Opinion ID: 780155
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: EQUAL PROTECTION CLAIMS AND QUALIFIED IMMUNITY UNDER SAUCIER v. KATZ

Text: 20 The equal protection claims asserted under §§ 1981 and 1983 against Hughes in his individual capacity were brought by two classes of plaintiffs — a class of white male faculty and a class of female plaintiffs comprised of both white and minority women. On appeal, Rudebusch argues that all along [b]oth the subclass of non-minority males, and the subclass of females, brought ... equal protection claims, based on the racial discrimination in the salary increase. Reply Br. at 17. Thus, for purposes of the constitutional claims, Rudebusch would have us focus solely on the pay adjustments made to minority male faculty, not to female faculty. Because the outcome is ultimately unaffected, for analytical simplicity we take Rudebusch at his word and consider these claims under the framework of racial classifications in reaching our conclusion that Hughes is entitled to immunity. 21 Hughes asserted the defense of qualified immunity as to all claims against him. As the Supreme Court reminds us, qualified immunity is an entitlement not to stand trial, that is an immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S., 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) (emphasis in original). As a consequence, qualified immunity safeguards `all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.' Brewster v. Bd. of Educ. of the Lynwood Unified Sch. Dist., 149 F.3d 971, 977 (9th Cir.1998) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)). This standard allows ample room for reasonable error on the part of the [official]. Knox v. Southwest Airlines, 124 F.3d 1103, 1107 (9th Cir.1997). It encompasses both mistakes of fact and mistakes of law. Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 507, 98 S.Ct. 2894, 57 L.Ed.2d 895 (1978). 22 The district court here proceeded without the benefit of the Supreme Court's recent teaching in Saucier v. Katz, which clarified the proper paradigm for assessing a qualified immunity claim. After Saucier, we ask a threshold question: Taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting injury, do the facts alleged show the officer's conduct violated a constitutional right? 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151. Only after determining whether the right was violated do we proceed to the next step of this two-part inquiry: whether the law was so clearly established that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. Id. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151 (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987)). The concern of the immunity inquiry is to acknowledge that reasonable mistakes can be made as to the legal constraints on particular [official] conduct. Id. at 205, 121 S.Ct. 2151. Central to our inquiry here, this analysis occurs in the specific context of the situation ... confronted by the official. Id. at 202, 107 S.Ct. 3034.
23 Before turning to the heart of the qualified immunity inquiry, we must first determine whether Rudebusch has established an equal protection violation; [i]f no constitutional right would have been violated were [Rudebusch's] allegations established, there is no necessity for further inquiries concerning qualified immunity. Id. at 201, 107 S.Ct. 3034. Rudebusch has overcome this first hurdle of the Saucier inquiry not only because of his reliance on the after-the-fact Gantz/Miller study, but also because the Chambers study relied upon by Hughes raises serious concerns about permissible inferences of discrimination. 24 We begin the initial step of the Saucier analysis by noting that courts have yet to assess the constitutional limitations inherent in decisions to rectify pay inequity based on race. Nevertheless, the general rule is well enough established that race-based classifications must withstand strict scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment. See City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 493-94, 109 S.Ct. 706, 102 L.Ed.2d 854 (1989). Thus, for a state-sponsored program to survive strict scrutiny, there must be a compelling governmental interest in employing a racial classification, and the classification must be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. See id.; see also Coral Constr. Co. v. King County, 941 F.2d 910, 916 (9th Cir.1991). 25 A governmental interest is sufficiently compelling to justify racial classifications only if actual, identifiable discrimination has occurred. Coral, 941 F.2d at 916. We have recognized that statistical comparisons represent an invaluable tool in evaluating the extent of discrimination warranting a response. Id. at 918. Looking to the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in the Title VII disparate impact area, we have concluded for purposes of equal protection, [w]here gross statistical disparities can be shown, they alone may in a proper case constitute prima facie proof of a pattern or practice of discrimination. Id. (quoting Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 307-08, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977)). 26 Hughes supported his motion for summary judgment with two types of statistical evidence: (1) the 1993 Chambers study; and (2) the 1993 affirmative action summary report. CHAMBERS STUDY 27 In critique of the Chambers study, Rudebusch relies primarily on the after-the-fact Gantz/Miller study. Although the Gantz/Miller study found pay disparities for more than half of NAU's minority faculty, it expressly found them to be statistically insignificant, thus rejecting any notions that adjustments were necessary to remedy actual racial discrimination. In other words, Gantz/Miller concluded as a matter of statistical analysis that any differences were not sufficiently gross as to reliably prove that inequity [was] due to... minority status. Quite simply, taking the Gantz/Miller study and its critique of the Chambers report as true, there was no evidence of actual discrimination. 