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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 September 9, 2015 Decided May 31, 2016

No. 14-5047

JANEAN E. CHAMBERS,

APPELLANT

v.

SYLVIA MATHEWS BURWELL,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:13-cv-00544)

Ellen K. Renaud argued the cause for appellant. With her 

on the briefs were David H. Shapiro and Richard L. Swick.

Alexander D. Shoaibi, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued 

the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Ronald C. 

Machen, U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and R. 

Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: GRIFFITH and SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judges, and 

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Janean Chambers alleges that 

she was denied a promotion at the Department of Health and 

Human Services because of her race and disability. The 

district court entered summary judgment against her, and we 

affirm.

I

Janean Chambers is a legally blind, African-American 

woman who has worked for HHS since 1989. In 2006, HHS 

promoted Chambers to be a Management Analyst in the

Office of Information Services (OIS) at a GS-9 pay grade. In 

this position, Chambers coordinated disability 

accommodations for employees in HHS’s Administration for 

Children and Families (ACF). Each operating division of 

HHS has someone like Chambers who is responsible for 

coordinating the disability accommodations required under 

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Chambers became eligible to apply for GS-11 positions 

in 2007. Because she preferred to continue as ACF’s Section 

508 Coordinator at that higher grade, she requested a 

promotion from her second level supervisor, the Director of 

OIS, Michael Curtis. Curtis, however, told Chambers that he 

could not promote her to the GS-11 pay grade in her current 

position because HHS had capped that job at the GS-9 level.

As a result, the agency’s formal personnel policies gave 

Chambers only two vehicles for promotion: (1) she could

apply for an available GS-11 position in the agency (including 

Section 508 Coordinator positions in other divisions), or (2)

she could request a favorable “desk audit” to demonstrate her

current duties warranted a higher pay grade. A desk audit 

allows an employee to have her duties independently 

reviewed by a human resources specialist. If the audit reveals 

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her responsibilities are at a higher level than her position is

graded, she is promoted to the higher level.

Chambers neither applied for an available GS-11 position 

nor asked for a desk audit. Instead, over the next four years, 

she pursued an informal method of promotion at the agency: 

the creation of a higher-graded vacancy with the same 

responsibilities as her current job. Curtis, for his part, told 

Chambers that he supported such a promotion. He explained, 

however, that he lacked the authority to create a new 

position—that could only be done by his superiors. Curtis 

promised Chambers that he would ask those superiors to 

create such a position. 

When no vacancy was created, Chambers met with her 

immediate supervisor and Curtis in October 2011 to discuss 

her frustration. At the meeting, Curtis told Chambers that he 

had asked the current Deputy Assistant Secretary, Jason 

Donaldson, to create a GS-11 position but that Donaldson had 

refused to do so, citing budgetary constraints. In an email she 

sent summarizing the meeting, Chambers acknowledged that 

Curtis could only urge the agency to create a vacancy for 

which she could apply. Chambers also reported that Curtis 

had “indicated that [supportive] paper work was submitted to 

the front office” in an effort to secure her an “opportunity for 

advancement,” but “was denied due to the lack of budget.”

Finally, Chambers requested that Curtis or her supervisor 

correct anything in her summary that she had misinterpreted.

Neither ever replied.

That same month, Chambers filed a complaint with the 

equal employment opportunity office at HHS alleging that she 

had been denied a promotion in October 2011 because of her 

race and disability. Chambers claimed that at the same time 

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that she had been told HHS lacked the funds to create her

desired position, the agency had created positions to promote

three white, sighted department heads from a GS-14 to a 

GS-15 pay grade and had created a new GS-14 network 

security position. She also asserted that the other Section 508 

Coordinators elsewhere in HHS were paid at a higher grade

than she was, despite serving smaller divisions. In an attempt 

to resolve the claim, the parties agreed to an expedited desk 

audit to determine whether Chambers’s responsibilities

warranted a higher grade. The audit concluded that

Chambers’s job was properly classified at the GS-9 level. 

Chambers then filed suit in district court. She alleged that 

she was not promoted to a GS-11 level because of her race

and disability in violation of Title VII and the Rehabilitation 

Act. The district court granted summary judgment to HHS, 

reasoning that an employee could not suffer a cognizable 

adverse employment action when the position she sought did 

not exist and when her supervisor lacked the authority to 

create it. Chambers timely appealed.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 to review

the district court’s grant of summary judgment. Our review is

de novo, and we may affirm the district court on any ground 

supported by the record. Wilburn v. Robinson, 480 F.3d 1140, 

1148 (D.C. Cir. 2007). We view the evidence in the light most 

favorable to Chambers, draw all reasonable inferences in her 

favor, and avoid weighing the evidence or making credibility 

determinations. Lathram v. Snow, 336 F.3d 1085, 1088 (D.C. 

Cir. 2003) (citing Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., 530 

U.S. 133, 150 (2000)).

