Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05092/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05092-0/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 December 5, 2008 Decided March 6, 2009 

No. 08-5092 

CHARLES BLAINE JONES, 

APPELLANT

v. 

BEN S. BERNANKE, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF GOVERNORS,

FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:04-cv-01696) 

Michael G. Kane argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs was David R. Cashdan. 

John L. Kuray, Senior Counsel, Board of Governors of 

the Federal Reserve System, argued the cause for appellee. 

With him on the brief were Richard M. Ashton, Deputy 

General Counsel, and Katherine H. Wheatley, Associate 

General Counsel. R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. 

Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, TATEL, Circuit Judge, 

and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

TATEL, Circuit Judge: In this employment discrimination 

case, the district court, finding that the employee had failed to 

make out a prima facie case of either discrimination or 

retaliation, granted summary judgment to the employer. We 

affirm as to the discrimination claims on the alternative 

ground that they were not properly before the district court. 

But we reverse and remand as to the retaliation claims. Given 

that the employer asserted its legitimate, non-retaliatory 

explanation, our precedent required the district court to 

abandon its focus on perceived deficiencies in the prima facie 

case and to proceed instead to the only issue properly before 

it, i.e., the question of retaliation vel non. 

I. 

After working for the Board of Governors of the Federal 

Reserve System for seven years and earning two promotions 

during that period, appellant Charles Blaine Jones sought a 

third promotion to a managerial position in March 1998. At 

that time Jones was 49 years old. Jones’s second-level 

supervisor, Michael Martinson, interviewed several 

candidates including Jones and selected Heidi Richards, a 34-

year-old woman. Believing Richards to be less qualified for 

the position than he, Jones complained to Martinson about her 

selection. In response Martinson assured Jones that he would 

soon be promoted to another position. But receiving no 

promotion despite Martinson’s and other supervisors’ 

repeated assurances, Jones filed an informal complaint with 

the Board’s EEO office in November 1999 and a formal 

complaint in January 2000. In his complaint Jones alleged 

that when the Board denied him promotion to the managerial 

position in favor of a younger woman, it discriminated against 

him on the basis of gender in violation of Title VII of the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et 

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seq., and age in violation of the Age Discrimination in 

Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. § 633a. During its 

investigation, the EEO office obtained affidavits from 

Martinson and other witnesses, including Richards who had 

by then become Jones’s first-level supervisor. On September 

22, 2000, at the conclusion of the investigation, Jones sent a 

letter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

(EEOC) requesting a hearing before an administrative law 

judge. Central to one of the issues before us, he sent a copy 

of that request to the Board’s EEO office. 

Approximately one month later, on October 25, Jones 

received from Richards a draft of his annual performance 

evaluation for the period September 1999 to October 2000. 

Although prior evaluations had rated Jones’s overall 

performance as either “outstanding” or “exceptional,” the 

2000 evaluation reduced his rating to “commendable”—the 

third of five possible categories and just one level above 

“marginal.” Signed by both Richards and Martinson, the 

evaluation explained (among other things) that Jones had 

failed to complete two assigned projects. Jones’s supervisors 

continued to rate his performance as only “commendable” in 

his 2001, 2002, and 2003 evaluations. Believing these 

evaluations misrepresented his actual performance, Jones 

amended his administrative complaint to allege that his 

supervisors retaliated against him for his complaints of age 

and gender discrimination by downgrading his annual 

performance ratings. 

The EEOC administrative judge dismissed Jones’s 

discrimination claims for untimely counselor contact. As to 

the retaliation claims, the administrative judge found 

insufficient evidence to question the Board’s explanation that 

the 2000–2003 evaluations reflected honest assessments of 

Jones’s performance and so granted summary judgment to the 

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Board. The Board subsequently adopted the administrative 

judge’s recommendations, dismissed Jones’s complaint, and 

notified him that he had ninety days from receipt of the 

decision to file a civil action in district court should he choose 

to do so. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c) (setting forth ninetyday filing requirement); Price v. Bernanke, 470 F.3d 384, 389 

(D.C. Cir. 2006) (applying Title VII’s ninety-day requirement 

to ADEA claims). 

