Case Name: Alfred G. KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Donald RUMSFELD, Secretary, United States Department of Defense, Defendant-Appellee
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 2003-05-08
Citations: 328 F.3d 145
Docket Number: No. 02-1313
Parties: Alfred G. KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Donald RUMSFELD, Secretary, United States Department of Defense, Defendant-Appellee.
Judges: Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and LUTTIG and GREGORY, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 3d Series
Volume: 328
Pages: 145–159

Head Matter:
Alfred G. KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Donald RUMSFELD, Secretary, United States Department of Defense, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 02-1313.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued: Feb. 24, 2003.
Decided: May 8, 2003.
ARGUED: Susan M. Andorfer, Susan M. Andorfer, L.T.D., Belleville, Illinois, for Appellant. Rachel Celia Ballow, Assistant United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Carolyn P. Carpenter, Carpenter Law Firm, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. Paul J. McNulty, United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee.
Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and LUTTIG and GREGORY, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge LUTTIG wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge WILKINS joined. Judge GREGORY wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
OPINION
LUTTIG, Circuit Judge:
Appellant Alfred G. King appeals the district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of his former employer, the United States Secretary of Defense, on his race and sex discrimination and retaliation claims brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e to 2000e-17. Because King has not presented a prima facie case as to his race and sex discrimination claims and because he has not overcome his employer's asserted legitimate motive in terminating him with respect to his retaliation claims, we affirm.
I.
The relevant facts of this case are straightforward. In 1996, King, a black man, was hired as a teacher by the Department of Defense (DOD) Dependent Schools, subject to a two-year probationary period. During the time of his probationary employment, King was reprimanded and counseled on multiple occasions by different superiors for using profanity around the students and for belittling them. King's first supervisor, Thomas Whitaker, was the first to take notice of and to confront King about this behavior. When Whitaker took medical leave, his successor, Douglas Carlson, heard similar reports of King's unsuitable conduct and similarly reprimanded and counseled King.
Because King was a probationary teacher and because his conduct concerned Carlson, Carlson began to review other aspects of King's work, including his lesson planning. Ultimately, Carlson concluded that King's job performance was inadequate, as reflected by his lesson planning, among other factors. Carlson shared his conclusion with King and counseled him as to how he might improve his performance. Following a subsequent performance review — which this time culminated with Carlson telling King he could be terminated based upon his performance — Carlson received notice from the DOD Office of Complaint Investigations that King had filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint against him.
Before Carlson took any definitive action with respect to King's employment, Whitaker returned from his medical leave. Upon returning, Whitaker met with Carlson to discuss King's performance. Whitaker reviewed the many notes Carlson kept of his conferences with King and of King's job performance. Whitaker then met with King on two occasions and asked King to explain his side of the events that occurred while Whitaker was away. Following these meetings, Whitaker decided to evaluate King himself before making a decision regarding his termination. Whitaker observed King's classes on several occasions and talked to several of King's students. Following his own review, Whitaker decided to terminate King prior to the end of his two-year probationary period.
King then brought this action alleging that he was terminated for discriminatory motives and that his termination was a retaliatory action against him for filing an EEO complaint. To support his claim, King proffered evidence (1) that another probationary teacher, a white man, whose conduct had generated complaints from students and parents was not fired; (2) that Carlson picked on him; (3) that a substitute teacher had been pressured by Carlson into providing a critical review of King after substituting for him; (4) that upon learning of King's EEO complaint Carlson said to him, "[tjhat's what you people always say when you screw up;" and most importantly, as will quickly become evident, (5) that other teachers at the school considered King's lesson plans not to be substantially different from their own plans.
Upon motion for summary judgment, the district court granted judgment to ap-pellee. The court determined that King's proffer failed to establish a prima facie case of race or sex discrimination because it did not contain evidence that King's job performance was satisfactory at the time of his discharge. The court also determined that King failed to establish a prima facie retaliatory discharge claim.
II.
We review an award of summary judgment de novo. Higgins v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., 863 F.2d 1162, 1167 (4th Cir.1988). Summary judgment is appropriate only if there are no material facts in dispute and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).