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II

The district court was right that Chambers must show that 

she suffered a cognizable adverse employment action to 

prevail under Title VII and the Rehabilitation Act. See Baloch 

v. Kempthorne, 550 F.3d 1191, 1196 (D.C. Cir. 2008). 

Chambers attempts to meet this burden by arguing that Curtis 

failed to ask his superiors to create a new GS-11 Section 508 

Coordinator position. This failure, in her view, amounted to 

the denial of a promotion. The government agrees that the

denial of a promotion is an adverse employment action. But 

the government argues a denial of promotion is only

cognizable as an adverse employment action if a vacancy for 

the desired position already exists. The district court agreed 

and on that basis ruled against Chambers. But there is no such 

categorical rule in our case law. Instead, we affirm the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment to HHS on a different 

ground: Chambers did not produce evidence from which a 

reasonable juror could find that she was denied the promotion 

because of her race or disability. 

A

Title VII and the Rehabilitation Act forbid federal

employers from discriminating on the basis of race, 42 U.S.C. 

§ 2000e-16(a), or disability, 29 U.S.C. § 794(a). To survive 

summary judgment, a plaintiff must introduce sufficient 

evidence for a reasonable jury to find that she suffered a

“materially adverse” employment action. See Stewart v. 

Ashcroft, 352 F.3d 422, 426 (D.C. Cir. 2003). This is not an 

onerous burden for claimants who allege the denial of a 

promotion. Often, the plaintiff satisfies this requirement by

showing that she applied for, and was rejected from, an 

available—i.e., vacant—position. 

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But Chambers alleges a different kind of adverse 

employment action. She claims that she suffered a denial of 

promotion when her supervisor failed to request the creation

of a new position to aid her promotion. According to 

Chambers, HHS routinely created new positions to promote 

employees similarly situated to her based on the 

recommendations of supervisors. Her supervisor’s failure to 

even make such a request, she argues, deprived her of a 

similar opportunity for advancement. Chambers makes no 

attempt to argue that she was denied promotion to a vacant 

position; indeed, she readily concedes that no available 

position ever existed. 

The government argues that the lack of a vacancy dooms 

her claim. We disagree. We have recognized that claims 

alleging an unlawful denial of promotion come in at least two 

forms: the denial of a promotion to a vacant position and the 

denial of an increase in pay or grade. See Cones v. Shalala, 

199 F.3d 512, 516-17 (D.C. Cir. 2000). The government’s 

argument recognizes the former, but overlooks the latter. 

Precedent makes clear that employees who pursue, and are 

denied, pay or grade increases can still suffer a materially 

adverse employment action. See id. at 517; see also Bundy v. 

Jackson, 641 F.2d 934, 951 (D.C. Cir. 1981). Chambers 

advances this type of claim, and she did not need to identify 

an available vacancy to survive summary judgment.

This approach avoids creating an unacceptable loophole 

in our antidiscrimination law. A categorical rule requiring 

employees to always identify a vacancy before advancing 

their denial of promotion claim would permit employers to 

systematically pass over qualified candidates because of their 

race or disability. An agency, for example, could limit formal 

promotional opportunities while allowing supervisors to

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promote subordinates by requesting the creation of vacancies 

tailored to their particular qualifications. In such a system, a 

supervisor could request vacancies only for white

subordinates because of his animus toward 

African-Americans, and thereby prevent African-American

employees from receiving promotions because of their race. 

Allowing employers to escape liability for this kind of 

unlawful workplace conduct would exalt form over substance

by ignoring the reality that employers promote employees in a 

variety of ways—both formal and informal. Courts have long 

avoided such anomalous results in the employment 

discrimination context by tailoring the evidence needed to 

survive summary judgment to the particular circumstances of 

the plaintiff’s claim. See, e.g., McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. 

Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802 n.13 (1973); see also BARBARA

LINDEMANN & PAUL GROSSMAN, EMPLOYMENT

DISCRIMINATION LAW 2-4 (5th ed. 2012). 

We follow that lead here. As a matter of law, at least 

where a manager regularly requests and receives upgraded 

vacancies that are earmarked for his subordinates, his decision 

not to engage in that process because of an employee’s 

disability or race can be an adverse employment action under 

our case law. 

B

We nevertheless conclude that Chambers’s claim suffers 

from a fatal defect: Chambers did not show that she was 

denied her promotion because of her race or disability. This 

showing is an essential element of her employment 

discrimination claim. Baloch, 550 F.3d at 1196. Evidence that 

is “merely colorable” or “not significantly probative” is 

insufficient to establish this element of her claim at summary 

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judgment. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 

249-50 (1986). Chambers instead needed to produce evidence 

from which a reasonable juror could conclude that the agency 

failed to promote her because of her race or disability. See id. 

at 249 (stating that to survive summary judgment, a party 

must produce “sufficient evidence favoring the nonmoving 

party for a jury to return a verdict for that party”). She failed

to do so.

