Opinion ID: 1460562
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Akron Position

Text: The district court found that Moss had made her prima facie case with respect to the Akron position. It further found that UPS had put forth a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for denying her the positionas Moss has conceded, she did not sign the intent sheet that was posted in August 2000. Moss asserted that UPS's reason was pretextual as was evidenced by the fact that the intent sheet was posted for only one week, and was posted six months before the position would be available, whereas by common practice, intent sheets were posted until about one or two weeks before a given position opened. The district court rejected Moss's pretext argument, reasoning that UPS's failure to follow its usual posting procedure did not, in itself, create a material issue of fact from which a jury could infer that UPS was motivated by race in taking down the intent sheet. The district court reasoned that because Moss did not present any evidence showing that UPS knew she was interested in the customer-counter-clerk position until after the intent sheet had been posted and the position filled, a jury could not infer that UPS took down the intent sheet to work a harm against Moss. We agree. As a matter of common sense, the only way that UPS's decision to take down the intent sheet could be evidence of racial discrimination is if UPS had reason to know that Moss was actually interested in the customer-counter-clerk position. Moss has not cited anything in the record indicating that UPS was on notice that Moss was interested in the position until well after the intent sheet had been posted and the position had been filled. Because Moss's theory of pretext is based solely on unsupported speculation that somehow UPS knew she wanted the customer-counter-clerk position, we conclude that the district court was correct in finding that Moss failed to establish evidence of pretext. Accordingly, we affirm the district court insofar as it granted summary judgment to UPS on Moss's disparate-treatment claim based on the Akron position.