A.
To establish a prima facie case of discriminatory discharge, King must show: (1) that he is a member of a protected class; (2) that he suffered from an adverse employment action; (3) that at the time the employer took the adverse employment action he was performing at a level that met his employer's legitimate expectations; and (4) that the position was filled by a similarly qualified applicant outside the protected class. See Brinkley v. Harbour Recreation Club, 180 F.3d 598, 607 (4th Cir.1999). This case turns on King's inability to demonstrate the third factor— that at the time of his discharge he was performing at a level that met appellee's legitimate expectations.
Appellee offered substantial evidence that King was not in fact meeting legitimate job performance expectations, chronicling in detail King's poor performance and his supervisors' numerous concerns. King's response to appellee's evidence is limited to his own claim of satisfactory job performance and to testimony he elicited from his fellow teachers to the effect that his lesson plans were substantially comparable to their own. Neither testimony can sustain a challenge to appellee's proffer that King was not in fact meeting appellee's legitimate performance expectations.
King's own testimony, of course, cannot establish a genuine issue as to whether King was meeting appellee's expectations. See Evans v. Technologies Applications & Serv. Co., 80 F.3d 954, 960-61 (4th Cir.1996) ("It is the perception of the decision maker which is relevant, not the self-assessment of the plaintiff." (citations omitted)). Nor can the fact testimony of King's co-workers that his lesson plans were comparable to theirs establish this genuine issue. Proof that King's perfor-' manee was comparable to his co-workers' is not proof that King's performance met appellee's legitimate job performance expectations. It is only proof that his work looked like that of his co-workers, a fact that, without more, does not bear on the critical inquiry. For this reason we have long rejected the relevance of such testimony and held it to be insufficient to establish the third required element of a prima facie discrimination case. See, e.g., Hawkins v. PepsiCo, Inc., 203 F.3d 274, 280 (4th Cir.2000) ("The alleged opinions of Hawkins' co-workers as to the quality of her work are [] close to irrelevant." (citation omitted)); Tinsley v. First Union Nat'l Bank, 155 F.3d 435, 444 (4th Cir.1998) ("[Although the affidavits put forth by Tinsley document the fact that certain co-workers, Bank customers, and attorneys believed Tinsley was doing a good job, they fail to address whether management honestly believed that Tinsley was doing a good job." (emphasis added)).
The irrelevance of King's co-workers as fact witnesses does not, as King contends, foreclose employees like him from ever proving a prima facie case of race and sex discrimination. King argues that our rule only allows employees to satisfy the prima facie standard in the unique, and employer-controlled, circumstance where the employer either (1) concedes that the employee was performing satisfactorily at the time of discharge, or (2) has previously given the employee positive performance reviews that establish this third element. But such is not the case. For King to establish that his work met appellee's legitimate job performance expectations he had only to offer qualified expert opinion testimony as to (1) appellee's legitimate job performance expectations and (2) analysis and evaluation of King's performance in light of those expectations.
It is not inconceivable that a plaintiffs co-workers could qualify as expert witnesses to testify as to their employer's legitimate job performance expectations and as to their own analysis and evaluation of the plaintiffs performance in light of those expectations. But King never proffered his co-workers in this capacity. And, even had the co-workers been so proffered, their testimony never touched on either of these two critical inquiries. King's coworkers' testimony was limited to the fact observation that King's lesson plans looked like theirs, and, arguably, to the fact that they believed King's work met appellee's expectations. Since testimony as to the fact that King's work looked like that of his co-workers, or even as to the fact that they believed his work met appellee's expectations, does not establish what expectations appellee could legitimately have, it cannot begin to answer the first step of the inquiry. Nor, obviously, can it answer the second step of the inquiry — an evaluation of King's work under appellee's as-of-yet unidentified legitimate expectations. Failing to address what expectations of King appellee could legitimately maintain and failing to analyze King's work in light of such opined expectations, the co-workers' fact testimony cannot build a prima facie case for King.
