Opinion ID: 6536842
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: After 36 years of service with the Alaska Railroad Corporation - most of those years as a conductor - an African-American man applied for a newly created managerial trainmaster position, but he was not chosen. He brought an unsuccessful internal racial discrimination complaint. He brought a similar complaint before the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights, and it was denied. He then appealed to the superior court, and it ultimately affirmed the Commission's determination that he had failed to carry his burden of showing racial discrimination. On appeal to us, the man contends that the Railroad's stated reasons for not hiring him were pretextual. Although there is some basis for his arguments that a hiring panel member may have harbored racial prejudice and that the explanation that he was not chosen because of poor interview performance was a post-hoc rationalization, we review the Commission's determination only for substantial supporting evidence. Under this deferential standard of review, we conclude that the evidence detracting from the Commission's determination is not dramatically disproportionate to the supporting evidence. Because substantial evidence in the record thus supported the Commission's determination, we affirm the superior court's decision upholding it.