Jones then filed a timely complaint in the United States 

District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the 

Board had retaliated against him for his complaints of gender 

and age discrimination in violation of Title VII and the 

ADEA. The Board moved to dismiss and for summary 

judgment. Jones opposed the motion and moved for 

discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(f). While 

those motions were pending and nearly a year after the filing 

of the original complaint, Jones moved to amend his 

complaint to add the Title VII and ADEA discrimination 

claims based on his non-promotion. Opposing the motion, the 

Board argued that the discrimination claims were untimely 

because Jones had failed to bring them within ninety days of 

receiving the notice of final agency action. 

Without passing on Jones’s Rule 56(f) motion, the district 

court granted in part and denied in part the Board’s motion for 

summary judgment. See Jones v. Greenspan, 402 F. Supp. 2d 

294, 303 (D.D.C. 2005). Applying the McDonnell Douglas

burden-shifting framework, see McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. 

Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), the district court concluded that 

Jones had satisfied his prima facie burden for his retaliation 

claims arising from the 2000 evaluation. Jones, 402 F. Supp. 

2d at 301–02. The district court also concluded that Jones had 

offered sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to infer that 

the evaluation was retaliatory rather than an honest 

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assessment of Jones’s performance. Id. As to the 2001–2003 

evaluations, however, the court ruled that because Jones had 

demonstrated no temporal proximity between his protected 

activity and the adverse evaluations during those years, he 

failed to satisfy his prima facie burden. Id. at 302–03. Thus, 

although the court denied the Board’s summary judgment 

motion on Jones’s retaliation claims arising from his 2000 

evaluation, it granted the motion as to the three later 

evaluations. Id. at 303. 

Next the district court granted Jones’s motion to amend 

the complaint, allowing him to add his gender and age 

discrimination claims to the lawsuit. Jones v. Greenspan, 445 

F. Supp. 2d 53, 58 (D.D.C. 2006). In response the Board filed 

an answer to the amended complaint and moved to dismiss 

the new claims or, alternatively, for summary judgment. 

Jones opposed the motion, again seeking Rule 56(f) 

discovery. Denying discovery, the district court granted the 

Board’s motion for summary judgment, finding that Jones had 

failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination. Jones 

v. Bernanke, 493 F. Supp. 2d 18, 23 (D.D.C. 2007). 

Finally the district court revisited its earlier denial of 

summary judgment on the retaliation claims arising from the 

2000 evaluation, concluding this time that Jones had in fact 

failed to establish a prima facie case of retaliation. Jones v. 

Bernanke, 538 F. Supp. 2d 53, 56 (D.D.C. 2008). The court 

explained that its original denial of summary judgment “was 

at least partially based on the incorrect assumption that the 

plaintiff proved its prima facie case,” id. at 64—an error the 

court explained it made because it “overlooked [Jones]’s 

inability to establish that his supervisors had knowledge of the 

protected activity,” id. at 56. Accordingly, the court granted 

the Board’s Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend the judgment 

and “dismiss[ed]” this claim as well. Id. at 64. 

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Jones now appeals, challenging both the denial of 

discovery and the grant of summary judgment on his 

discrimination and retaliation claims. We review the denial of 

a Rule 56(f) motion for abuse of discretion. Dunning v. 

Quander, 508 F.3d 8, 9 (D.C. Cir. 2007). We review the 

district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo and may 

affirm only if, viewing the evidence in the light most 

favorable to Jones and giving him the benefit of all 

permissible inferences, we conclude that no reasonable jury 

could reach a verdict in his favor. Carter v. George 

Washington Univ., 387 F.3d 872, 878 (D.C. Cir. 2004). And 

“because we review the district court’s judgment, not its 

reasoning, we may affirm on any ground properly raised.” 

EEOC v. Aramark Corp., 208 F.3d 266, 268 (D.C. Cir. 2000). 

II. 

We begin with Jones’s argument that the district court 

erred by granting the Board summary judgment on his 

discrimination claims and denying him Rule 56(f) discovery 

in the process. According to the Board, we needn’t address 

either issue, as Jones’s discrimination claims were not 

properly before the district court in the first place. We agree.