Because King cannot establish that his job performance satisfied appellee's legitimate expectations, and so cannot establish a prima facie case, his other allegations— that a similarly situated white, probationary teacher was not fired after complaints were raised about him, and that Carlson picked on him, asked a substitute to critique him, and ultimately told him "[tjhat's what you people always say when you screw up" — are irrelevant to the inquiry. These allegations, as King recognizes, go to the issue of whether appellee's explanation of King's discharge is pretextual. But, since King never established a prima facie case as to his discrimination claims, appellee is under no duty to supply an explanation for King's discharge. See Brinkley, 180 F.3d at 607 ("Once the pri-ma facie case is established, the burden shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse employment action." (emphasis added)). Because appellee is freed from having to justify the discharge (with respect to the discrimination claims), King's evidence-in-waiting, prepared to rebut any justification, is of no moment.
B.
The district court also concluded that King failed to make out a prima facie case of retaliatory discharge. We disagree. We conclude that King did indeed make out a prima facie case of retaliation. However, appellee offered a legitimate, non-retaliatory motive for King's termination, as to which proffer King has not offered evidence of pretext.
To make out a prima facie case of retaliation, King must show (1) that he engaged in a protected activity; (2) that his employer took an adverse employment action against him; and (3) that a causal connection existed between the protected activity and the asserted adverse action. See Williams v. Cerberonics, Inc., 871 F.2d 452, 457 (4th Cir.1989). Here, King's filing of the EEO complaint was protected activity, and his termination indisputably constituted adverse employment action. Moreover, that his termination came so close upon his filing of the complaint gives rise to a sufficient inference of causation to satisfy the prima facie requirement. See id. ("Appellant's proof of a causal connection between the protected activity and her discharge was that she was fired after her employer became aware that she had filed a discrimination charge. While this proof far from conclusively establishes the requisite causal connection, it certainly satisfies the less onerous burden of making a prima facie case of causality.").
Appellee, however, proffered a legitimate, non-retaliatory discharge motive — that King was not meeting appellee's job performance expectations — after King shifted the burden to it by establishing his prima facie case. See id. ("Once this prima facie evidence [of retaliatory discharge] is' established, it must be rebutted by legitimate nonretaliatory reasons[J"). Appellee thus shifted the burden back to King with his proffer. See Womack v. Munson, 619 F.2d 1292, 1296 (8th Cir.1980) (following the employer's proffer of a legitimate, non-retaliatory reason for an adverse employment action the burden of persuasion remains with the plaintiff to prove that the employer's reason is pretext, a cover-up for retaliation).
None of King's various allegations — that a similarly situated white, probationary teacher was not fired after complaints were raised about him, and that Carlson picked on him, asked a substitute to critique' him, and ultimately told him "[t]hat's what you people, always say when you screw up" — contradict appellee's proffered discharge motive.
Nor are they probative in the manner that the dissents, suggests. For example, the dissent says:
[T]hat Whitaker was aware of reports of ongoing misconduct by Moore — post reprimand . establishes a solid basis for the permissible inference . that the administrators knew • that Moore's misconduct continued beyond reprimand[.]
Post at 156. But, evidence that a parent wrote to the school to complain about this other teacher after that teacher was reprimanded cannot establish that King and that teacher were similarly situated. To establish that King and that teacher were similarly situated, King must proffer evidence that school administrators believed that the other teacher had, like King, continued his misconduct beyond reprimand. To prove this, either King must directly proffer evidence of the administrators' beliefs, or he must proffer evidence that the other teacher's misconduct did in fact continue beyond reprimand. Of course, the latter proof form is relevant only insofar as it might make possible the inference that despite the administrators' protestations to the contrary, they did in fact know about the misconduct.
King does not present the first form of proof here — testimony that the administrators believed the two teachers were similarly situated in the relevant respect. The administrators testified they believed the other teacher had ceased his misconduct. King proffered no evidence to contradict their testimony directly. The letter from the vexed parent that the dissent cites does not, and cannot, directly establish that the administrators thought as the parent thought. It establishes only that the administrators were informed as to the parent's thoughts. Indeed, that very letter reports that the administrators disagreed with its author and believed the other teacher had ceased his misconduct.
