Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca11-15-11103/USCOURTS-ca11-15-11103-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jonathan Baker
Appellee
Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia
Appellee
Gregory Moore
Appellee
Antoinette Thaxton-Brooks
Appellant

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 15-11103

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 1:13-cv-01180-MHS

ANTOINETTE THAXTON-BROOKS, M.D.,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

JONATHAN BAKER, 

GREGORY MOORE, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

 

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

________________________

(April 12, 2016)

Before JORDAN and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and KALLON,* District 

Judge.

 

* Honorable Abdul K. Kallon, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama, 

sitting by designation.

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PER CURIAM:

Dr. Antoinette Thaxton-Brooks, a physician and former employee at the 

Stamps Health Services clinic at the Georgia Institute of Technology, appeals from 

the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Jonathan Baker, Dr. 

Gregory Moore, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia 

(“the Regents”) in her race discrimination and retaliation lawsuit under Title VII 

and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Dr. Thaxton-Brooks’ complaint alleged in relevant part that 

Baker retaliated against plaintiff because of plaintiff’s protected activities. The 

complaint also alleged that Moore retaliated against plaintiff because of her 

protected activities. The complaint further alleged that the Regents racially 

discriminated against her because she is African-American by refusing to provide 

an alternative to Georgia Tech’s new policy requiring all physicians at Stamps 

Health Services to become board certified as a condition of continued employment 

while holding out such an alternative for a white colleague. Finally the complaint 

alleged that the Regents retaliated against Dr. Thaxton-Brooks for asserting her 

rights under Title VII and § 1981 by denying her request for an alternative to the 

board certification requirement and terminating her employment. 

I. THE CLAIM AGAINST BAKER

The only claim that remains alive against defendant Baker is a §1981 claim 

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that Baker retaliated against plaintiff because of plaintiff’s protected activity.1 The 

only potential protected acts of plaintiff are her July 25, 2008 charge filed with the 

Georgia Commission on Equal Opportunity (“GCEO”) and the United States Equal 

Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) claiming racial discrimination in 

the selection of Baker as Director of Health Services instead of plaintiff, and 

plaintiff’s May 6, 2009 letter to the President of Georgia Tech complaining of race 

discrimination and alleging that Baker and his subordinates had retaliated against 

plaintiff for filing a complaint. Plaintiff claims that, in retaliation for that protected 

activity, Baker created a hostile work environment to harass plaintiff.

Baker testified in deposition that he did not learn of plaintiff’s July 25, 2008

GCEO/EEOC charge until June of 2009, when he learned of plaintiff’s May 2009 

letter to the president. However, Knox, another employee in the office, stated in 

her affidavit that:

Within two months after Mr. Baker was hired as the 

senior director at Stamps Health Services in the Fall of 

2008, he told me that Dr. Antoinette Thaxton-Brooks had 

filed a complaint related to him being hired instead of 

her.

Chinaetta Knox Decl., at 3, ECF No. 57-1. Because Baker was promoted to the 

position of Director of Health Services in April 2008, and because plaintiff's 

 1 Other claims by plaintiff against Baker have been abandoned.

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GCEO/EEOC charge was not filed until July 25, 2008, and because that time lapse 

is more than two months rather than “within two months” as Knox indicated, the 

district court completely discounted Knox’s testimony, apparently agreeing with 

the Magistrate Judge who had concluded that Knox’s testimony was “inherently 

unreliable.”

We conclude that the district court erred. Taking all reasonable inferences in 

favor of plaintiff, as we must do in the summary judgment posture of this appeal, a 

plausible reading of Knox’s affidavit is that she was mistaken as to the length of 

time after Baker was hired as Director of Health Services that the conversation 

took place. We believe that a reasonable inference, and perhaps even the most 

plausible inference, is that Knox was testifying that the conversation took place “in 

the Fall of 2008,” which is sufficiently after plaintiff’s July 25, 2008 GCEO/EEOC 

charge that Baker could well have learned thereof. In other words, a plausible 

reading of Knox’s affidavit is that, in saying “within two months,” she meant 

within a short time after Baker’s promotion to the position of senior director. This 

is consistent with Knox’s indication that the conversation occurred “in the Fall of 

2008,” is consistent with the possibility that Baker could well have known of the 

plaintiff’s complaint by then, and is consistent with Knox’s testimony that Baker 

had worked well with plaintiff before the late Summer of 2008, but that his attitude 

“changed dramatically” thereafter. 