Nearly a year after Jones sued the Board for retaliation, 

he moved to amend his complaint to add the underlying 

discrimination claims. The Board opposed the amendment, 

arguing that the discrimination claims were untimely because 

Jones had failed to bring them within the required ninety-day 

period. See § 2000e-16(c); Price, 470 F.3d at 389. The 

district court disagreed, holding that “[b]ecause the amended 

complaint builds on previously alleged facts and because the 

defendant had notice of the discrimination claims, the 

amended complaint relates back to the original complaint.” 

Jones, 445 F. Supp. 2d at 57 (applying Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 15(c)). 

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Although Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) permits 

amendments to the pleadings “when justice so requires,” an 

amendment adding a new ground for relief to the complaint 

must contend with the applicable statute of limitations. See 

United States v. Hicks, 283 F.3d 380, 386–87 (D.C. Cir. 2002) 

(explaining that statute of limitations problems might “beset” 

Rule 15(a) amendments). In limited circumstances, Rule 

15(c) saves an otherwise untimely amendment by deeming it 

to “relate back” to the timely-filed claims the plaintiff alleged 

in the original complaint. Specifically, Rule 15(c)(1)(B) 

provides that an amendment “relates back” to the date of the 

original pleading if the “amendment asserts a claim . . . that 

arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out—

or attempted to be set out—in the original pleading.” 

Interpreting this language, the Supreme Court recently 

explained that relation back is improper when the amended 

claim “asserts a new ground for relief supported by facts that 

differ in both time and type from those the original pleading 

set forth.” Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644, 650 (2005). We 

have likewise explained that an amendment that “attempts to 

introduce a new legal theory based on facts different from 

those underlying the timely claims” does not relate back. 

Hicks, 283 F.3d at 388. Indeed, even an amendment that 

shares “some elements and some facts in common” with the 

original claim does not relate back if its effect is “to fault [the 

defendants] for conduct different from that identified in the 

original complaint.” Meijer, Inc. v. Biovail Corp., 533 F.3d 

857, 866 (D.C. Cir. 2008). Thus, “[t]he underlying question 

is whether the original complaint adequately notified the 

defendants of the basis for liability the plaintiffs would later 

advance in the amended complaint.” Id.

In this case, because the facts supporting the amended 

claims for discrimination “differ in both time and type” from 

those set forth in Jones’s original complaint, Mayle, 545 U.S. 

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at 650, the amended claims plainly fault the Board “for 

conduct different from that identified in the original 

complaint,” Meijer, 533 F.3d at 866. Although an employee 

may allege both discrimination and retaliation based on the 

same incident, Jones has not done so. Instead he has alleged 

that the Board initially discriminated against him when it 

denied him a promotion, and then—some 32 months later, at 

least—retaliated against him when it downgraded his 

evaluations in reaction to his discrimination complaints. 

Indeed, the original complaint nowhere even mentions the 

Board’s 1998 selection of Richards for the managerial 

position—the factual basis for Jones’s discrimination 

claims—but instead recounts only Jones’s subsequent 

complaints of discrimination. Specifically, paragraph 9 of the 

original complaint says only that: 

In November 1999, Mr. Jones filed a 

complaint with the Federal Reserve’s EEO 

Office. The complaint, and subsequent 

amendments to it, raised claims of age 

discrimination, gender discrimination, and 

retaliation. The complaint specifically named 

Mr. Michael Martinson, Mr. Jones’ immediate 

supervisor at the time, as one of the primary 

wrongdoers. 

Compl. ¶ 9. Although this paragraph alludes to Jones’s 

discrimination claims, it sets forth no facts that would support 

them. Indeed, the facts the complaint does recite—Jones’s 

filing of a 1999 administrative complaint, his receipt of 

“inaccurate[]” performance evaluations in following years, 

and the effect those ratings had on his salary and career, see 

id. ¶¶ 10–11—differ markedly “in both time and type” from 

those that would. See Mayle, 545 U.S. at 650. 

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The district court thought it relevant that Jones’s notice of 

intent to sue, which Jones filed after receiving the notice of 

final agency action and before filing his civil complaint, 

informed the Board that he planned to bring his 

discrimination claims in the civil suit. Under our precedent, 

however, it is the original complaint, not some other earlier 

filing or document, that must give the defendant notice of the 

amended claim. See Meijer, 533 F.3d at 866. Indeed, if 

anything, Jones’s inclusion of his discrimination claims in the 

notice of intent to sue makes their absence from the original 

complaint all the more conspicuous. Rather than informing 

the Board “of the basis for liability [that Jones] would later 

advance in the amended complaint,” id., the original 

complaint effectively notified the Board that Jones was 

abandoning any attempt to hold it liable for failing to promote 

him. 