The second form of proof — proving by inference from the fact that the other teacher's misconduct had continued beyond reprimand that the administrators knew such to be the case — is not met here either. The only evidence King proffers on this score is the same letter as discussed above. King argues, in essence, that the letter proves two different facts: (1) that the teacher did in fact continue his misconduct beyond reprimand; and (2) that the administrators were given knowledge of this fact. It should be readily apparent that until evidence that can establish the fact of continuing misconduct is proffered, the letter cannot establish the second fact. For if there is no proof that the misconduct continued, the letter cannot establish that the administrators were given knowledge that it continued since the foundation of any such knowledge is the actual fact that the misconduct continued.
The letter, however, cannot establish that the misconduct in fact continued. As an initial matter, the letter-writer concedes he is a parent of a child who had not been inappropriately touched by the teacher following his reprimand. See J.A. at 333-34. Consequently, the aspect of the letter to which King, and the dissent, cling is the hearsay assertion by that parent that another parent's child had been inappropriately touched after the teacher's reprimand. The letter writer claimed to have "learned" of that alleged instance (and most importantly of the time it occurred) via a hearsay report from his son. He did not learn of the incident (and again, most importantly, of the time it occurred) from either the allegedly inappropriately touched child or from the parent of that child. Indeed, the letter-writer notes that in another hearsay conversation with the parent of the allegedly touched child, while the parent of that child confirmed his child had been "poked," he could not confirm that such had occurred after the teacher had been reprimanded. See J.A. at 333. Furthermore, and of greatest import, King proffered no evidence either from the student who was allegedly poked after the teacher's reprimand, or from that student's parent. And, we note as well, neither that student nor his parents filed a complaint with the school alleging that the student was inappropriately touched following Moore's reprimand. There is thus no reliable, proffered basis on which to conclude that the teacher's misconduct continued past reprimand.
Since the letter cannot establish the fact of continuing misconduct, and since no other evidence was presented to establish this fact, the letter cannot establish that it gave the administrators knowledge of such a fact. With no valid evidentiary basis on which to infer that the administrators knew, despite their denial, that the other teacher's misconduct continued, King cannot establish inferentially that he was similarly situated to that other teacher.
Likewise, the dissent places too much weight on the testimony by Donna Fontenot (a substitute teacher at the school) that Carlson asked her to be "critical" of, or make "derogatory comments" about, King's lesson plans in her post-substituting evaluation forms. See J.A. at 381. As an initial matter, that an employer asks, or even coerces, a subordinate to evaluate another's work critically is not sufficient on its own to establish evidence of pretext. Employers are entitled to demand that subordinates provide critical reviews of their employees when such are justified by sub-par work. And, even if Carlson's demand of Fontenot is the least bit probative that he harbored an unlawful motive for firing King and so desired that she provide a pretext under which he could fire him, the fact is that Carlson did not fire King. Whitaker fired King after conducting his own independent investigation of the matter, and after Carlson had left the school. No evidence links to Whitaker the motive King uses Fontenot's testimony to ascribe to Carlson. Since Carlson did not fire King, and since any motive Carlson had for pressuring Fontenot is not attributable to Whitaker, Fontenot's testimony could only be relevant if the record contained evidence that Fontenot provided reviews of King's work that falsely attributed sub-par performance to him and that King was fired at least partially on that basis. But, the record contains no suggestion at all that the reviews Fontenot provided were in any way inaccurate reviews of King's work.
