[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 14-11498

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 3:12-cv-00152-TCB

CHARLES FLOWERS, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant,

versus

TROUP COUNTY, GEORGIA, SCHOOL DISTRICT, 

DR. COLE PUGH,

individually and in his official capacity as Superintendent

of the Troup County School District, 

JOHN RADCLIFFE, 

individually and in his official capacity as Assistant 

Superintendent of the Troup County School District, 

TED ALFORD,

individually and in his capacity as a member of the

Board of Education of Troup County, 

DEBBIE BURDETTE, 

individually and in her capacity as a member of the

Board of Education of Troup County, Georgia, et al., 

 Defendants - Appellees,

REV. ALLEN SIMPSON,

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individually and in his capacity as a member of

the Board of Education of Troup County, Georgia,

 Defendant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

________________________

(October 16, 2015)

Before TJOFLAT and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and MOODY,

* District

Judge.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge: 

Employers covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 may not 

“fail or refuse to hire or ... discharge any individual, or otherwise ... discriminate 

against any individual ... because of such individual’s race.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e2(a)(1). Charles Flowers is the former head football coach of Troup High School 

in Troup County, Georgia. Following his termination from that position, Flowers 

brought suit against the Troup County School District under Title VII and related 

federal laws that outlaw racially discriminatory employment decisions. The 

School District argues that it fired Flowers because Flowers committed recruiting 

 * The Honorable James S. Moody, Jr., United States District Judge for the Middle District 

of Florida, sitting by designation.

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violations that resulted in ineligible students being enrolled at Troup High School 

to play football. Flowers denies any wrongdoing and claims that the School 

District singled him out for special treatment under the pretext of investigating 

alleged recruiting violations. The parties fiercely dispute the existence of, and 

meaning to be drawn from, many of the ins and outs of the events leading to and 

following Flowers’s termination. 

Although the voluminous record before us is admittedly complex, the

conclusion to be drawn from it is simple. Title VII functions only as a bulwark 

against unlawful discrimination; it does not substitute the business judgment of 

federal courts for any other nondiscriminatory reason. Flowers, though he has 

produced sufficient evidence that could lead a reasonable jury to infer that he was 

treated unfairly,1 has failed to produce any evidence suggesting that his treatment 

was on account of his race. When we hack back the thicket of factual disputes and 

excise Flowers’s conclusory allegations, we are left with nothing more than a 

routine disagreement between employer and employee. Any indication that racial 

discrimination informed the School District’s decision to fire Flowers is

 1 Though Flowers might be able to assert state-law remedies for defamation or unlawful 

termination—an issue on which we express no opinion—Title VII provides him no succor.

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conspicuously absent from the evidence presented. We therefore affirm the 

District Court’s grant of summary judgment.

2

I.

A.

At the end of 2009, Troup High School, part of Georgia’s Troup County 

School District, began its search for a new head football coach. Both the school’s 

athletic director and the then-head coach reached out to Charles Flowers, an 

alumnus of Troup High School. Flowers had distinguished himself at Shaw High 

School in Columbus, Georgia, winning multiple coach-of-the-year awards and 

state championships in both baseball and football between 1987 and 2005. 

Following his tenure at Shaw High School, Flowers served as the athletic director 

 2 We pause briefly to highlight a matter that the District Court declined to rule on, but 

should have. Precedent makes it abundantly clear that qualified immunity should have been 

granted to seven of the ten individual defendants, Troup County School District officials who 

were caught up in Flowers’s trawl by their sheer proximity to the intended catch. These 

officials—Troup County School Board members Ted Alford, Debbie Burdette, John Darden, 

Dianne Matthews, Alfred McNair, Sheila Rowe, and Rev. Allen Simpson—took discretionary 

actions approving the investigation into Flowers and his subsequent termination based, at least in 

part, on a nondiscriminatory reason: the punishment of suspected recruiting violations. There is 

nothing in the record to suggest that the board members were on actual or constructive notice 

that any of their actions could possibly be considered a violation of Flowers’s constitutional 

rights. See, e.g., Rioux v. City of Atlanta, Ga., 520 F.3d 1269, 1282–85 (11th Cir. 2008); see also 

Harrison v. Culliver, 746 F.3d 1288, 1298 (11th Cir. 2014) (citing Cottone v. Jenne, 326 F.3d 

1352, 1360 (11th Cir. 2003) (quotation marks omitted)). 