In sum, given that Jones’s discrimination claims fault the 

Board for conduct identified nowhere in the original 

complaint, they cannot relate back under Rule 15(c). And 

because Jones failed to bring his discrimination claims within 

ninety days of receiving notice of final agency action and 

because he nowhere argues that the claims are otherwise 

timely, we agree with the Board that the district court should 

have dismissed them. 

Jones believes that two procedural problems bar us from 

affirming on this ground. He is mistaken. 

First, Jones claims that the Board’s failure to appeal the 

district court’s order granting the motion to amend precludes 

this “stealth appeal” of the district court’s determination that 

the claims were timely under Rule 15(c). Appellant’s Reply 

Br. 3. But a party that prevails entirely in the district court—

like the Board here—needn’t cross-appeal an adverse 

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interlocutory order to urge the rejected argument as an 

alternative ground for affirming the final judgment. See Singh 

v. George Washington Univ. Sch. of Med. & Health Scis., 508 

F.3d 1097, 1099–1100 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (cross-appeal 

unnecessary when the appellee seeks “no change in the final 

judgment in its favor” but instead only seeks “affirmance of 

the judgment, either on the grounds of the district court’s 

latest opinion or on the basis of arguments that the district 

court rejected in various interlocutory rulings”). In fact, we 

encourage such parties not to cross-appeal. See Crocker v. 

Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 49 F.3d 735, 741 (D.C. Cir. 1995) 

(“Cross-appeals for the sole purpose of making an argument 

in support of the judgment are worse than unnecessary.” 

(quoting Jordan v. Duff & Phelps, Inc., 815 F.2d 429, 439 

(7th Cir. 1987))).

Second, Jones argues that the Board’s statute of 

limitations defense cannot sustain the judgment because the 

Board failed to present it to the district court as a ground for 

summary judgment. In support, Jones relies on Marymount 

Hospital, Inc. v. Shalala, 19 F.3d 658 (D.C. Cir. 1994), but 

that case only stands for the unremarkable proposition that an 

argument never made below is waived on appeal—not the 

very different proposition that an argument made, rejected, 

and unrenewed in a later summary judgment motion provides 

no grounds for affirmance. In reality, we may affirm a 

judgment on any ground the record supports, Wilburn v. 

Robinson, 480 F.3d 1140, 1148–49 (D.C. Cir. 2007), and that 

the opposing party had a “fair opportunity” to address, Briggs 

v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., 481 F.3d 839, 843 (D.C. 

Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here not only 

did the Board raise its statute of limitations defense in its 

opposition to Jones’s motion to amend the complaint, as Jones 

concedes, see Appellant’s Reply Br. 2, but he responded in 

his reply brief, see Pl.’s Reply to Def.’s Opp. to Mot. to 

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Amend 2–5. Moreover, contrary to Jones’s argument, the 

Board did not abandon its defense by failing to raise it in its 

summary judgment motion. On the very day the Board filed 

that motion, it asserted the defense in its answer to Jones’s 

amended complaint, see Answer to Am. Compl. 4, and a 

defendant does not abandon an affirmative defense set forth in 

the answer simply by omitting it from a motion for summary 

judgment, Daingerfield Island Protective Soc’y v. Babbitt, 40 

F.3d 442, 445 (D.C. Cir. 1994). Nor do we agree with Jones 

that he suffered prejudice because the Board chose to forgo 

rehashing this argument at the summary judgment stage. To 

the contrary, we can hardly imagine a less prejudicial 

situation for Jones given that he not only argued the statute of 

limitations issue in the district court but prevailed. 

III. 

This brings us to the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment to the Board on Jones’s retaliation claims. 