The core of Chambers’s claim that she was the victim of 

unlawful discrimination is her allegation that Curtis did not

request the creation of a GS-11 position from his superiors. In 

other words, Chambers relies on Curtis’s allegedly 

discriminatory conduct as the cause of the agency’s failure to 

create the position she desired. But no reasonable juror could 

find from this record that Curtis contributed to the agency’s 

inaction. 

In fact, the record supplies ample evidence that Curtis 

made the request for the GS-11 position that Chambers 

desired. Curtis testified that he asked Donaldson to create the 

position. Donaldson confirmed that Curtis did in fact request

the administrative support position. Substantial evidence in 

the record also confirms that Curtis supported Chambers’s

career development. He consistently gave her high 

performance ratings, expressed his desire to see her promoted, 

approved training to increase her promotional opportunities, 

and encouraged her to pursue a desk audit or other 

promotional possibilities. And, during her time at ACF,

Chambers received twice as many promotions as other 

employees under Curtis.

Chambers provides no probative evidence in response.

To the contrary, any evidence that Chambers offers to 

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demonstrate that Curtis failed to make her desired request is 

“merely colorable.” See Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249. She first 

contends that a reasonable juror could conclude that Curtis 

lied when he said that he asked for a new position, because he 

gave conflicting reasons for why his request was denied.

Initially, he told Chambers the reason was budgetary. Later, 

he cited management’s preference for other personnel goals.

But there is no tension between these explanations. Often an 

agency lacks funding for one activity because it prioritizes 

other agency goals. Indeed, as Donaldson’s account confirms, 

when Curtis made the request for the administrative support 

position, “[r]esources became much more constrained” and he 

considered other personnel goals critical to the agency’s

needs.

Chambers also claims that a reasonable jury could 

conclude that Curtis never sought her desired position because 

HHS never produced any paperwork indicating a request was 

made. The record is by no means clear that paperwork was 

required for Curtis to request a new position. But, even if we 

assume that paperwork was required, the district court found 

that Chambers never sought such paperwork in discovery; and

no such discovery request is in the record—a point 

Chambers’s counsel conceded at oral argument. See Oral Arg.

at 5:30-6:10. No reasonable juror could conclude that Curtis 

lied merely because the agency did not produce a document 

that Chambers never requested. Speculation about whether 

such paperwork existed and what inferences could be drawn 

from its absence cannot meet Chambers’s burden at summary 

judgment.

Chambers next points to HHS’s creation of a new GS-11 

Section 508 Coordinator position for ACF in 2012, after the 

start of this litigation. Chambers was the only applicant for 

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the position and Curtis selected her for the slot. According to 

Chambers, a reasonable juror could infer from this that Curtis 

failed to ask for her position earlier. But the record contains 

no probative evidence about who created this position, much 

less why. It is thus mere speculation that Donaldson decided 

to create the position based on a belated request by Curtis as 

opposed to a change in budgetary constraints or other wholly 

benign circumstances.

Chambers also failed to offer evidence that HHS ever 

granted any supervisory requests like the one she asked Curtis 

to make—evidence that might have supported an inference 

that the agency’s failure to create the position earlier was a 

result of Curtis’s failure to make the request. In fact, she

produces no evidence that Curtis secured such a vacancy for 

anyone similarly situated to her, while allegedly denying her 

the same opportunity. While she does point to three 

promotions that may have occurred through HHS’s creation 

of tailor-made vacancies, the record shows that Curtis’s 

superiors exercised their own initiative in creating these 

GS-15 positions for department heads under their supervision. 

There is no evidence that a supervisor like Curtis, who lacked 

the ability to create new positions, played any role in 

requesting the creation of these positions. As such, there is no 

basis, beyond mere conjecture, from which a juror could 

conclude that any delay in securing the new GS-11 position

that Chambers desired was caused by Curtis’s discriminatory 

failure to seek the position earlier. 

Finally, a reasonable juror could not conclude from this 

record that Donaldson denied the request for the GS-11 

position because of Chambers’s race or disability. Chambers

acknowledges that Donaldson did not know that Curtis was 

asking for the GS-11 position as a promotional opportunity 

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for Chambers. Donaldson could not then have denied the 

request in order to discriminate against Chambers because he 

had no idea who Curtis sought to put in that position. As a 

result, we have no need to further probe the budgetary reason 

that Donaldson gave for his initial denial of the request. Nor 

must we resolve whether Donaldson’s budget explanation is 

believable in light of his decision to create other new 

positions at the same time. Whatever the reason for 

Donaldson’s denial, it could not have been based on 

discrimination if, as Chambers recognizes, he was not aware 

that the requested position was designed to facilitate 

Chambers’s promotion.

III

Chambers’s failure to offer colorable evidence that she 

was denied her promotion because of her race or disability is 

fatal to her case. We affirm the district court’s grant of 

summary judgment to HHS.

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