Nor does Flowers advance any evidence suggesting that the board members acted in 

anything but good faith at all times. Indeed, their involvement is only tangentially related to the 

events at the heart of Flowers’s case. Allowing the board members to remain in the proceedings, 

then, exposes these individuals to exactly the sort of burdensome costs that qualified-immunity 

doctrine is designed to eliminate. 

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of the Muscogee County School District for a year and a half and then became the 

head football coach of the Dougherty Comprehensive High School in Albany, 

Georgia. The Troup County School District’s Board of Education extended to

Flowers an at-will one-year contract on August 1, 2010, making Flowers the first 

black head football coach in Troup County since the School District had been 

racially desegregated in 1973. Despite having retired from teaching in 2010, 

Flowers agreed to coach Troup High School’s football team as a part-time, “49% 

employee.” This arrangement allowed Flowers to coach football while receiving 

his retirement benefits.

Seven months before he was officially hired, Flowers began holding

workouts and practices while administrators subjected him to an unusually 

intensive background check, with a particular focus on discovering any potential 

recruiting violations. After that investigation came up empty, Troup County 

School District confirmed Flowers’s employment. In subsequent contracts, 

Flowers also became the Defensive Coordinator of the football team, Events 

Coordinator, and Department Chair of Health and Physical Education. The School 

District later offered Flowers a second year-long employment contract, which 

provided that Flowers would also serve as Assistant Athletic Director.

After hiring Flowers, the School District’s administrators decided that they 

needed to update the School District’s policies regarding athletic eligibility and 

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improper recruiting. On August 19, the School Board took “swift action” to adopt 

a new “Competitive Interscholastic Activities Policy,” which came to be known as 

the “Charles Flowers Policy” as a result of allegations of recruiting violations 

made against Flowers. Between August 5, 2010 and February 28, 2011, Troup 

County School District officials received seven letters from school officials in 

neighboring Lanett, Alabama, questioning eight students’ eligibility to play for 

Troup High School.3

 The first letter, sent by a Lanett City Schools attendance 

officer on August 5, 2010, declared that Lanett officials had “verified” that two 

Troup High School students and football players—Jalen and Zanquanarious 

Washington—lived in the Lanett City School District, and that Lanett officials 

were “in the process of verifying ... the residence” of a third Troup High School 

student and football player. 

The Washington brothers had previously attended Lanett High School, 

where they had also played football, before enrolling at Troup High School in 

2010. Concerned with her boys’ educational opportunities in Lanett, Shayla 

Washington decided to enroll her sons Jalen and Zanquanarious Washington at 

Troup High School. Shayla Washington’s residential eligibility to do so, however, 

 3 Lannett, Alabama and Troup County, Georgia abut one another roughly halfway along 

the Alabama–Georgia line.

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became the subject of a months-long investigation by both Lanett and Troup 

County officials.4

 

Troup County Superintendent Cole Pugh, who assumed office on February 

1, 2011, directed that an investigation be made into suspected recruiting violations 

committed by Flowers. On his first day of work, Superintendent Pugh met with 

the principal of Troup High School, who alleged that Pugh told him that Pugh 

“understood [Flowers] was a recruiter.” Though the principal denied that Flowers 

was a recruiter, Pugh responded that he has “learned that where there’s smoke, 

there’s fire.” Two months later, in April 2011, the Troup County School Board

hired a private investigator, Duke Blackburn, who had been recommended by the 

Troup County Sheriff’s Office, to look into the allegations of recruiting violations 

made against Flowers. 

In his first report, sent on May 14, 2011, Blackburn originally stated that 

“any involvement of Troup County Staff” in efforts to falsify students’ residencies

was “unfounded.” Blackburn then sent two follow-up emails after he learned in 

July 2011 that Shayla Washington and her children had been evicted from their 

 4 Because the actual status of the Washington brothers’ eligibility is irrelevant to whether 

the Troup County School District unlawfully discriminated against Flowers, we decline to 

recount the entire history of the investigation though we do note that the parties contest the 

details and conclusions of the investigation fiercely and at considerable length. As we are 

required to do in reviewing a disposition on summary judgment, we credit Flowers’s contention

that the Washington brothers were in fact eligible to enroll at Troup High School.

