Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca11-13-15851/USCOURTS-ca11-13-15851-0/pdf.json

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

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[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 13-15851

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 4:11-cv-00093-CDL

TERRI EZELL, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant,

versus

JOAN B. WYNN, et al.,

 Defendants,

JOHN DARR, 

Individually and in his Capacity as 

Sheriff of Muscogee County, 

COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT, 

 Defendants - Appellees.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Georgia

________________________

(September 23, 2015)

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Before TJOFLAT and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and MOODY,* District 

Judge.

JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judge:

Terri Ezell, a deputy sheriff, appeals the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment to Columbus Consolidated Government (“CCG”) and its sheriff, John 

Darr, on her claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She alleged in her complaint that, 

upon taking office after winning his election, Sheriff Darr transferred her to a less 

prestigious position in the sheriff’s office with much less responsibility and 

authority because she supported his opponent in the election. She claims that the 

transfer violated her rights under the First Amendment against employer retaliation 

based on political affiliation and under the Fourteenth Amendment against gender 

discrimination. The district court concluded that (1) her First Amendment claim 

was foreclosed as a matter of law by this Court’s precedent, despite the fact that

CCG’s civil service system prohibits employment decisions based on political 

patronage, and (2) her Fourteenth Amendment claim could not proceed to trial 

because no genuine dispute existed over whether Sheriff Darr’s proffered reasons 

for her transfer were a pretext for discrimination. After careful review, and with 

the benefit of oral argument, we affirm.

 

* Honorable James S. Moody, Jr., United States District Judge for the Middle District of 

Florida, sitting by designation.

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I.

Ms. Ezell has a long and path-breaking record of law enforcement service 

for CCG.

1

 She began working in the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office in 1983 as 

a correctional officer in the county jail. She was promoted to the position of 

deputy sheriff in 1985 and continued to climb in rank thereafter. In 2000, she 

became the first woman to have obtained the rank of major. The highest rank she 

obtained before Sheriff Darr’s administration was commander, which meant that 

she was senior to majors and third-in-command in the entire sheriff’s office.

2

 

Under then-Sheriff Johnson’s administration, her responsibilities as commander 

included supervising the Muscogee County Jail and its 250 employees, as well as

serving on Sheriff Johnson’s command staff. In each administration, the command 

staff consists of the highest-ranking employees in the office, to whom the sheriff 

customarily turns for counsel in making decisions about office policy. 

In 2008, John Darr ran for election against Sheriff Johnson. During the 

election season, Ms. Ezell showed political support for her supervisor in a number 

of ways. She put a sign supporting Sheriff Johnson in her yard, attended his 

campaign’s kick-off event, spent time at his campaign headquarters, and attended 

 

1 CCG is a consolidated government comprising the city of Columbus and Muscogee 

County. It was the first city-county in Georgia to be consolidated, in 1971.

2 Because CCG and Sheriff Darr moved for summary judgment, we view the evidence

and draw inferences in the light most favorable to Ms. Ezell. See Mobley v. Palm Beach Cnty. 

Sheriff Dep’t, 783 F.3d 1347, 1350 (11th Cir. 2015).

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his public debates. She also contributed monetarily to the campaign. Now-Sheriff 

Darr was not necessarily aware of these actions, but he assumed that Ms. Ezell 

supported the incumbent given that she was a member of his command staff. 

When Sheriff Darr took office in 2009, he began reorganizing the sheriff’s 

office. Because he had worked in the jail for years before becoming sheriff, one of 

his objectives was to improve management of the jail: he sought to reconfigure 

what he felt were ineffective lines of communication within the jail and to make 

better progress toward meeting the terms of a consent order imposed in litigation 

with the U.S. Department of Justice. Ms. Ezell had managed the jail up to that 

point, and so he considered her responsible for these deficiencies. Within a month, 

he had replaced not just Ms. Ezell but also the rest of Sheriff Johnson’s command 

staff. He fired Major Joe McCrea, transferred Major Troy Culpepper to a position 

within the jail with no specific responsibilities, and transferred Ms. Ezell to the 

Recorder’s Court, where she would supervise only about 12 employees and no 

longer have access to her police radio.