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Because the district court erred with respect to the timing of Baker’s 

knowledge, and because the district court has not considered in the first instance 

whether the totality of the alleged acts of harassment (from shortly after plaintiff’s 

July 25, 2008 GCEO/EEOC charge until the end of the employment) rises to the 

necessary level of severity and pervasiveness to constitute a hostile working 

environment, we vacate the judgment of the district court with respect to plaintiff’s 

§ 1981 retaliatory hostile working environment claim against Baker and remand to 

the district court for further proceedings.2

II. THE CLAIM AGAINST DR. MOORE

The only claim that remains alive against defendant Dr. Moore is a §1981 

claim that he retaliated against plaintiff because of her protected activity.3

 The 

only potential protected act by plaintiff is her May 6, 2009 letter to the President of 

Georgia Tech making claims of race discrimination and retaliation against Baker

 2 Both the Magistrate Judge and the district court declined to rule on the issue of whether 

the plaintiff’s affidavit should be disregarded to the extent that its content was responsive to 

discovery requests and questions at deposition but improperly withheld. Both the Magistrate 

Judge and the district court considered the challenged content of the affidavit immaterial because 

it occurred before Baker’s knowledge of plaintiff’s protected activity. In light of the district 

court’s error with regard to the timing of Baker’s knowledge, its materiality finding with respect 

to plaintiff’s affidavit is also error. On remand, the district court can also address the remaining

issues relating to the plaintiff’s affidavit. 

In light of plaintiff’s argument that there is some evidence that Baker enlisted the help of 

subordinates with regard to his harassment, the district court should also consider whether the 

actions of Baker’s subordinates should be counted in the evaluation of the severity and 

pervasiveness issue.

3 Other claims by plaintiff against Dr. Moore have been abandoned.

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and his colleagues.

4

 Plaintiff claims that, in retaliation for that protected activity, 

Dr. Moore in the fall of 2010 denied her request for exemption from the Board 

Certification requirement and her request for alternative opportunities for 

employment without the necessity of Board Certification. She also claims that 

such retaliation played a part in Dr. Moore’s role with respect to her termination on 

November 17, 2010. 

Dr. Moore testified in deposition that he did not learn of plaintiff’s 

complaints of discrimination and retaliation until preparing for her administrative 

appeal from her termination during the summer of 2011. Although plaintiff 

attempts to rely upon several vague statements which, according to Knox, Dr. 

Moore made to her shortly after he was hired in the summer of 2010. We agree 

with the district court that the statements relating to Dr. Moore’s agitation with 

plaintiff relate to the time period in the summer of 2011 when he was preparing for 

the administrative hearing. We also agree with the district court that the vague 

comments which Dr. Moore allegedly made to Knox shortly after he was hired in 

the summer of 2010 cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to plaintiff's 

complaints of discrimination and retaliation. Plaintiff made the latter complaints 

more than a year before Dr. Moore was hired and those complaints were 

 4 Plaintiff has admitted that Dr. Moore did not at the relevant time know about her July 25, 

2008 GCEO/EEOC charge, admitting that he learned of that for the first time in the summer of 

2011 in connection with plaintiff’s administrative appeal from her termination. 

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completely resolved by September, 2009, almost a year before the time of the 

alleged comments. We note that plaintiff wrote another letter to the President of 

Georgia Tech in May of 2010, complaining this time not about discrimination or 

retaliation but rather about ethical violations and questionable hiring practices. 

The vague comments attributed by Knox to Dr. Moore could plausibly relate to 

those very recent complaints by plaintiff. However, as the district court correctly 

found, those complaints do not constitute protected activities because they do not 

relate to racial discrimination or retaliation. We conclude that the vague comments 

attributed to Dr. Moore could plausibly relate to the very recent unprotected 

complaints by plaintiff, but could not plausibly relate to the more distant protected 

complaints by plaintiff, which had long been settled and were not an issue with the 

relevant decision makers at the time. Because the May 2010 letter is not protected 

activity, it cannot be the source of a retaliation claim.

For the foregoing reasons, we agree with the district court that plaintiff has 

not adduced evidence to create a genuine issue of fact as to whether Dr. Moore 

knew of plaintiff’s protected activity at the time he denied her an exemption to 

Board Certification and at the time he participated in the termination of her 

employment. Thus, the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor 

of Moore.