Jones first argues that the district court abused its 

discretion in failing to rule on his related Rule 56(f) motion 

before granting summary judgment to the Board on his 

retaliation claims. This argument needn’t detain us given that 

Jones has offered no legal analysis in support of it. Although 

Jones did provide sufficient analysis with respect to his 

separate Rule 56(f) motion related to the discrimination 

claims, that motion is distinct from this one, as are the issues 

underlying it. Thus, because Jones neither cites nor discusses 

any relevant case law to support his argument regarding his 

Rule 56(f) request for discovery on his retaliation claims, we 

consider the argument waived. See Ry. Labor Executives’ 

Ass’n v. U.S.R.R. Ret. Bd., 749 F.2d 856, 859 n.6 (D.C. Cir. 

1984) (declining to decide issue “on the basis of briefing 

which consisted of only three sentences . . . and no discussion 

of the . . . relevant case law”). 

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Before moving on to the merits of Jones’s retaliation 

claims, we pause for a refresher on the basics. Both Title VII 

and the ADEA prohibit the federal government from 

retaliating against employees who complain of employment 

discrimination. Montgomery v. Chao, 546 F.3d 703, 706 

(D.C. Cir. 2008) (Title VII); Gomez-Perez v. Potter, 128 S. 

Ct. 1931, 1943 (2008) (ADEA). Whether brought under Title 

VII or the ADEA, retaliation claims based on circumstantial 

evidence—like Jones’s—trigger the familiar burden-shifting 

framework of McDonnell Douglas. Carter, 387 F.3d at 878. 

Under that framework, a plaintiff must first establish a prima 

facie case of retaliation by showing (1) that he engaged in 

statutorily protected activity; (2) that he suffered a materially 

adverse action by his employer; and (3) that a causal link 

connects the two. Wiley v. Glassman, 511 F.3d 151, 155 

(D.C. Cir. 2007). If the plaintiff establishes a prima facie 

case, the burden shifts to the employer to produce a 

“‘legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason’” for its actions. Id.

(quoting Tex. Dep’t of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 

253 (1981)). If the employer does so, “the burden-shifting 

framework disappears, and a court reviewing summary 

judgment looks to whether a reasonable jury could infer . . . 

retaliation from all the evidence,” which includes not only the 

prima facie case but also the evidence the plaintiff offers to 

“attack the employer’s proffered explanation for its action” 

and other evidence of retaliation. Carter, 387 F.3d at 878 

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

With these fundamental principles in mind, we follow the 

district court’s lead, considering first the retaliation claims 

arising from the 2000 evaluation and then the claims arising 

from the 2001–2003 evaluations. 

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2000 Evaluation 

Recall that although the district court originally denied 

summary judgment on the retaliation claims arising from the 

2000 evaluation, it subsequently granted the Board’s Rule 

59(e) motion to alter or amend the judgment because Jones 

had failed to “prove[] [his] prima facie case.” Jones, 538 F. 

Supp. 2d at 64. Previously the district court reached just the 

opposite conclusion. Relying on the established principle that 

temporal proximity between protected EEO activity and 

adverse action can support an inference of causation when the 

two events are “‘very close’” in time, Woodruff v. Peters, 482 

F.3d 521, 529 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (quoting Clark County Sch. 

Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273–74 (2001)), the district 

court originally concluded that Jones satisfied his prima facie 

burden because approximately one month separated his 

September 2000 request for a hearing from the adverse 2000 

evaluation. But reconsidering that decision, the court ruled 

that Jones had not satisfied his prima facie burden because he 

“failed to establish that his supervisors had knowledge of” his 

September 2000 request for a hearing. Jones, 538 F. Supp. 2d 

at 64. Although a denial of summary judgment is 

interlocutory in nature and therefore not a proper basis for a 

Rule 59(e) motion, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(a) (“‘Judgment’ as 

used in these rules includes a decree and any order from 

which an appeal lies.”), we view the district court’s ultimate 

“dismiss[al]” of the retaliation claims arising from the 2000 

evaluation, Jones, 538 F. Supp. 2d at 64, as equivalent to a 

permissible reconsideration of its original denial of summary 

judgment, see Langevine v. District of Columbia, 106 F.3d 

1018, 1023 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (“Interlocutory orders are not 

subject to the law of the case doctrine and may always be 

reconsidered prior to final judgment.”). 