3

 Some time later, Sheriff Darr returned 

Major Culpepper to the command staff and made him the head of the Operations 

Unit. But Ms. Ezell remained in Recorder’s Court, filling a station previously 

 

3 The other member of Sheriff Johnson’s command staff, Chief Deputy Jimmy Griffin, 

resigned. Human Resources Director Tom Barron’s testimony supported Chief Deputy Griffin’s 

impression that Sheriff Darr was going to terminate him because he had been too close to Sheriff 

Johnson. 

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occupied by a sergeant, a position four ranks below commander.

4

 Ultimately, 

Sheriff Darr transferred the Recorder’s Court out of the sheriff’s office to the office 

of the city manager; at that time, Ms. Ezell was ordered to discontinue wearing her 

uniform. 

Sheriff Darr’s reorganization of the office involved several significant

promotions to populate the new command staff as well as a variety of other 

promotions. Three members of Sheriff Darr’s new command staff were formerly 

lieutenants, meaning that each enjoyed a promotion of at least two ranks: Chief 

Deputy John Fitzpatrick (four ranks), Commander Dane Collins (three ranks), and 

Major Randy Robertson (two ranks).5

 All told, Sheriff Darr promoted thirteen 

officers to the rank of sergeant or higher when he took office, all of whom were 

male. By the time the motion for summary judgment was briefed, Sheriff Darr had 

promoted twenty-eight men and six women to the rank of sergeant or higher. No

woman was promoted to a rank higher than lieutenant, however.

The employees in Sheriff Darr’s office were civil service employees. 

During the previous administration, Sheriff Johnson had placed all the positions in 

the sheriff’s office under a civil service system created by CCG. Under Georgia 

 

4 From the highest rank down to the lowest rank, the chain of command in the sheriff’s 

office is: sheriff, chief deputy, commander, major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant, deputy, 

correctional officer. 

5 The final member of Sheriff Darr’s original command staff, Major Mike Massey, was 

promoted only one rank, from captain.

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law, a county may create its own civil service system and allow elected officers to 

place positions under their supervision within the system at their discretion. 

O.C.G.A. § 36-1-21(a), (b). Once placed within such a system, a position cannot 

be removed from the system. Id. § 36-1-21(b). Within the civil service system, 

CCG promulgated merit rules providing that “all appointments . . . to positions in 

the merit system shall be on the sole basis of merit and fitness . . . and that 

applicants and employees shall not be discriminated against because of . . . 

political affiliations . . . or any other nonmerit factor.” Dist. Ct. Docket No. 4:11-

cv-00093-CDL, Doc. 59-1 at 7. The Georgia statute providing CCG with the 

authority to implement its system mandates that the system “shall be administered 

in such manner and pursuant to such rules and regulations” as CCG specifies. 

O.C.G.A. § 36-1-21(c). Thus, the civil service system had the effect of state and 

local law in prohibiting Sheriff Darr from making employment decisions on the 

basis of political affiliation.

In 2011, Ms. Ezell joined two other employees in filing this action against 

CCG, Sheriff Darr in both his individual and official capacities, and other officials. 

In her complaint, she asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for First and 

Fourteenth Amendment violations arising out of Sheriff Darr’s adverse personnel 

decisions. Her First Amendment claim was based on her allegation that political 

patronage motivated Sheriff Darr’s adverse decisions toward her. Her Fourteenth 

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Amendment claim cited the same adverse decisions and proceeded on the theory 

that gender discrimination also motivated them. One such decision of note, apart 

from her transfer to Recorder’s Court, was that Sheriff Darr denied her the 

opportunity to accumulate “comp time,” or compensatory time off, while allowing 

men of comparable rank to do so.