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apartment in Troup County. After speaking with the co-owner of that apartment, 

Ric Hunt, Blackburn reported that Shayla Washington’s application had been

denied because of her bad credit but that Flowers had intervened to guarantee the 

rent payments. At no point in the investigation did Blackburn or any other Troup 

County School District official interview Shayla Washington directly. 

On September 22, 2011, Superintendent Pugh and Assistant Superintendent

of Operations John Radcliffe interviewed Ric Hunt, who again stated that Flowers 

had called on Shayla Washington’s behalf and made rental payments to secure the 

apartment. On January 19, 2012, Pugh and Radcliffe obtained a signed statement 

from Hunt to that effect. Having waited several months until the end of the 

football season, Pugh met with Flowers and fired him on February 16, 2012. 

Though Pugh had the authority as superintendent to fire Flowers on his own 

because of Flowers’s status as a “49% employee,” the Troup County School Board

approved Pugh’s decision to fire Flowers. 

B.

Six months after his termination, Flowers brought suit in the Northern 

District of Georgia claiming that the Troup County School District, and a host of 

school officials in both their official capacities and individually, discriminated 

against him on the basis of race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 

1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e; 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983; and the Equal 

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Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.5 

The District Court referred Flowers’s case to a Magistrate Judge for report and 

recommendation. The Magistrate Judge, after a careful and in-depth review of 

both parties’ accounts, concluded that summary judgment should be granted 

because Flowers had been unable to show that the School District’s proffered 

reason for firing him—the School District’s belief that Flowers had committed 

recruiting violations—was pretext for racial discrimination. 

The District Court agreed with the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation and 

granted summary judgment for the Troup County School District. After 

summarizing the series of events leading to Flowers being fired, the court analyzed 

all of Flowers’s federal race-discrimination claims under Title VII’s McDonnell 

Douglas burden-shifting framework, which is used in cases where the only 

evidence of unlawful discrimination is circumstantial. Under that familiar 

framework, a plaintiff first must establish a prima facie case of unlawful 

discrimination. If the plaintiff succeeds, a presumption of discrimination arises 

and the defendant then bears the burden of producing a legitimate,

 5 Not relevant here, Flowers also brought state-law tort claims of slander and intentional 

interference with contractual relations against Daves Nichols, the former chairman of the Troup 

County School Board, in Nichols’s individual capacity. On summary judgment, the District 

Court held against Flowers on his federal race-discrimination claims and declined to exercise 

supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims. 

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nondiscriminatory reason for its allegedly discriminatory action. Should the 

defendant put forth a reasonably clear legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason, all 

presumptions drop from the case and the plaintiff must prove, as a factual matter, 

that he suffered unlawful discrimination.

The Magistrate Judge concluded that Flowers had established a prima facie 

case of race discrimination and that the School District had advanced a legitimate, 

nondiscriminatory reason for firing Flowers. Neither party objected. The District 

Court then adopted these conclusions, noting that neither was “clearly erroneous.” 

The sole issue before the District Court, as well as on appeal, is whether Flowers 

has produced enough evidence of pretext that would allow a reasonable jury to 

conclude that the School District fired Flowers because of his race.

Flowers made three objections to the Magistrate Judge’s findings and 

conclusions on the issue of pretext. First, Flowers argued that “a genuine dispute 

exists about whether he actually committed a recruiting violation” because it is 

unsettled whether the Washington brothers or any of the other allegedly ineligible 

Troup High School football players were in fact ineligible. Second, Flowers 

argued that the School District’s “reason for firing him is unworthy of credence” 

because Superintendent Pugh gave “inconsistent reasons for his termination.” 

Third, Flowers argued that “two similarly situated comparators,” white head

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football coaches in Troup County also accused of recruiting violations, “were 

neither investigated nor disciplined.” 

The District Court considered, and rejected, all three of Flowers’s 

objections. After correctly reciting the standard for summary judgment—that the 

moving party must show “that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact 

and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law” when the evidence is 

viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)—

the court noted that Flowers could survive summary judgment by showing either 

(1) that the School District’s “proffered reason is pretext and thus unworthy of 

credence,” (2) that Flowers’s “similarly situated comparators were treated more 

favorably,” or (3) that there exists “a convincing mosaic of circumstantial 

evidence” that would allow a reasonable jury to conclude that Flowers was 

terminated because of his race. The District Court summarized Flowers’s 

approach to showing pretext as a “three-front attack,” and rejected each front in 

turn. 