On appeal Jones argues that he satisfied his prima facie 

burden by demonstrating that the Board had knowledge of his 

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September 2000 request for a hearing and that whether his 

supervisors themselves had such knowledge was a question of 

fact for the jury. At this stage of the litigation, however, 

asking whether Jones satisfied his prima facie burden is an 

unnecessary and improper “sideshow.” Brady v. Office of 

Sergeant at Arms, 520 F.3d 490, 494 (D.C. Cir. 2008). The 

Supreme Court long ago held in United States Postal Service 

Board of Governors v. Aikens that once the employer asserts a 

legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions, it “has 

done everything that would be required . . . if the plaintiff had 

properly made out a prima facie case,” so “whether the 

plaintiff really did so is no longer relevant.” 460 U.S. 711, 

715 (1983). At this point, the Court explained, the only 

question is the “ultimate factual issue in the case”—

“discrimination vel non.” Id. at 714–15. We have repeatedly 

reiterated this principle. See, e.g., George v. Leavitt, 407 F.3d 

405, 411–13 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (doing so when the defendant 

articulated its legitimate reasons for the contested action “as 

part of the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment”). 

Indeed, in Brady v. Office of Sergeant at Arms we emphasized 

that “the question whether the employee made out a prima 

facie case” under the McDonnell Douglas framework “is 

almost always irrelevant” because “by the time the district 

court considers an employer’s motion for summary judgment 

. . . the employer ordinarily will have asserted a legitimate, 

non-discriminatory reason for the challenged decision—for 

example, through a declaration, deposition, or other testimony 

from the employer’s decisionmaker.” 520 F.3d at 493; see 

also id. (“[J]udicial inquiry into the prima facie case is usually 

misplaced.”). Not only is the prima facie case irrelevant at 

this point, but “the district court need not—and should not—

decide whether the plaintiff actually made out a prima facie 

case under McDonnell Douglas.” Id. at 494. Because the 

employer in Brady had asserted its legitimate, 

nondiscriminatory reason for the challenged demotion, we 

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rejected awarding summary judgment on the ground that the 

plaintiff’s prima facie case was wanting, instead affirming 

because all the evidence, taken together, was insufficient to 

support a reasonable inference of discrimination. Id. at 494–

95. 

Because these principles apply equally to retaliation 

claims, they control the outcome of this case. See Wiley, 511 

F.3d at 155–56. Given that the Board asserted its legitimate 

non-retaliatory explanation for the 2000 evaluation—that it 

reflected an honest assessment of Jones’s performance—the 

district court should have proceeded to the ultimate issue of 

retaliation vel non instead of evaluating whether Jones made 

out a prima face case. At that stage, the only question is 

whether the employee’s evidence creates a material dispute on 

the ultimate issue of retaliation “‘either directly by [showing] 

that a discriminatory reason more likely motivated the 

employer or indirectly by showing that the employer’s 

proffered explanation is unworthy of credence.’” Aikens, 460 

U.S. at 716 (quoting Burdine, 450 U.S. at 256); see also Aka 

v. Wash. Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 1294 (D.C. Cir. 1998) 

(en banc) (“In an appropriate case, ‘[t]he factfinder’s disbelief 

of the reasons put forward by the defendant’ will allow it to 

infer intentional discrimination.” (quoting St. Mary’s Honor 

Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 511 (1993) (alteration in 

original))). Thus, the court reviews each of the three relevant 

categories of evidence—prima facie, pretext, and any other—

to determine whether they “either separately or in 

combination” provide sufficient evidence for a reasonable 

jury to infer retaliation. Waterhouse v. District of Columbia, 

298 F.3d 989, 996 (D.C. Cir. 2002). Moreover, though 

evidence of pretext is not per se sufficient to permit an 

inference of discrimination, see Aka, 156 F.3d at 1291, it 

“[u]sually . . . will be enough to get a plaintiff’s claim to a 

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jury,” George, 407 F.3d at 413 (internal quotation marks 

omitted). 

Reviewing the evidence ourselves, we conclude that the 

district court got it right the first time when it denied the 

Board’s motion for summary judgment. We start with Jones’s 

prima facie evidence of the temporal proximity between his 

September 2000 request for a hearing and the October 2000 

evaluation. According to the Board, this timing of events 

cannot support an inference of retaliatory motive for two 

reasons. 