6

The defendants moved for summary judgment. First, regarding Ms. Ezell’s 

First Amendment claim, they primarily argued that this Court has already decided

that deputy sheriffs have no claim for adverse employment decisions based on 

political patronage. The reason, as this Court has explained, is that the nature of 

the sheriff-deputy relationship is such that a sheriff must be able to require absolute 

loyalty from his deputies for his office to be effective. Ms. Ezell argued in 

response that CCG’s civil service system undermines this conclusion here because 

it prohibits a sheriff from making employment decisions based on political 

affiliation. Thus, she reasoned, CCG’s sheriff cannot argue that he requires 

political loyalty for his office to be effective. Second, regarding Ms. Ezell’s 

Fourteenth Amendment claim, the defendants argued that Ms. Ezell’s transfer was 

not an adverse employment decision, and, in the alternative, she could not prove 

that Sheriff Darr’s stated reasons for his personnel decisions were pretextual.

 

6 Ms. Ezell filed an amended complaint in 2012 that asserted additional claims for gender

discrimination under Title VII based on the same allegations on which her Fourteenth 

Amendment claim was based. No Title VII claims are at issue on appeal.

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The district court denied the motion for summary judgment as to Ms. Ezell’s 

claims for comp time, but it granted the motion as to all other claims.

7

 Ms. Ezell 

now appeals the grant of summary judgment on her First and Fourteenth 

Amendment claims based on her transfer and demotion.

II.

We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment, 

construing the facts and all reasonable inferences therefrom in favor of the 

nonmoving party. Urquilla-Diaz v. Kaplan Univ., 780 F.3d 1039, 1050 (11th Cir. 

2015). Summary judgment is appropriate where the record gives rise to “no 

genuine dispute as to any material fact,” such that “the movant is entitled to 

judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

III.

We first address the First Amendment claim. The First Amendment protects

public employees from adverse employment actions based on political patronage, 

but only if political loyalty is an inappropriate requirement for the effectiveness of 

a given employee’s position, as that position is defined by state and local law. 

Underwood v. Harkins, 698 F.3d 1335, 1339, 1344 (11th Cir. 2012). In its best 

formulation, Ms. Ezell’s argument in support of her First Amendment claim is 

 

7 The parties subsequently stipulated to the voluntary dismissal without prejudice of Ms. 

Ezell’s claims for comp time. After the district court entered a final judgment in favor of the 

defendants and against Ms. Ezell on her First and Fourteenth Amendment claims, she filed a 

timely notice of appeal.

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straightforward: patronage cannot be necessary to the effectiveness of the CCG 

sheriff’s deputies because CCG’s civil service system, which binds the sheriff’s 

office with the force of state and local law, prohibits employment decisions based 

on political patronage. We acknowledge that Ms. Ezell’s argument is intuitively 

appealing, but we reject it as foreclosed by precedent.

This Court is now well familiar with the broader question this case presents. 

Once and again, we have concluded that political loyalty is an appropriate 

requirement for the job of deputy sheriff because of the “closeness and cooperation 

required between sheriffs and their deputies” in fulfilling overlapping duties. 

Terry v. Cook, 866 F.2d 373, 377 (11th Cir. 1989); see Silva v. Bieluch, 351 F.3d 

1045 (11th Cir. 2003); Cutcliffe v. Cochran, 117 F.3d 1353 (11th Cir. 1997). 

CCG’s civil service system has no impact on this analysis because, as we further 

explain below, our precedent compels us to take a categorical approach to the 

question that is sensitive only to how state and local law define the duties of a 

deputy sheriff. See Underwood, 698 F.3d at 1343–45. No other legal or practical 

dimensions to the sheriff-deputy relationship in a particular case are relevant to the 

inquiry. Here, although CCG’s civil service system granted certain rights to 

deputy sheriffs under state and local law, Ms. Ezell cannot show how the civil 

service system modified her statutory duties as a deputy sheriff. Finding no 

grounding in either Supreme Court or Eleventh Circuit precedent for Ms. Ezell’s 

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argument, we conclude that the district court properly granted summary judgment 

to CCG on her First Amendment claim.

A.