First, the court concluded that it was irrelevant whether Flowers had actually 

committed a recruiting violation. So long as “Pugh fired Flowers based on an 

honest belief that Flowers had violated the recruiting rules,” merely proving that 

Pugh’s belief was mistaken or unfounded does not show pretext, even if the belief 

is “dead wrong.” Moreover, the court held that, though Flowers had advanced 

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factual disputes concerning the details of the meeting at which Pugh fired Flowers, 

those disputes were not material. Specifically, Flowers asserted that he never 

admitted to making the call to Ric Hunt to guarantee Shayla Washington’s rent and 

that Pugh provided inconsistent reasons for firing him. Flowers alleged that Pugh 

initially told him that he had been fired for recruiting violations but Pugh later 

testified at a deposition that Pugh was unsure about whether Flowers’s actions 

constituted recruiting until he contacted Ralph Swearngin, the Executive Director 

of the Georgia High School Association, after Pugh had already fired Flowers.

6

 

The court expressed skepticism about the materiality of Pugh’s after-the-fact 

decision to reach out to Swearngin and “merely ... verify” Pugh’s belief that 

Flowers had committed a recruiting violation. In any event, the court concluded 

that Pugh’s and Swearngin’s statements were “not fundamentally inconsistent” and 

“do not create a jury question on the issue of pretext.” 

Second, the court rejected the comparators put forth by Flowers because it 

determined that they were not similarly situated. Flowers directed the court’s 

attention to Donnie Branch and Pete Wiggins, white head football coaches in 

 6 The contents of the Pugh–Swearngin telephone conversation, but not its existence, are 

also disputed by the parties. Regardless of the actual contents of that conversation, as with the

many other factual disputes in this case, the critical issue remains that Flowers has failed to put 

forth any evidence that tends to show that the Troup County School District fired Flowers

because of his race.

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Troup County who had also been accused of recruiting violations. Branch 

allegedly had a meeting with an ineligible student at which Branch offered the 

student his choice of position and told the student that “[he] would be highly 

recruited if he played safety or outside linebacker.” Wiggins allegedly provided an 

ineligible student with expensive equipment and cash payments of an undisclosed 

amount, as well as transportation to the student’s residence, which was located 

outside of Troup County. The court reasoned that recruiting violations “can occur 

in myriad ways” and “fall along a spectrum” depending on their “nature and

quality,” including the magnitude of any “monetary value” received, the relative 

“likelihood of success,” and “the risk of detection.” Given that Flowers’s alleged 

misconduct involved providing two students more than $1,500 of support, securing 

their physical presence to be able to enroll at Troup High School, and doing so in a 

manner especially likely to go undetected, the court held that Branch and Wiggins 

were not sufficiently similar comparators. 

Finally, the court held that Flowers failed to establish “a convincing mosaic 

of circumstantial evidence” that would support a reasonable jury’s inference that 

Flowers was the victim of racial discrimination. Noting that “most of the 

evidentiary tiles [Flowers] proffers” had already been “discarded as insufficient or 

irrelevant,” the court determined that “[t]hese tiles cannot now be reassembled” to 

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create a mosaic of discriminatory intent. Simply put, “no reasonable jury could 

conclude that [Flowers] was fired because he is African-American.” 

The District Court granted summary judgment to the School District. 

Flowers appealed. We affirm.

II.

We review the District Court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Cook 

v. Bennett, 792 F.3d 1294, 1298 (11th Cir. 2015). To do so, we view all evidence 

in the light most favorable to Flowers and draw all reasonable inferences in his 

favor. Id. Summary judgment is appropriate only if “there is no genuine dispute 

as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” 

Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A factual dispute will preclude summary judgment if its 

resolution “might affect the outcome of the suit under the governing law” or “the 

evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving 

party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S. Ct. 2505, 2510, 

91 L. Ed. 2d 202 (1986).

III.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in relevant part, forbids covered 

employers from “discriminat[ing] against any individual with respect to his 

compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such 

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individual’s race.”7 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). Employees who believe that they 

are the victims of racial discrimination may, of course, present direct evidence of 

that discrimination. When direct evidence of unlawful discrimination is lacking, 

Title VII plaintiffs may instead turn to the burden-shifting framework set out in 

McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S. Ct. 1817, 36 L. Ed. 