The Board first claims that the temporal proximity 

evidence is worthless absent additional evidence that Jones’s 

supervisors knew of his September 2000 request—knowledge 

the Board insists they lacked. We agree that Jones’s 

supervisors could not have retaliated against him unless they 

had knowledge of his protected activity. To survive summary 

judgment, however, Jones needn’t provide direct evidence 

that his supervisors knew of his protected activity; he need 

only offer circumstantial evidence that could reasonably 

support an inference that they did. And we have repeatedly 

recognized that the precise kind of evidence Jones has 

offered—that “the employer had knowledge of the 

employee’s protected activity, and the adverse personnel 

action took place shortly after that activity”—is “adequate to 

permit an inference of retaliatory motive,” at least at the 

prima facie stage. Holcomb v. Powell, 433 F.3d 889, 903 

(D.C. Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and alteration 

omitted, emphasis added); see also id. (recognizing temporal 

proximity when employee “traded correspondence” with 

unidentified “senior [agency] personnel” around the time that 

her supervisors allegedly retaliated against her); Rochon v. 

Gonzales, 438 F.3d 1211, 1220 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (recognizing 

temporal proximity when agency had knowledge of 

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employee’s protected activity); Singletary v. District of 

Columbia, 351 F.3d 519, 525 n.6 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (similar). 

Of course, that such evidence would show intent at the prima 

facie stage does not resolve the question of retaliation vel non. 

Yet the reason we deem such evidence sufficient to support a 

prima facie case—that it tends to support a circumstantial 

inference of retaliation—applies to the ultimate inquiry as 

well. Moreover, if such evidence can support an inference of 

actual retaliatory motive, it necessarily can support an 

inference of mere knowledge. 

 

Contrary to the Board’s second argument, Clark County 

School District v. Breeden does not weaken any inference of 

retaliation that a reasonable jury could draw from the 

temporal connection between Jones’s protected activity and 

his subsequent adverse evaluation. In Breeden nearly twenty 

months had elapsed between the plaintiff’s protected activity 

(the filing of an EEOC complaint) and the adverse action (a 

proposed transfer). 532 U.S. at 273–74. Three months before 

the supervisor recommended the transfer, however, the 

employer received a right-to-sue letter from the EEOC. Id. at 

272. The employee argued that this chronology supported an 

inference that the proposed transfer was in response to her 

EEOC complaint because the right-to-sue letter provided the 

employer with its earliest notice of it. Id. at 273. The 

Supreme Court thought otherwise. Relying on the fact that 

Title VII and its implementing regulations require notice to 

the employer upon the filing of charges, the Court reasoned 

that “if one presumes [the supervisor] knew about [the rightto-sue letter], one must also presume that she (or her 

predecessor) knew almost two years earlier about the 

protected action (filing of the EEOC complaint) that the letter 

supposedly disclosed.” Id. at 273. As such, the Court 

deemed the interval between the protected activity and the 

adverse action to be the twenty months actually separating the 

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two rather than the three months between the right-to-sue 

letter and the adverse action. “[A]ction taken . . . [twenty] 

months later,” the Court concluded, “suggests, by itself, no 

causality at all.” Id.

Relying on Breeden, the Board argues that if its 

knowledge of Jones’s protected activity is sufficient to 

“presume” his supervisors’ knowledge, then it’s also 

sufficient to presume that his supervisors knew of his initial 

informal complaint, and because that occurred eleven months 

prior to the 2000 evaluation, far too much time passed to infer 

a retaliatory motive. Nothing in Breeden supports this 

proposition. Unlike the right-to-sue letter at issue in Breeden, 

Jones’s September 2000 request for a hearing was itself 

protected activity, as the Board concedes, see Appellee’s Br. 

