Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-05-05415/USCOURTS-caDC-05-05415-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Stephen L. Johnson
Appellee
Harvey L. Patterson
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 7, 2007 Decided October 30, 2007 

No. 05-5415 

HARVEY L. PATTERSON,

APPELLANT

V. 

STEPHEN L. JOHNSON, ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 02cv02213) 

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

on the briefs was Richard L. Swick. David H. Shapiro entered 

an appearance. 

Oliver W. McDaniel, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Jeffrey A. 

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

Attorney. Michael J. Ryan, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered 

an appearance. 

Before: RANDOLPH and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

USCA Case #05-5415 Document #1076532 Filed: 10/30/2007 Page 1 of 9
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Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Harvey L. Patterson 

claims that his immediate supervisor engaged in unlawful 

racial discrimination against him through her various 

interventions into Patterson’s management of his division at 

the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”). He also 

claims that his later transfer to another position within the 

EPA amounted to unlawful retaliation directed against his 

filing and pursuit of a discrimination complaint before the 

EPA’s Office of Civil Rights. The district court granted 

summary judgment for the defendant. We affirm. 

* * * 

 Beginning in 1998, Patterson, an African-American, 

served as Director of the Superfund/RCRA Regional 

Procurement Operations Division (“SRRPOD”) and as a 

member of the EPA’s Senior Executive Service (“SES”). 

SRRPOD is a division of the Office of Acquisition 

Management (“OAM”), which itself is within the Office of 

Administration and Resources Management (“OARM”). 

 During the summer of 2000, Judy S. Davis, a Caucasian, 

became Patterson’s immediate supervisor upon her promotion 

to Acting Director of OAM (a promotion made permanent the 

following year). Patterson alleges that trouble between him 

and Davis began almost immediately and that their 

relationship suffered from serious differences in management 

philosophy. The disparate treatment that Patterson alleges 

depends entirely on actions by Davis as his superior; those 

actions, and more broadly the interaction between him and 

Davis, also form the background for the allegedly retaliatory 

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transfer. We address the allegations of disparate treatment 

first, then those of retaliation. 

 Discrimination claims. These need not detain us long. 

As a threshold matter, Patterson first contacted an EEO 

counselor on February 28, 2002. His claims that are based on 

alleged actions taken more than 45 days earlier were not 

properly exhausted, see 29 C.F.R. § 1614.105(a)(1); see also 

Broderick v. Donaldson, 437 F.3d 1226, 1232 (D.C. Cir. 

2006), so summary judgment as to those claims was clearly 

correct. 

Patterson’s remaining discrimination claims rest on 

evidence that Davis: (1) vetoed his hiring of clerical staff on 

February 25, 2002, thus usurping what he believed to be his 

prerogative (although she reversed that decision two days 

later); (2) detailed two employees out of SRRPOD in 

February and March 2002; (3) hired an interviewee over his 

objection in March 2002, and then immediately detailed that 

new employee out of SRRPOD; (4) failed to appoint him as 

Acting Director for the day of March 8, 2002; and (5) 

intervened in and refused to take disciplinary action regarding 

a case of possible theft involving one of Patterson’s 

subordinates. 

Liability for discrimination under Title VII requires an 

adverse employment action, Brown v. Brody, 199 F.3d 446, 

452-55 (D.C. Cir. 1999). For the mine run of cases, we’ve 

adopted Supreme Court language, formulated in a slightly 

different context, and held that such adversity requires “‘a 

significant change in employment status, such as hiring, 

firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly 

different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant 

change in benefits.’” Taylor v. Small, 350 F.3d 1286, 1293 

(D.C. Cir. 2003) (quoting Burlington Indus., Inc. v. Ellerth, 

524 U.S. 742, 761 (1998)). This formulation doesn’t seem 

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quite apt for a case where the gravamen of the complaint is 

interference with the plaintiff’s managerial prerogatives. Cf. 

Ohal v. Bd. of Trs. of the Univ. of the Dist. of Columbia, 100 

F. App’x 833, 834 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (per curiam) (requiring “a 

material reduction of supervisory responsibilities” (emphasis 

added)). In such a case, we think the interference could 

qualify as an adverse employment action only if it tended to 

materially impair the plaintiff’s job performance or prospects 

for advancement. 

Patterson provides no evidence that Davis’s actions could 

have had any such effects. As SRRPOD Director he 

supervised approximately 57 employees; how the detail of just 

three of those subordinates to other duties might be materially 

adverse is not apparent. Indeed, Patterson’s official 

evaluations classed his management of SRRPOD as 

“outstanding,” the highest of the five possible ratings. Joint 

Appendix (“J.A.”) 634. 