2d 668 (1973), and Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 

248, 101 S. Ct. 1089, 67 L. Ed. 2d 207 (1981).

Under the well-trod McDonnell Douglas framework, a plaintiff first must 

make out a prima facie case of discrimination that “in effect creates a presumption 

that the employer unlawfully discriminated against the employee.” Burdine, 450 

U.S. at 254, 101 S. Ct. at 1094. In race-discrimination cases, a plaintiff makes out 

a prima facie case when he shows by a preponderance of the evidence (1) that he is 

a member of a protected racial class, (2) that he was qualified for the position, 

(3) that he experienced an adverse employment action, and (4) that he was replaced 

by someone outside of his protected class or received less favorable treatment than 

a similarly situated person outside of his protected class. Maynard v. Bd. of 

Regents, 342 F.3d 1281, 1289 (11th Cir. 2003) (citing McDonnell Douglas Corp., 

 7 Though Flowers brought claims under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection 

Clause and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983 as well, their fates rise and fall with his Title VII claim. 

See, e.g., Smith v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 644 F.3d 1321, 1324–25 & n.14 (11th Cir. 2011).

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411 U.S. at 802, 93 S. Ct. at 1824). If the plaintiff can make this showing—which 

is “not onerous”—the establishment of a prima facie case creates a presumption 

that the employer discriminated against the plaintiff on the basis of race. Burdine, 

450 U.S. at 253–54, 101 S. Ct. at 1094.

At the time this presumption of discrimination arises, the burden then shifts 

to the employer to produce “a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason” for the action 

taken against the plaintiff. Id. at 254, 101 S. Ct. at 1094. The employer’s initial 

showing, just as the plaintiff’s, is a low bar to hurdle. The burden placed on the 

employer is only an evidentiary one: a burden of production that “can involve no 

credibility assessment.” St. Mary’s Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 509, 113 S. 

Ct. 2742, 2748, 125 L. Ed. 2d 407 (1993). Once the employer advances its 

legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason, the plaintiff’s prima facie case is rebutted 

and all presumptions drop from the case. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 255, 101 S. Ct. at 

1094–95. Having “frame[d] the factual issue with sufficient clarity,” the parties 

now “have a full and fair opportunity” to litigate whether the employer’s proffered 

reason for its action is pretext. Id. at 255–56, 101 S. Ct. at 1095. At all times, the 

plaintiff retains “the ultimate burden of persuading the court that she has been the 

victim of intentional discrimination.” Id. at 256, 101 S. Ct. at 1095.

This burden-shifting analysis helps to filter out particularly obvious cases 

and works to frame more clearly the specific issues to be litigated. It does not, 

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however, relieve Title VII plaintiffs of their burden to put forth evidence of 

discrimination on the basis of race. As we have made clear, “establishing the 

elements of the McDonnell Douglas framework is not, and never was intended to 

be, the sine qua non for a plaintiff to survive a summary judgment motion” in Title 

VII cases. Smith v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 644 F.3d 1321, 1328 (11th Cir. 2011). 

The critical decision that must be made is whether the plaintiff has “create[d] a 

triable issue concerning the employer’s discriminatory intent.” Id. 

On appeal, Flowers questions only the District Court’s failure to adopt his

pretext arguments and reprises his three-front attack against the Troup County 

School District. First, Flowers claims that he never committed the alleged

recruiting violations and that the investigation into his conduct was pretext because 

the School District knew Flowers to be innocent. Second, Flowers argues that the 

School District’s shifting and inconsistent explanations for his firing support an 

inference of pretext. Third, Flowers asserts that he has identified sufficiently 

similar comparators to allow a jury to decide whether their disparate treatment 

turned on the basis of race. We face each front in turn. 

A.

First, Flowers claims to have put forth “abundant evidence” that the Troup 

County School District’s investigation into him was pretext for his firing and that 

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the District “knew” Flowers had not committed any recruiting violations. The 

“abundant evidence” identified by Flowers is as follows:

• First, Troup County School District had not had a black head football coach 

before Flowers since the District was racially desegregated in 1973, 

performed an unusually intense background check on Flowers, and specially

adopted “a detailed recruiting policy” in response to Flowers being hired. 

