Opinion ID: 204284
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rowland as Decisionmaker

Text: During her deposition, Rowland testified that she fired Schandelmeier, that no one else fired Schandelmeier, and that no one else recommended to her that Schandelmeier be fired. At trial, however, Rowland testified that McDonald had recommended that Schandelmeier be fired, although Rowland did not know what information McDonald considered or why she recommended termination. Rowland also testified at trial that she fired Schandelmeier because, two or three weeks before August 1st, she had witnessed Schandelmeier not interacting with day-campers. She testified that Schandelmeier had failed to prepare camp schedules and that parents were complaining. When pressed, though, Rowland admitted that no parent had actually spoken to her or complained about the availability of camp schedules. Nevertheless, Rowland claimed she drafted Schandelmeier's termination letter on August 1st as soon as she arrived in the office because this was an important thing that needed to get done that morning, so that was the first thing that I did when I got into my office. As in McDonald's version, Rowland testified that she acted without knowledge of the J.J. incident or Adams's last straw memo. But Rowland also was confronted byand the jury heardher earlier deposition testimony in which she stated that she discussed the J.J. incident with Williams on the morning of August 1st. Also, Adams testified that she was certain that she had called and spoken to Rowland on July 31st. The jury was not obligated to believe Rowland's explanation for why she decided to fire Schandelmeier, or even that she was the decisionmaker at all, let alone that the timing was innocently coincidental. To the contrary, given all of the conflicts in the evidence, including the conflicts between the different defense witnesses' testimony, the jury heard sufficient evidence to have concluded that it was more likely than not that Rowland knew of the J.J. incident when she drafted the termination letter, and that Adams had a decisive influence on the termination decision. Regardless of whether McDonald or Rowland was the actual decisionmaker, the parties' briefs have focused on pinpointing the details of who, what, and when about the J.J. incident, as though all discriminatory bias in this case stems from that one event. The jury, however, was not required to see it that way. The J.J. incident provided strong evidence of Adams's racial bias, but the jury was not required to assume that Adams's bias affected her only at that specific time with respect to that single incident. Nor was the jury required to assume that the termination decision could have been tainted by Adams's influencesingular or notonly if the decision could be connected to that one incident. Under the cat's paw theory, the appropriate inquiry is whether the biased Adams had influence over the decision to terminate Schandelmeier, and, if so, how much influence she had, without limiting the inquiry to the single incident where that bias was displayed so flagrantly.