Likewise, there is no evidence that materially adverse 

consequences to Patterson’s employment could have flowed 

from Davis’s not designating him as Acting Director of OAM 

for a single day, see Taylor v. FDIC, 132 F.3d 753, 764-65 

(D.C. Cir. 1997), her veto of clerical staff hiring that she 

reversed just two days later, or her decision not to refer a theft 

case involving an SRRPOD employee for formal 

investigation. Patterson claims that these actions caused him 

to feel “undermin[ed],” J.A. 570, 577, but “‘purely subjective 

injuries,’ such as . . . loss of reputation, are not adverse 

actions.” Holcomb v. Powell, 433 F.3d 889, 902 (D.C. Cir. 

2006); see also Forkkio v. Powell, 306 F.3d 1127, 1132 (D.C. 

Cir. 2002) (holding that while “supervision” may have caused 

an employee “subjective injury,” it did not “objectively harm 

his working conditions or future employment prospects”). 

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Retaliatory transfer. This issue requires introduction of a 

new dramatis persona, Morris X. Winn, an African-American 

who was designated as Assistant Administrator for OARM in 

late 2001 and confirmed and appointed to that position in 

February 2002. Accession to this post made him the superior 

of both Davis and Patterson. Shortly after Winn’s designation 

to lead OARM, Patterson arranged a meeting with him and 

discussed his difficulties working with Davis and his 

willingness to transfer to a comparable position within the 

EPA. Later, in December 2001, in one of the time-barred acts 

of alleged discrimination, Davis cancelled an approved leave 

of Patterson’s so that he could attend a rescheduled OAM 

staff meeting. This precipitated another spat between Davis 

and Patterson, with Patterson then calling on Winn to 

intervene. Shortly thereafter, on January 4, 2002, Patterson 

sent Winn a draft EEO complaint in order “to give [Winn] a 

sense of some of what I have been dealing with for the last 

several years, and why I feel that the cost of repairing the 

relationship [with Davis] is far beyond what I’m willing to 

pay.” J.A. 645. 

 At about this time Winn started to consider possible 

transfers for Patterson, and in February 2002 offered him a 

new position as his own Senior Advisor. Patterson declined 

that offer and asked to remain at SRRPOD unless the “other 

options” he had discussed with Winn became available. J.A. 

644. Patterson recalled that Winn “offered several different 

positions” to him in early 2002, but that he declined each offer 

because he “did not think [they] were comparable 

[positions].” J.A. 147. As part of an agency exercise to shift 

SES employees to new positions within EPA, Patterson 

provided EPA’s Office of Human Resources and 

Organizational Services with a list of five positions to which 

he would be willing to transfer. He was told that none of 

those positions was available.

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On June 18, 2002, Patterson contacted Winn to inform 

him that “schisms in OAM are deepening and intensifying” 

and that absent some intervention “explosions may be close at 

hand.” J.A. 659. The next day, Patterson forwarded Winn an 

e-mail chain in which Patterson and Davis argued over who 

would be named to a temporary detail assignment—a 

communication that Winn labeled “More of the same.” J.A. 

657. Soon thereafter, Winn proposed to Patterson that he be 

transferred to a new position—Associate Director for 

Competition and Strategic Planning—that EPA was 

establishing within OARM’s Office of Grants and Debarment. 

Patterson declined the offer, but Winn decided to transfer 

Patterson over his objection. When Winn signed paperwork 

creating the new position on July 3, 2002, he listed Patterson 

as the employee who would fill the position. Later that 

month, Winn formally requested Patterson’s transfer and 

made it effective on August 1, 2002. Patterson alleges that 

this transfer constituted unlawful retaliation for the filing and 

pursuit of his EEO complaint. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). 

We assume in Patterson’s favor that the evidence made 

out a prima facie case of retaliation. Thus we assume that the 

temporal proximity of Patterson’s discrimination complaint 

and transfer could support a jury’s finding of a causal link, see 

Mitchell v. Baldridge, 759 F.2d 80, 86 (D.C. Cir. 1985); Winn 

received official notice of Patterson’s formal complaint the 

day before he formally created the new position for Patterson, 

though he had long been aware of Patterson’s discrimination 

complaint against Davis and had long contemplated a change 

in Patterson’s position. And we assume that the sharp 

reduction in supervisory responsibilities associated with the 

transfer—Patterson had 57 subordinates in the old position, 

but none in the new (at least at the outset)—could support a 

jury’s finding that such a transfer “could well dissuade a 

reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of 

discrimination.” Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 

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126 S. Ct. 2405, 2409 (2006); see also id. at 2415; cf. 