• Second, when Superintendent Pugh assumed office after Flowers had been 

hired, Pugh continued to investigate Flowers based on “false allegations 

from Lanett, Alabama school officials” who “had a vested interest” in 

retaining the allegedly ineligible students “to play football at their high 

school.” 

• Third, Pugh neither ended the investigation into Flowers after the School 

District’s investigation initially turned up nothing nor did he grant the 

private investigator’s requests to question Shayla Washington and Flowers. 

• Fourth, Pugh and Assistant Superintendent of Operations Radcliffe were 

aware of the investigation’s flaws because both “have college degrees” and 

“years of experience in school administration and management.” 

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• Fifth, Pugh “made no attempt to verify the information” provided by Ric 

Hunt, the co-owner of the apartment Flowers allegedly secured for the 

Washington family. 

• Sixth, Flowers maintains that he would not have violated the School 

District’s Competitive Interscholastic Activities Policy even if he had called 

Hunt and offered to pay the rent for the Washington family—allegations 

Flowers continues to dispute—because that policy applies only to recruiting

efforts outside the District. 

• Finally, at no time prior to the meeting at which he was fired did anyone 

from the School District speak with Flowers, which violated the District’s 

policy of first giving warnings to employees under investigation.

8

 

Flowers contends that, taken together, he has offered sufficient evidence of pretext 

to allow a reasonable jury to infer that the School District’s true motivation was 

racially discriminatory. We disagree.

As a theoretical matter, could the School District’s actual reason for firing 

Flowers have been that Flowers is black? Of course. Has Flowers produced any 

evidence, outside of his own conclusory say-so, that would support an inference of 

 8 Whether the Troup County School District indeed had a general policy of giving at-will 

employees pretermination warnings, like so much of the record, is disputed. We, of course, 

resolve this factual uncertainty in Flowers’s favor and assume that the District did have such a 

policy.

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racial discrimination from the circumstances? He has not. In the light most 

favorable to Flowers, the evidence at most might support an inference that the 

School District’s investigation into Flowers’s potential recruiting violations may

have been pretext of something. The School District’s ham-handed investigation 

and actions singling out Flowers could lead a reasonable jury to conclude that Pugh

had it in for Flowers from the beginning. But Flowers offers no evidence, after

conducting extensive discovery and assembling a lengthy record, that the 

investigation was pretext of discrimination on the basis of his race. 

As we have “repeatedly and emphatically held,” employers “may terminate 

an employee for a good or bad reason without violating federal law.” Damon v. 

Fleming Supermarkets of Fla., Inc., 196 F.3d 1354, 1361 (11th Cir. 1999) (citing 

Elrod v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 939 F.2d 1466, 1470 (11th Cir. 1991)). Title VII 

does not allow federal courts to second-guess nondiscriminatory business 

judgments, nor does it replace employers’ notions about fair dealing in the 

workplace with that of judges. We are not a “super-personnel department” 

assessing the prudence of routine employment decisions, “no matter how 

medieval,” “high-handed,” or “mistaken.” Alvarez v. Royal Atl. Developers, Inc., 

610 F.3d 1253, 1266 (11th Cir. 2010) (quotation marks, citations, and alterations 

omitted). Put frankly, employers are free to fire their employees for “a good 

reason, a bad reason, a reason based on erroneous facts, or for no reason at all, as

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long as its action is not for a discriminatory reason.” Nix v. WLCY Radio/Rahall 

Commc’ns, 738 F.2d 1181, 1187 (11th Cir. 1984). 

There are virtually limitless possible nondiscriminatory reasons why the 

Troup County School District could have wanted to fire Flowers. Most obviously, 

the School District could have honestly believed that Flowers had committed 

recruiting violations. Or the School District, though not believing that Flowers had 

committed recruiting violations, could have wanted a football program free from 

the appearance of impropriety. Or the School District could have wanted to avoid 

an interstate kerfuffle with school officials in Lanett, Alabama. Or the School 

District could have wanted to make room for a new head coach—perhaps even a 

new coach who would be more willing to commit recruiting violations.