The dissent also points to King's coworker testimony as evidence that King was treated differently than similarly situated colleagues. But again, for similar reasons as governed our discussion in section H.A., cf. infra pp. 148-151, the opinion of King's colleagues that his work was equivalent to theirs is probative only of the fact that those co-workers believed their work was equivalent to his. It is not probative of whether King's work actually was equivalent to theirs, and thus of whether King actually was similarly situated to them. For King to prove that he was similarly situated to his colleagues in terms of his job performance would, in the absence of evidence to that effect from the employer or its job performance reviews, require an expert to form an opinion based on reasoned analysis as to how King and the other teachers were performing and as to how their performances measured against one another. Such is not the stuff of lay, fact testimony. Compare Fed. R.Evid. 701 (opinion testimony by lay witnesses allowed only where that opinion is "rationally based on the perception of the witness," and not where the opinion is based on "specialized knowledge"), with Fed.R.Evid. 702 (Testimony by Experts). Thus, just as it would take an expert witness to provide an opinion as to whether any given teacher had met legitimate job performance expectations, as the dissent agrees, see post at 154, 157, so too it would take an expert to provide an opinion as to whether any given teacher's work was equivalent to that of another teacher's.
Though the dissent would rely upon Conkwright v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 933 F.2d 231 (4th Cir.1991), to reach the contrary conclusion, that case does not support the dissent. In Conkwright, we considered the employment discrimination claims of a worker who was laid off after his employer enacted firm-wide cutbacks by first rating all its employees, and then discharging those on the bottom of the ratings list. Conkwright's co-workers testified that they thought he did a good job, that he did not deserve his ratings, and that he did not deserve to gét laid off. We concluded that this co-worker testimony was close to irrelevant, but in dicta in a footnote observed that:
It is only close to irrelevant because if the ratings were wildly out of line with other indicia of an employee's performance then one may question whether the rating system has a bias in its implementation. But that is not the case here.
Id. at 235 n. 4.
As is readily apparent from the language of that footnote, we were there concerned with the relevance of "indicia of an employee's performance" in an inquiry as to pretext. We did not there address the reliability of co-worker testimony as a means of proving that an employee's work performance was either adequate or that it was equivalent to that of other workers.
Here, we accept that indicia of King's performance might be relevant to the pretext inquiry. But, as explained above, King has not proffered any' reliable and admissible testimony as to such indicia, and King cannot qualify the testimony of his co-workers as a reliable assessment of the relative competence of him and his coworkers. The dissent's effort to backdoor the co-worker testimony into the case under Conkwright thus fails and King may not ground his proof of pretext on such testimony.
For all the reasons given above, none of the evidence King proffers is sufficiently demonstrative of retaliatory intent to establish that the unrebutted poor performance discharge motive is pretext. As a result, King's proffer is insufficient for his action to survive appellee's motion for summary judgment. And while the district court improperly found King not to have made out a prima facie case, it properly granted summary judgment for appel-lee.
CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated herein, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
. For example, in one particular instance, King left identical worksheets for three different classes at different grade levels when he had to be absent. Carlson concluded that the uniform worksheet for such disparate classes reflected inadequate preparation on King's part.
. The record, however, also discloses that this teacher, who had been asked not to tickle the students after two reported incidents of such, corrected his behavior following reprimand, unlike King.
. That. King's co-workers thought his work substantially similar to their own is simply not the smoking gun King believes. By way of example, the co-worker's testimony, taken as fully accurate, might simply reflect that their job performance too was lacking.
. King's argument is really no more than an argument for the admissibility of expert opinion testimony from unqualified, non-expert witnesses. For, King's conclusion' — that the fact that his co-workers thought he met appel-lee's expectations is probative of whether he did meet those expectations — necessarily relies on the implicit assumption that the coworkers' have reliable and admissible (i.e., expert) opinions as to what expectations ap-pellee could legitimately maintain and as to whether analysis of King's work shows satisfactory performance under those expectations.
. King's firing came two months and two weeks following Carlson's receipt of notice that King had filed an EEO complaint with DOD's Office of Complaint Investigations. This length of time between Carlson's notice of the complaint and the adverse employment action is sufficiently long so as to weaken significantly the inference of causation between the two events. Yet, in the context of this particular employment situation, this length of time does not undercut the inference of causation enough to render King's prima facie claim unsuccessful. Here, Carlson and Whitaker committed to ongoing reviews of King's performance that set the end of the academic school year as the natural decision point, thus making likely that any discharge, lawful or unlawful, would come at that time.