Czekalski v. Peters, 475 F.3d 360, 364-65 (D.C. Cir. 2007). 

The remaining question is whether, in light of the 

justifications offered by the EPA, a reasonable jury could 

infer from Patterson’s prima facie case and any other evidence 

that the transfer was a response to Patterson’s protected 

activity rather than a result of the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons proffered by the EPA. See Broderick, 

437 F.3d at 1231-32. 

 The EPA argues that Winn transferred Patterson because 

he had requested to be transferred away from a supervisor 

with whom his relationship was admittedly beyond repair, and 

that the transfer responded to insistent congressional concerns 

and furthered a new mobility program aimed at all of the 

EPA’s senior executives. Indeed, at their very first meeting, 

Patterson had asked Winn to transfer him out of OAM (and 

thus away from Davis’s supervision) and into a comparable 

position elsewhere in OARM. Weeks after Patterson 

informed Winn of his draft EEO complaint, Winn had asked 

Patterson to serve as his own Senior Advisor, but Patterson 

declined that offer. Moreover, the position to which Winn 

ultimately transferred Patterson was important to the EPA. 

Members of Congress had long been concerned that EPA 

issued too few of its grants on a competitive basis, and at the 

time of the transfer they were demanding that EPA establish a 

“competition advocate” who would implement grant-making 

reforms then undertaken mainly on paper. Winn believed that 

Patterson’s experience with procurement contracts made him 

uniquely qualified for the task. Finally, Winn also claimed 

that Patterson’s transfer request provided him with an 

opportunity to further the EPA’s new “SES Mobility 

Program,” through which officials expected to transfer at least 

one third of senior executives as a means to counteract SES 

members’ having become “entrenched” in their particular 

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positions in the EPA. For all of those reasons, Winn believed 

that transferring Patterson—even over Patterson’s objection—

was in the best interests of the EPA. See 5 U.S.C. § 3131 

(“The Senior Executive Service shall be administered so as 

to . . . enable the head of an agency to reassign senior 

executives to best accomplish the agency’s mission.”). 

 To rebut EPA’s justifications, Patterson raises two 

arguments. First, Patterson interprets Winn’s expressions of 

irritation at the ongoing bickering between him and Davis as 

indicating hostility to Patterson’s statutorily protected 

complaints of discrimination. Second, he notes his own 

deposition testimony recounting that Winn and other EPA 

officials “said that no one would be moved involuntarily” and 

that “[t]here would be no forced moves.” J.A. 145. We will 

assume for the purposes of summary judgment that even a 

transfer precipitated by an employee’s own request, but to a 

position not of his choosing, breached those assurances. 

As to the first, it seems clear that Winn’s problem was not 

with discrimination claims but with incessant quarreling. For 

months, Patterson had informed Winn of his complaints 

against Davis and his desire to transfer out of OAM. Indeed, 

Patterson provided Winn with a draft of his EEO complaint 

six months before the transfer, and there is no evidence that 

Winn objected to Patterson’s filing that complaint. Instead, 

Winn merely expressed exasperation with his squabbling 

subordinates: on receiving a chain of disputatious e-mails 

between Davis and Patterson, seemingly calling on him to 

referee the fight, he forwarded it to his deputy, noting “More 

of the same.” J.A. 657-58. Having reached his “upset 

quotient,” he asked the deputy to “make sure this thing gets 

fixed. I’m spending too much of my time reading e-mails.” 

J.A. 224. The e-mail wrangling had no racial element on its 

face, and Winn’s express reaction shows no more than that he 

found it a diversion from more pressing duties. 

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As to the allegation that Winn broke a promise in 

reassigning Patterson to a post not of Patterson’s choice, any 

such breach of promise is not in itself evidence of retaliation. 

Patterson doesn’t argue, much less submit evidence, that 

promise-breaking and retaliation are correlated in such a way 

that one is a sign of the other. It is not enough for plaintiff to 

show that Winn’s decision was “not just, or fair,” see 

Fischbach v. D.C. Dep’t of Corrections, 86 F.3d 1180, 1183 

(D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Pignato v. American Trans Air, 

Inc., 14 F.3d 342, 349 (7th Cir. 1994)); he must show that it 

was retaliatory. Although Patterson offers evidence that 

Winn’s only other transfer under the SES mobility program 

moved an employee to a position of that employee’s choice, 

the sample size is far too small to be meaningful, and 

Patterson concedes that SES mobility transfers by other 

managers were sometimes to positions the transferees did not 

desire. Cf. id. (finding no inference of pretext to be drawn 

from a “departure from the prescribed procedure [that] had 

become the norm”). 

Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is 

Affirmed. 

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