9

 Or the 

School District could have simply grown tired of Flowers. We just don’t know. 

Because Flowers has the burden of persuasion on this point, it is his 

responsibility to advance sufficient evidence of racial discrimination to create a 

triable factual dispute. The only evidence that Flowers offers that even touches on 

his race is the fact that he became the first black head football coach in Troup 

County since 1973. Regardless of the unaddressed reality that the School District 

 9 We have no reason to believe that the Troup County School District condones or 

encourages recruiting ineligible students to play football. We simply note that even if the School 

District were so disposed, Flowers’s case would find no surer legal footing.

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not only hired Flowers knowing of his race but also rehired him for a second yearlong contract,10 without more there is nothing to suggest a causal connection 

between his race and his termination. 

B.

Second, Flowers argues that the Troup County School District gave shifting 

and inconsistent reasons for firing him, and that these inconsistent reasons 

demonstrate pretext. We agree with the District Court’s assessment that the 

alleged inconsistencies in the School District’s explanation for firing Flowers—

which concern what Pugh said to Flowers during their meeting on February 16, 

2012, and whether Pugh changed his tune in the following weeks—are easily 

reconciled. Even if Pugh’s purported explanation for his decision to fire Flowers 

had been a bald-faced lie, however, Flowers’s claims would still fail to survive 

summary judgment.

At one time under this Circuit’s law, Flowers could have gotten his claims 

before a jury after making a prima facie case and merely contradicting the School 

District’s proffered legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason. See Combs v. Plantation 

 10 The status of such “same actor” evidence remains unsettled in this Circuit. See 

Williams v. Vitro Servs. Corp., 144 F.3d 1438, 1442–43 (11th Cir. 1998). Because it is 

unnecessary to do so to resolve Flowers’s case, we do not decide what, if any, adjudicative 

weight is due the School District’s decisions to hire and rehire Flowers with the knowledge of his 

race.

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Patterns, 106 F.3d 1519, 1529 (11th Cir. 1997), recognized as modified, Chapman 

v. AI Transport, 229 F.3d 1012, 1025 n.11 (11th Cir. 2000) (en banc). Intervening 

precedent has since closed this avenue for Title VII plaintiffs. Contradicting the 

School District’s asserted reason alone, though doing so is highly suggestive of 

pretext, no longer supports an inference of unlawful discrimination. “Certainly 

there will be instances where, although the plaintiff has established a prima facie 

case and set forth sufficient evidence to reject the defendant’s explanation, no 

rational factfinder could conclude that the [employer’s] action was 

discriminatory.” Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 148, 

120 S. Ct. 2097, 2109, 147 L. Ed. 2d 105 (2000). Allowing the plaintiff to survive 

summary judgment would be inappropriate, for example, if the record 

“conclusively revealed some other, nondiscriminatory reason” or the “plaintiff 

created only a weak issue of fact as to whether the employer’s reason was untrue 

and there was abundant and uncontroverted independent evidence that no 

discrimination had occurred.” Id.; see also Kagor v. Takeda Pharm. Am., Inc., 702 

F.3d 1304, 1307 (11th Cir. 2012) (“[A] contradiction of the employer’s proffered 

reason for the termination of an employee is sometimes enough, when combined 

with other evidence, to allow a jury to find that the firing was the result of unlawful 

discrimination.” (emphasis added)).

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Because, as discussed above, Flowers has failed to put forth any additional 

evidence that would support an inference of unlawful discrimination, it is 

insufficient for Flowers merely to make a prima facie case and—assuming that he 

could do so—call into question the School District’s proffered legitimate, 

nondiscriminatory reason. The burden placed on Title VII plaintiffs to produce 

additional evidence suggesting discrimination after contradicting their employer’s 

stated reasons is not great, but neither is it nothing. Though we do not require the 

“‘blindered recitation of a litany,’” we cannot “ignore the failure to present 

evidence of discrimination.” Hawkins v. Ceco Corp., 883 F.2d 977, 984 (11th Cir. 

1989) (quoting Byrd v. Roadway Express, Inc., 687 F.2d 85, 86 (5th Cir. 1982)).

Flowers’s challenge, then, fails on this score as well.

C.