7. Compare Breeden, 532 U.S. at 273 (considering it “utterly 

implausible . . . that the EEOC’s issuance of a right-to-sue 

letter—an action in which the employee takes no part—is a 

protected activity of the employee”), with, e.g., Singletary, 

351 F.3d at 524–25 (deeming the plaintiff’s letter requesting a 

status update to be protected activity). Therefore, the letter’s 

significance is not that it disclosed earlier protected activity 

but that it was itself protected activity. Were we to accept the 

Board’s argument, temporal proximity could support an 

inference of retaliation only in the immediate aftermath of the 

employee’s first protected act. Yet because Title VII and the 

ADEA protect employees who engage in any protected 

activity, we have repeatedly held that an adverse action 

following closely on the heels of protected activity may in 

appropriate cases support an inference of retaliation even 

when occurring years after the initial filing of charges. See 

Holcomb, 433 F.3d at 903 (considering protected activity 

occurring two years after the filing of the complaint); 

Singletary, 351 F.3d at 524–25 (concluding that the district 

court erred in evaluating temporal proximity only on the basis 

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of the “original protected activity” rather than protected 

activity years later (internal quotation marks omitted)). 

To be sure, in some cases the nature of the protected 

activity and the full context (including the whole chain of 

events since the initial filing of a complaint) may render 

evidence of temporal proximity insufficient to permit an 

ultimate inference of retaliation. But we needn’t decide 

whether this is such a case, for Jones has offered evidence 

discrediting the Board’s legitimate explanation for the 2000 

evaluation—evidence that alone provides an adequate basis 

from which a reasonable jury might infer retaliation. 

Specifically, in response to the Board’s claim that Jones’s 

2000 “commendable” rating reflected an honest assessment of 

his performance and his failure to complete two projects in 

particular, Jones offered evidence that he was never assigned 

one of the projects and was removed from the other. As we 

have said, such evidence “usually” is itself sufficient to allow 

a reasonable jury to infer retaliation. George, 407 F.3d at 

413. Although a jury may ultimately choose to believe the 

Board’s explanation of events rather than Jones’s, at this stage 

we refrain from making credibility determinations, weighing 

the evidence, or drawing inferences from the evidence—

these, after all, are “jury functions, not those of a judge ruling 

on a motion for summary judgment.” Id. It’s enough for us 

to conclude, as the district court originally did, that this 

evidence would allow a reasonable jury to believe Jones’s 

version of events. 

2001–2003 Evaluations 

As in the case of the 2000 evaluation, even though the 

Board had offered its legitimate explanation for the 2001–

2003 evaluations, the district court assumed that a 

shortcoming in Jones’s prima facie case entitled the Board to 

judgment as a matter of law. As we explained above, 

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however, under the Supreme Court’s decision in Aikens and 

our cases interpreting it, the district court should have focused 

only on the ultimate question of retaliation vel non, not the 

antecedent—and by then irrelevant—prima facie case. 

Of course we could decide this issue ourselves, see supra

at 16, but the Board has urged us not to do so. Instead, 

acknowledging that the district court ruled in its favor only 

because of perceived defects in Jones’s prima facie case and 

that the court neither addressed the question of retaliation vel 

non nor even considered entire categories of evidence relevant 

to its resolution, the Board asks that if we “decide that the 

district court erred in its determination of the causation issue,” 

we “remand the matter to the district court for consideration 

of the issue of retaliation vel non.” Appellee’s Br. 17. We 

think this makes sense. Given “the state of the record and the 

factual intricacies intertwined with [Jones’s] allegations,” we 

are “unwilling to delve into . . . questions that the district 

court did not address.” Steele v. Schafer, 535 F.3d 689, 696 

(D.C. Cir. 2008). Consistent with the Board’s request, then, 

we shall reverse the grant of summary judgment on Jones’s 

retaliation claims arising from the 2001–2003 evaluations and 

remand to allow the district court to address the retaliation vel 

non question in the first instance. See id. at 696-97 (reversing 

and remanding after concluding that district court made an 

error of law in granting summary judgment). 

IV. 

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm in part and reverse 

in part, remanding the retaliation claims arising from the 2000 

evaluation for trial and those arising from the 2001–2003 

evaluations for further proceedings consistent with this 

opinion. In doing so, we emphasize that nothing we say here 

forecloses the district court from granting the Board summary 

judgment as to the 2001–2003 evaluations if it concludes that 

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the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to Jones, is 

insufficient to support a reasonable inference of retaliatory 

intent. Any such conclusion, however, must rest on all 

available evidence, not on any perceived technical 

deficiencies in Jones’s prima facie case. 

 So ordered.

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