Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-04-01635/USCOURTS-ca8-04-01635-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Target
Appellee
Patricia Torlowei
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 04-1635

___________

Patricia Torlowei, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the District

* of Minnesota.

Target, a Minnesota corporation, *

* [PUBLISHED]

Appellee. *

___________

Submitted: November 16, 2004

 Filed: March 25, 2005

___________

Before SMITH, BEAM, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

PER CURIAM.

Patricia Torlowei appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment in

favor of Target on her race discrimination claim brought under Title VII of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. Having reviewed the record de novo,

see Shanklin v. Fitzgerald, 397 F.3d 596, 602 (8th Cir. 2005), we affirm.

The district court's Memorandum and Order thoroughly addresses the relevant

facts and their application to the law in this case. We wish to clarify, however, a

portion of the court's statement of the law of this circuit in Title VII cases. In its

analysis of Torlowei's race discrimination claim, the district court relied on Dunbar

Appellate Case: 04-1635 Page: 1 Date Filed: 03/25/2005 Entry ID: 1883588 
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Indeed, while providing no admissible evidence of a prima facie case or

pretext, Torlowei's briefs focus mostly on arguments that Target should have

provided better training to all of its collectors, that it should have utilized a better

computer system, that termination is too harsh a result for falsification of company

documents, and that Torlowei had nothing to gain by such falsification. At one point,

Torlowei's brief argues that since Target could have taken additional steps to avoid

falsification at all, it was "grossly unfair" to fire employees who do. At argument,

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v. Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers of Iowa, Inc., 285 F. Supp. 2d 1180 (N.D. Iowa 2003),

to conclude that Desert Palace, Inc. v. Costa, 539 U.S. 90 (2003), changed the

traditional McDonnell Douglas summary judgment analysis by allowing a plaintiff

to defeat summary judgment either by showing pretext, or, even if pretext could not

be shown, by showing that the plaintiff's race was at least one motivating factor in the

adverse action. After the district court's opinion in this case was issued, this court,

in Griffith v. City of Des Moines, 387 F.3d 733, 735-36 (8th Cir. 2004), held that

"Desert Palace had no impact on prior Eighth Circuit summary judgment decisions."

Id. at 736. We stressed that Desert Palace is applicable to post-trial jury instructions,

and not to the analysis performed at summary judgment. And we concluded that any

language in Desert Palace that may seem to point to a change in the McDonnell

Douglas framework refers only to the traditional understanding that direct

evidence–evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that shows a strong causal

connection between discriminatory animus and the adverse employment action–is

another method of defeating a defendant's summary judgment motion. Id. The

district court's recitation of the law would have been complete without reference to

Desert Palace in this summary judgment case.

We agree with the district court that Torlowei has failed to present a prima

facie case of race discrimination under Title VII. In essence, Torlowei's complaint

seeks to invoke the appellate powers of this court not to right a discriminatory wrong,

but to review the fairness of Target's policies and the effectiveness of its computer

system.1

 Torlowei would have us decide this case on the basis of fairness, not

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Torlowei argued that her termination was unfair given that her falsification was such

a "small thing" when compared to the many phone calls handled by Target's call

center. None of this, of course, presents a prima facie case or provides evidence of

pretext under McDonnell Douglas.

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evidence of racial discrimination. This, of course, we cannot do. We have oft

repeated the maxim that "[f]ederal courts do not sit as a super-personnel department

that reexamines an entity's business decisions." Wilking v. County of Ramsey, 153

F.3d 869, 873 (8th Cir. 1998) (quotation omitted) (alteration in original).

Accordingly, we affirm.

______________________________

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