Finally, Flowers asserts that he has identified two similarly situated

comparators whose more-favorable treatment could support a reasonable jury’s 

inference that the Troup County School District’s decision to fire him was pretext 

for race discrimination. Flowers points to Donnie Branch and Pete Wiggins, the 

white head football coaches at the two other high schools in Troup County during 

Flowers’s tenure at Troup High School. Branch and Wiggins had both been 

flagged as recruiters in communications directed to School District officials for 

various alleged violations—including extending offers, making cash payments, and 

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providing transportation and expensive equipment to ineligible players—though 

neither Branch nor Wiggins had been investigated intensely or fired as a result. 

In order to use comparators to support an inference of race discrimination in 

the context of workplace discipline, a plaintiff must show that the comparators’ 

alleged misconduct is “nearly identical to the plaintiff’s in order ‘to prevent courts 

from second-guessing employers’ reasonable decisions and confusing apples with 

oranges.’” Silvera v. Orange Cty. Sch. Bd., 244 F.3d 1253, 1259 (11th Cir. 2001) 

(quoting Maniccia v. Brown, 171 F.3d 1364, 1368–69 (11th Cir. 1999)). Though 

the comparators need not be the plaintiff’s doppelgangers, the “nearly identical” 

standard requires much more than a showing of surface-level resemblance. Take, 

for example, our decision in Burke-Fowler v. Orange County, Florida, 447 F.3d 

1319 (11th Cir. 2006). In Burke-Fowler, the plaintiff was a certified correctional 

officer who entered into a romantic relationship and married an inmate serving 

time at another correctional facility and was subsequently fired, allegedly for that 

reason. Id. at 1321–22. Believing her employer’s reason to be pretext for 

discrimination based on her race, the plaintiff, who is black, brought suit and 

pointed to four white corrections officers who had also fraternized with inmates 

but went unpunished. Id. at 1322, 1324–25. Some of the comparators had 

romantic relationships with individuals who were subsequently incarcerated; others 

had post-incarceration relationships with inmates that were not romantic. Id. at 

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1325. Despite their superficial similarity, we held that the plaintiff in BurkeFowler had failed to establish valid comparators due to the “significant” 

differences in “type or degree of fraternization” because the plaintiff’s misconduct 

was the only instance of officer–inmate fraternization that involved romance and

that occurred after the inmate had been incarcerated. Id.

The District Court identified three ways in which Flowers’s and his 

comparators’ alleged recruiting violations differed—the magnitude of any 

“monetary value,” the likelihood of success of recruiting ineligible players, and 

“the risk of detection”—and noted that “Flowers’s alleged misconduct could likely 

be distinguished in other ways as well.” We agree. The most salient difference not 

discussed by the District Court is the intensity and frequency of the recruiting 

allegations leveled against Flowers. Starting mere days after Flowers was first 

hired, Troup County School District officials received, over a period of roughly six 

months, seven letters from Lanett, Alabama school administrators questioning 

eight students’ eligibility to play for Troup High School. Flowers, in turn, points 

to the statements of the principal of Troup High School and two Troup High 

School students and football players, one of whom was Flowers’s nephew, alerting 

Troup County officials to potential recruiting violations committed by Branch and 

Wiggins—all of which were made only after the investigation into Flowers had 

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begun. The obvious differences between Flowers’s circumstances and those of his 

purported comparators are hardly the stuff of an apples-to-apples comparison.

Moreover, Flowers’s argument essentially boils down to quibbling about 

whether Branch’s and Wiggins’s alleged violations were worse than his own, not 

about whether they were sufficiently similar.

11 On-the-ground determinations of 

the severity of different types of workplace misconduct and how best to deal with 

them are exactly the sort of judgments about which we defer to employers. That 

Branch and Wiggins were treated differently, then, matters not.

IV.

Accordingly, the District Court’s decision to grant summary judgment is 

AFFIRMED.

AFFIRMED.

 11 Flowers disagrees with the District Court’s judgment about the relative harms posed by 

his alleged recruiting violations compared to those of Branch and Wiggins. Flowers asserts that 

his alleged violations concerned improper benefits of lesser monetary value, were less likely to 

succeed in securing commitments from ineligible players, and were more likely to result in 

Flowers’s misconduct being discovered. Precisely because reasonable minds can disagree on 

such matters, we leave their resolution to the discretion of employers.

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