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III. THE TITLE VII RACE DISCRIMINATION

CLAIM AGAINST THE REGENTS

Plaintiff claims that she suffered two adverse employment actions because 

of racial discrimination against her. First, she claims that she was denied an 

exemption from Georgia Tech’s new policy requiring physicians to become board 

certified as a condition of their employment and denied an opportunity for 

alternative opportunities for employment not requiring board certification because 

of racial discrimination against her. The other adverse employment action of 

which she complains is her termination, again because of racial discrimination 

against her.5

 Plaintiff’s only claim of disparate treatment is that she and Dr. Miller 

(her white colleague) were similarly situated in all relevant respects, but that Dr. 

Miller was exempted from the Board Certification requirement and offered 

alternative opportunities for continued employment, while plaintiff was not. After 

careful consideration of the briefs and relevant parts of the record, we conclude 

that plaintiff and Dr. Miller were not similarly situated in “all relevant respects.” 

Smith v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 644 F.3d 1321, 1326 n.17 (11th Cir. 2011). 

Dr. Miller’s situation was different from plaintiff's in that Dr. Miller faced a 

per se inability and ineligibility to take the Board Certification examination 

 5 We need not address whether plaintiff has waived any claim that her termination 

constituted an adverse employment action resulting from discrimination, as the district court 

held, because we conclude that plaintiff has not created a genuine issue of fact as to any disparate 

treatment.

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because she had not completed a residency in any specialty at the time that Georgia 

Tech introduced its board certification requirement. Thus, unlike plaintiff who had 

the option to sit for and pass the Board Certification examination, it was 

impossible for Dr. Miller to complete a residency and take the exam within the 

time allotted by Georgia Tech’s policy. Put differently, that plaintiff could, and in 

fact did, sit twice for the examination, albeit unsuccessfully, undermines her 

contention that she is similarly situated to Dr. Miller in all relevant respects. 

Examining this summary judgment record as a whole, it is significant that there is 

no evidence of racial bias on the part of any decision maker, and it is significant 

that the evidence shows that Georgia Tech’s decision to require all of its physicians 

to be Board certified is clearly motivated by a legitimate business reason. We 

cannot conclude on this record that any reasonable jury could find that the adverse 

employment actions taken by defendants were a pretext for racial discrimination 

rather than actions taken for legitimate business reasons.6

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is affirmed with 

respect to its summary judgment in favor of the regents on plaintiff’s Title VII race 

discrimination claim.

 6 In light of our resolution, we need not actually decide whether plaintiff might have 

satisfied a prima facie case, because we readily conclude that no reasonable jury could find the 

defendant’s actions were a pretext for discrimination. 

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IV. THE TITLE VII RETALIATION

CLAIM AGAINST THE REGENTS

Plaintiff’s claim is based on her protected activity in filing an EEOC charge 

on July 25, 2008, alleging discrimination against defendants, as well as plaintiff’s 

May 6, 2009, letter to the President of Georgia Tech complaining about Baker’s 

retaliation against plaintiff for having filed the EEOC charge. Plaintiff claims that 

the retaliation against her took the form of the same two adverse employment 

actions discussed above – i.e., by the denial of her request for an exemption from 

the Board Certification requirement by affording her alternative opportunities for 

continued employment, and by her termination.7

 As did the district court, we note 

that over two years elapsed between the 2008 GCEO/EEOC charge and the alleged 

adverse employment actions and that over one year elapsed between the plaintiff’s 

May 2009 letter to the president of Georgia Tech and the alleged adverse 

employment actions. Especially in light of the above discussion of the absence of 

evidence of racially discriminatory intent and the evidence of legitimate reasons 

for defendants’ actions, we agree with the district court that no reasonable jury 

could find that plaintiff’s protected activity, being so remote in time, was the cause 

of defendants’ actions. 

 7 Any other claims against the Regents have been abandoned. In particular, plaintiff has 

abandoned, and does not argue on appeal, that the Regents are responsible for any hostile work 

environment as a result of racial discrimination against her. Thus, she has abandoned any hostile 

environment claim against the Regents.

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V. CONCLUSION

With respect to plaintiff’s §1981 retaliation claim against Baker, the 

judgment of the district court is vacated, and the case is remanded for further 

proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. In all other respects, the judgment 

of the district court is affirmed.

AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND REMANDED.

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