To begin, we review the development of relevant case law. We note as a 

primary matter that this is a “pure political patronage case,” that is, one in which 

political allegiance is solely at issue, not the content of the employee’s political 

speech. See Epps v. Watson, 492 F.3d 1240, 1244 (11th Cir. 2007); Silva, 351 F.3d 

at 1046–47 (identifying similar acts of speech in support of a candidate as “nothing 

more than bare statements of support for a candidate” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)). For this reason, the basic test governing this appeal is derived from the

two Supreme Court cases establishing the scope of patronage dismissals permitted 

under the First Amendment, Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347 (1976), and Branti v. 

Finkel, 445 U.S. 507 (1980).

In Elrod, a controlling concurrence by Justice Stewart established that “a 

nonpolicymaking, nonconfidential government employee can[not] be discharged or 

threatened with discharge from a job that he is satisfactorily performing upon the 

sole ground of his political beliefs.” Elrod, 427 U.S. at 375 (Stewart, J., 

concurring); see Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977) (the narrowest 

opinion that commands a majority controls in the absence of a majority opinion). 

Although not controlling, the plurality opinion clarified the policy rationale behind 

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limiting the Court’s restriction on patronage dismissals to only some public 

employees: while as a general matter patronage dismissals “severely restrict 

political belief and association” and may sometimes hamper the democratic 

process, the need for government efficiency and effective implementation of policy 

can justify such dismissals of employees in “policymaking” positions. Elrod, 427

U.S. at 368–72 (plurality opinion).

Four years later, the Supreme Court retreated from its emphasis on the words 

“nonpolicymaking” and “nonconfidential” to describe employees to whom the 

general rule applies, when it concluded in Branti that the First Amendment 

protected assistant public defenders from patronage dismissals. Comprising a new 

majority that omitted Justice Stewart, the author of the controlling concurrence in 

Elrod, the Court held that “the ultimate inquiry is not whether the label 

‘policymaker’ or ‘confidential’ fits a particular position; rather, the question is 

whether the hiring authority can demonstrate that party affiliation is an appropriate 

requirement for the effective performance of the public office involved.” 445 U.S. 

at 518. This later, more specific formulation of the inquiry became known as the 

“Elrod-Branti” standard. The Court in Branti provided clues about the meaning of

“appropriate” when it discussed the difficulty of classifying a position cleanly 

within the “policymaking” and “confidential” exceptions established in Elrod. For 

example, although a university’s football coach obviously formulates policy, the 

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Court reasoned, no one could seriously argue that loyalty to the state’s governing 

party would make the coach more effective at his job. Id. Conversely, the Court 

noted that a position might be neither policymaking nor confidential but 

nevertheless require a particular political affiliation. The Court hypothesized that 

an election judge, tasked with supervising a voting precinct during an election, 

could be discharged for changing her party registration if state election law 

allowed only one election judge from each of two parties per precinct. Id.

Still, regardless of any differences between Elrod and Branti or ambiguity in 

how Branti clarified Elrod’s holding,

8 these cases demonstrated that an employee’s 

substantive responsibilities are the essential focus of the inquiry and that the beliefs 

of state or local officials as to the necessity of patronage must give way to

independent federal review of the position at issue. See Branti, 445 U.S. at 518; 

Elrod, 427 U.S. at 375 (Stewart, J., concurring) (implying that effective 

performance of job duties is a question the Court reviews independently of the 

hiring authority’s perspective).

We first applied the Elrod-Branti standard to the dismissal of Alabama 

deputy sheriffs in Terry v. Cook. We concluded as a matter of law that political 

 

8 We have acknowledged before that “because Justice Stevens specifically addressed 

whether an assistant public defender was a ‘policymaking’ and/or ‘confidential’ employee, and 

concluded that the answer to each question was no, there is disagreement in the legal academy 

about whether the language in Branti purporting to substantively reformulate the Elrod standard 

is dicta.” Underwood, 698 F.3d at 1339 (citation omitted).

