery to a time-off award is, as in Douglas, a labyrinth, with 

many ways to fail but only one way to succeed. We begin with 

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the highly subjective standards for a time-off award. According

to the Department of the Interior Memorandum regarding 

“awards and Recognition Program[s],” the following are 

“examples of . . . criteria” for the award: 

[m]aking a high quality contribution involving a difficult or 

important project or assignment; [d]isplaying special 

initative . . . ; [e]nsuring the mission . . . is accomplished 

during a difficult period . . . ; [u]sing initiative and 

creativity in making improvements in a product, activity 

program, or service; [p]roviding exceptional service . . . ; 

[d]eveloping new procedures or guidelines that improve the 

quality of services provided . . . ; [o]ther comparable 

employee achievements.

J.A. 121-22. What’s more, these vague measures must be passed 

upon by a supervisor, reviewed by a captain, and, depending on 

the amount of time-off at issue, approved by the Chief of Police. 

This is a far cry from the award that Weber could rightly claim 

based on achievement of an objective measure. The subjective 

nature of the award criteria makes it hard for us to imagine that 

the mere failure to nominate would be governed by Weber.

Bridgeforth’s claim is especially weak, because he has 

failed to produce any evidence that would establish a direct and 

non-speculative connection between action, nomination, and 

award. Although he received seven time-off awards over a threeyear period preceding the summer of 2007, he tells us nothing 

about them that would cast suspicion upon why he was not 

nominated for such an award during the three months following 

the settlement of his claims. He has provided no evidence of 

how frequently or consistently he was nominated or the rate at 

which nomination led to receipt of the award. Nor has he shown 

that such nominations (or awards) occurred with a predictable 

regularity that ceased for three months in the summer of 2007, 

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but then resumed afterwards. Bridgeforth makes no effort to 

explain why the past history of scattered awards even raises an 

inference that he was entitled to more during this brief period in 

the summer of 2007. Finally, that no other Park Service officer 

was commended for any of the acts Bridgeforth argues merited 

his nomination for a time-off award undermines his claim.

Bridgeforth argues that the district court erred by finding in

Douglas a categorical rule that an employer’s failure to 

nominate an employee for a time-off award could never be 

unlawful. If that is what the district court did, it erred, because 

we found no such rule in Douglas. But we need no such rule to 

affirm the district court’s judgment. As Burlington Northern

admonishes, in retaliation claims, “[c]ontext matters.”

Burlington N., 548 U.S. at 69. The context here refutes 

Bridgeforth’s claim that the failure to nominate him for a timeoff award was an adverse action.

Bridgeforth’s allegation that his employer’s failure to 

nominate him for a time-off award constituted materially 

adverse action falls between Douglas and Weber, but it is much 

closer to Douglas. On different facts, Bridgeforth might have 

shown that he suffered adverse action by producing evidence

that he always received nominations for certain types of work, or 

that he received such nominations with a predictable regularity, 

as did the plaintiff in Weber, and that upon being nominated, he 

always received a time-off award. But Bridgeforth has produced 

no such evidence. He has not shown that his nominations for 

time-off awards occurred predictably. On the contrary, he offers 

a scattered and incomplete award history. He also has notshown

that each time he received a nomination, he received the time-off 

award. Again, the evidence demonstrates that approval for such 

awards required several supervisors to exercise their discretion 

in the same way. Thus, while Bridgeforth’s receipt of a time-off 

award may be less speculative than Douglas’s receipt of a 

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Presidential Rank Award, Bridgeforth still has not shown the 

entitlement to an award that we require. As such, he cannot 

demonstrate that the failure of his employer to nominate him for 

time-off awards materially affected the terms of his employment. 

We note the limited nature of our holding. There is no 

categorical rule preventing a plaintiff from demonstrating 

materially adverse action simply because there is no direct

correlation between nomination for an award and receipt of a 

tangible benefit.

IV

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the order of the district 

court granting summary judgment against Bridgeforth on his

retaliation claim.

So ordered.

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KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, concurring:

I agree with the majority opinion that the district court

correctly granted summary judgment to the government because

appellant Wayne Bridgeforth’s retaliation claim is, at best,

speculative. I write separately, however, because I disagree with

the majority’s suggestion that the case is close because it “falls

between” Douglas v. Donovan, 559 F.3d 549 (2009), and Weber

v. Batista, 494 F.3d 179 (D.C. Cir. 2007). Maj. Op. at 8. The

failure to nominate Bridgeforth for time-off awards was no more

an adverse employment action than was the employee’s failure

to make the cut for a Presidential Rank Award in Douglas. Like

the “indefinable star qualities” of “outstanding leadership and

innovation” that Douglas’s award was intended to reward—the

criterion for U.S. Park Police time-off awards —“personal effort

that contributes to the quality, efficiency, or economy of 

Government operations”— is “by [its] very nature subjective.” 

Douglas, 559 F.3d at 553; JA 119. In Donovan, we made clear

that the decision whether to nominate an employee for such a

subjective award does not by itself constitute the sort of

“adverse employment action” necessary to make out a

discrimination or retaliation claim. “[T]he inherent uncertainty

in the [award] process means there can be no direct tie between

a nomination and an award.” 559 F.3d at 553. Accordingly, an

employee “must go the further step of demonstrating how the

decision . . . caused such an objectively tangible harm.” 

Douglas, 559 F.3d at 553. In Weber, the plaintiff did just that,

producing evidence that her lower performance ratings after she

complained of discrimination caused her to lose a performance

award that was based on those ratings. Like the Douglas

plaintiff, however, Bridgeforth offered no evidence of the

necessary causal link and his claim should therefore be

easily—and summarily—rejected.

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