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loyalty was an appropriate requirement for the job, relying primarily on the overlap 

in sheriffs’ and deputies’ duties under Alabama law, the sheriff’s civil liability for 

actions taken by deputies in the course of performing their duties, and the more 

abstract observation that “[t]he deputy sheriff is the alter ego of the sheriff.” 866 

F.2d at 377. By contrast, we made no determinations as a matter of law regarding 

employees in other positions who were subject to dismissal in that case, including

the offices of “clerk, investigator, dispatcher, jailer, and process server.” Id. at 

378. Regarding these positions, we decided that further inquiry was necessary into 

the “actual responsibilities of each position and the relationship of each to the 

sheriff,” as “[s]uch positions traditionally revolve around limited objectives and 

defined duties and do not require those holding them to function as the alter ego of 

the sheriff or ensure that the policies and goals of the office are implemented.” Id.; 

see Epps, 492 F.3d at 1245 (concluding that a tax commissioner’s clerk sufficiently 

pled facts putting her in the group of positions entitled to a factual determination 

under Terry).

Our analysis in Terry laid the groundwork first for cases involving deputy 

sheriffs and, eventually, for the standard that now governs our Elrod-Branti 

jurisprudence generally. Beginning with Cochran v. Cutcliffe and later in Silva v. 

Bieluch, we read Terry to preclude, as a matter of law, deputy sheriffs’ First 

Amendment claims for adverse employment decisions based on patronage. See 

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Silva, 351 F.3d at 1047 (demotion); Cutcliffe, 117 F.3d at 1357–58 (termination). 

In both cases, we reaffirmed Terry’s holding as applied to Florida deputy sheriffs 

without addressing any potential differences between Alabama and Florida 

deputies in their statutorily defined duties, actual duties, or relationship to the 

sheriff. At the same time, in Cutcliffe we also noted that this “broad holding” may 

be in tension with language in Branti suggesting that an employee is entitled to a 

factual determination whether effectiveness in her position requires political 

loyalty. Cutcliffe, 117 F.3d at 1357–58. Even so, we adhered to the holding in the 

deputy sheriff cases without clarifying which facts in Terry were critical to it, or, 

consequently, if or how Terry might ever be distinguishable in a deputy sheriff 

case.

We resolved these open questions in Underwood v. Harkins, in which we 

held that “an elected official may dismiss an immediate subordinate for opposing 

her in an election without violating the First Amendment if the subordinate, under 

state or local law, has the same duties and powers as the elected official.” 698 F.3d 

at 1343. We explained that this test, derived in large part from Terry, represents a 

“categorical” approach that considers only “what the subordinate is legally 

empowered to do under state or local law,” that is, “not . . . a snapshot of the 

position as it is being carried out by a given person at a given point in time under a 

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given elected official.”9 Id. at 1344. But, we acknowledged that, as in Terry, a 

factual determination remains necessary for any subordinate whose statutory duties 

do not make her the “alter ego” of the hiring authority. Id. at 1345; see Leslie v. 

Hancock Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 720 F.3d 1338, 1349 (11th Cir. 2013) (“Ordinarily the 

determination that an employee is a policymaking or confidential employee is a 

question of fact. But we have applied a categorical approach based on the statutory 

authority of an employee when the employee is empowered by the relevant state or 

local law to act as the alter ego of her employer.” (citation omitted)). In supplying 

the rationale for our holdings in deputy sheriff cases, Underwood made clear that a 

deputy sheriff fails as a matter of law to plead a First Amendment claim for an 

adverse employment decision based on patronage wherever her duties and powers 

are the same as the sheriff’s.

 

9 We acknowledge the position of some other circuits and at least one judge on this Court 

that a factual determination regarding a subordinate’s duties is necessary in every Elrod-Branti

case. See Underwood, 698 F.3d at 1346–48 (Martin, J., dissenting). But, our precedent does not 

require such a factual determination in the limited circumstances before us today. We note in 

particular that, although the former Fifth Circuit treated Elrod’s policymaker exception as a 

question of fact in Stegmaier v. Trammell, 597 F.2d 1027, 1034 (5th Cir. 1979), and although we 

are bound by that decision as a whole, see Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th 

Cir. 1981) (en banc), we decline to ignore the holdings in Terry and Underwood because, as we 

recognized in Underwood, we do not read Stegmaier to preclude a categorical inquiry where the 

statutory duties of the position at issue are clear and answer the question decisively. See 

Underwood, 698 F.3d at 1342–43. More specifically, it does not appear that in Stegmaier the 

Court treated Elrod’s confidential exception as a question of fact as it did the policymaker 

exception, suggesting that the Court did not find a factual determination necessary in all cases 

implicating Elrod. See id. at 1342 (citing Stegmaier, 597 F.2d at 1038–40). Regardless, Branti

reformulated the test in Elrod after Stegmaier was decided, and the change in the language is

significant enough, in our view, to throw into question the precedential value of lower courts’

treatment of Elrod before Branti.

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B.

As explained above, the viability of Ms. Ezell’s claim turns on the role of a 

deputy sheriff under Georgia law. Although we have performed the Elrod-Branti

analysis in the context of deputy sheriffs in Florida and Alabama, we have not had 

occasion to do so in Georgia. Under Terry and Underwood, our task is to review 

Georgia law to determine if a deputy sheriff has the same powers and duties as the 

sheriff and is thus the “alter ego” of the sheriff. See Underwood, 698 F.3d at 1343, 

1345; Terry, 866 F.2d at 377. We agree with the district court that this is plainly 

the case here. See O.C.G.A. § 15-16-23; Veit v. State, 357 S.E. 2d 113, 115 (Ga. 

Ct. App. 1987) (“A deputy sheriff is an agent of the sheriff and in effecting the 

proper discharge of his duties is empowered with the same duties and powers.”). 

This conclusion ends the inquiry. To the extent Ms. Ezell requests a factual 

determination whether political loyalty is an appropriate requirement in the CCG 

sheriff’s office, that request is foreclosed. See Underwood, 698 F.3d at 1344 

(citing Cutcliffe, 117 F.3d at 1358). To the extent Ms. Ezell argues that the civil 

service system has modified the legal relationship between the sheriff and his 

deputies, that argument also misses the mark — even if true — because she cannot 

show how the civil service system modified the duties of a CCG sheriff’s deputy. 

We thus are bound to conclude that political loyalty is an appropriate requirement 

for the position of deputy sheriff in Georgia.

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For the above reasons, we conclude that our precedent precludes any ElrodBranti inquiry that exceeds the scope defined in Underwood, regardless of the 

intuitive appeal of Ms. Ezell’s argument. Ms. Ezell’s First Amendment claim is 

foreclosed, and she cannot revive it on the basis that her office was included in

CCG’s civil service system.

IV.

We turn now to Ms. Ezell’s gender discrimination claim under the 

Fourteenth Amendment. Such claims are “subject to the same standards of proof 

and . . . analytical framework” as gender discrimination claims under Title VII of 

the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryant v. Jones, 575 F.3d 1281, 1296 n.20 (11th Cir. 

2009). When a plaintiff seeks to show discrimination by way of circumstantial 

evidence, as here, that framework requires a three-step burden-shifting process: 

(1) the plaintiff must establish a prima facie case, which creates a presumption of 

discrimination; (2) the employer must rebut the presumption with legitimate, 

nondiscriminatory reasons for its decisions; and (3) the plaintiff must finally 

“discredit the proffered nondiscriminatory reasons by showing that they are 

pretextual.” Standard v. A.B.E.L. Servs., Inc., 161 F.3d 1318, 1331 (11th Cir. 

1998) (citing McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973)). To 

establish a prima facie case, a plaintiff must show that she (1) was a member of a 

protected class, (2) was qualified for the job, (3) suffered an adverse employment 

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action, and (4) was replaced by someone outside the protected class. Hinson v. 

Clinch Cnty., Ga. Bd. of Educ., 231 F.3d 821, 828 (11th Cir. 2000). 

The district court concluded that Ms. Ezell established a prima facie case of

discrimination, and we agree. Although CCG and Sheriff Darr dispute that Ms. 

Ezell’s transfer was an adverse employment action, the record as construed in Ms. 

Ezell’s favor demonstrates that it was. Together, the following facts compel a 

reasonable person’s conclusion that the transfer involved a serious “reduction in 

. . . prestige or responsibility”: her removal from the command staff, her 

assignment to a post formerly held by an officer four ranks lower than she, the 

reduction in the number of employees she supervised from 250 to twelve, and the 

eventual instruction she received to discontinue wearing her uniform. See id. at 

829. The district court also concluded that CCG and Sheriff Darr met their 

subsequent burden to provide a legitimate, nondiscriminatory explanation for the

transfer, and again we agree. Sheriff Darr’s explanation for the transfer is “one 

that might motivate a reasonable employer”: he was unsatisfied with ineffective 

lines of communication and other problems within the jail and decided that new 

management was an important part of his jail reorganization plan. See Wilson v. 

B/E Aerospace, Inc., 376 F.3d 1079, 1088 (11th Cir. 2004).

Thus, the burden shifts back to Ms. Ezell to show that this proffered reason 

was pretextual. To survive summary judgment in an employment discrimination 

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case, a plaintiff must “produce sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfinder to 

conclude that [the defendant’s] proffered nondiscriminatory reason” for an adverse 

employment action “was a pretext for . . . discrimination.” Chapman v. AI Transp., 

229 F.3d 1012, 1033 (11th Cir. 2000) (en banc). In particular, we must decide 

“whether the plaintiff has demonstrated such weaknesses, implausibilities, 

inconsistencies, incoherencies, or contradictions in the employer’s proffered 

legitimate reasons for its action that a reasonable factfinder could find them 

unworthy of credence.” Jackson v. State of Ala. State Tenure Comm’n, 405 F.3d 

1276, 1289 (11th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Applying these standards, we hold that Ms. Ezell has failed to create a 

genuine issue for trial with regard to pretext. Specifically, she failed to cast 

sufficient doubt on the reasoning behind Sheriff Darr’s reorganization plan such 

that a reasonable juror could find that his explanation was not believable. See 

Jackson, 405 F.3d at 1289. Ms. Ezell was not the only member of Sheriff 

Johnson’s command staff who received a new placement with much less prestige 

and responsibility when Sheriff Darr took office; Major Culpepper, the only other 

member of the former command staff still employed in the office, was subject to a 

materially similar transfer. It is true that Major Culpepper eventually made his 

way back to the command staff, but this fact does nothing to change the apparently 

political nature of Sheriff Darr’s original transfer decisions or the special priority 

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that Sheriff Darr placed on reorganizing the part of the office over which Ms. Ezell 

formerly had control. We agree with the district court that no inference of pretext

is available on the basis of the facts surrounding Ms. Ezell’s transfer.

We note nonetheless that the general disparities in promotion and rank of 

men and women in the CCG sheriff’s office under Sheriff Darr give us pause in 

reaching our decision today. Regardless of whether such disparities were present 

before Sheriff Darr’s administration, they heighten our sensitivity to any evidence

in the record that Ms. Ezell was treated differently than similarly situated men. In 

this case, we conclude that those disparities alone cannot give rise to a reasonable 

inference that gender discrimination was at work in Ms. Ezell’s transfer. The 

number and modesty of Sheriff Darr’s promotions of women allow for the 

theoretical possibility that discrimination was at work in his employment decisions 

regarding those women, but Ms. Ezell has failed to show how those disparities 

support an inference that his jail reorganization plan was a pretext for 

discrimination against her in particular. Without more, a jury would have to rely 

on impermissible speculation to find in her favor.

10 See Cordoba v. Dillard’s, Inc., 

419 F.3d 1169, 1181 (11th Cir. 2005). She has failed to present enough evidence 

 

10 Ms. Ezell argues that a jury actually did find in her co-plaintiffs’ favor in a trial on 

gender discrimination, but that argument fails at the very least because this Court may not 

consider a verdict rendered after the summary judgment order in reviewing the order. See

Chapman, 229 F.3d at 1026 (“[A] federal appellate court may examine only the evidence which 

was before the district court when the latter decided the motion for summary judgment.”

(internal quotation marks omitted)).

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to create a genuine issue whether Sheriff Darr’s stated reason for her transfer was 

pretextual. Accordingly, the district court properly granted summary judgment on 

her Fourteenth Amendment claim.

V.

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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