28 In keeping with Saucier's suggestion, we find it important to emphasize several aspects of the Chambers analysis that would make future reliance upon such a study problematic as a matter of law. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151 (In the course of determining whether a constitutional right was violated on the premises alleged, a court might find it necessary to set forth principles which will become the basis for a holding that a right is clearly established. This is the process for the law's elaboration from case to case....). 29 First, we express concern about inferring discrimination from a study in which the highest single pay disparity for ethnic minorities fell 2.0 standard deviations away from predicted salary — but produced a lowest statistically unexplainable difference of $87 between ethnic minorities and their Anglo counterparts. In addition, this was even less than the $296 difference measured the previous academic year. 30 As the executive summary of the Chambers study itself indicated, [t]he threshold for evidence of salary inequity's generally considered 2.0 standard deviations, but at least in the Title VII context, we rejected the proposition that standard deviations of 1.3 and 2.46 were sufficiently representative, at least on their own, to make an inference of discrimination. Gay v. Waiters' & Dairy Lunchmen's Union, 694 F.2d 531, 551 (9th Cir.1982). We came to this conclusion in the same breath as saying that [i]t would be improper to posit a quantitative threshold above which statistical evidence of[discrimination] is sufficient as a matter of law to infer discriminatory intent, and below which it is insufficient as a matter of law, id., while also recognizing the Supreme Court's admonition that the usefulness of statistical evidence depends on all of the surrounding facts and circumstances. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 340, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977) (quoted in Gay, 694 F.2d at 553). Consequently, we need not decide whether discrimination may ever be inferred from a probability that is this low 1 to hold that, absent other evidence, a statistical difference of this order of magnitude does not, and by itself cannot, show a conspicuous imbalance in salaries such as to justify the salary adjustments here. 31 Heeding the Supreme Court's directive to look at the surrounding facts and circumstances of the Chambers study, we discover further reason to discount permissible inferences of discrimination, namely the fact that while over half the minority faculty were making less than predicted salary, a significant percentage of white male faculty were also making less than predicted. There were 493 faculty members included in the 1993 regression. If the University discriminated, we would expect minorities (or women) to be paid less than the amount predicted while non-minority males would be paid more. In fact, eighty-five female and minority male faculty members out of the 493 were below predicted salary, but so were 192 non-minority males as well. Though this may show that almost everyone at NAU was being underpaid, the existence of across-the-board disparities would seem to undercut the study's ability to demonstrate that minorities were discriminated against simply because their salaries fell below predicted. This evidence falls far short of showing conspicuous imbalance along ethnic or gender lines. 32 As the Gantz/Miller report on equity pay adjustments notes, neither before nor after the 1993 adjustment was there a statistically significant difference in salaries between males and females or between majority and minority members of the faculty. While this suggests that the adjustments themselves did not create a conspicuous imbalance to Rudebusch's disadvantage, it also shows that adjusting salaries in the first place was not urgently necessary to correct a conspicuous imbalance. 33 As a final point, we have concerns about the way in which Hughes calculated and made the adjustments in this case. Particularly when, as was the case here, adjustments depend upon a regression analysis that does not account for performance factors such as academic credentials, performance, merit, teaching, research, or service — factors that are the major criteria for faculty compensation on campuses across the country — the failure to make some sort of more individualized determination of what sort of adjustments are warranted in any given case will not satisfy strict scrutiny. 34 This is not to say, however, that we dictate which factors must be included in regression studies. As the Supreme Court reminds us, the propriety of controlling for particular variables in a regression analysis goes to weight rather than admissibility. 2 See Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 400, 106 S.Ct. 3000, 92 L.Ed.2d 315 (1986); see also Maitland, 155 F.3d at 1017 (for finder of fact to consider the variables that have been left out of an analysis, and the reasons given for the omissions, and then to determine the weigh to accord to the study's results). Rather, we emphasize that when adjustments are warranted by permissible inferences of discrimination, the school must at some point ensure that the adjustments given are somehow correlated to individual merit. As Hughes himself acknowledged, Arizona State University (under the same impetus to integrate its faculty as NAU) managed to provide such a individualized claim process for all faculty below predicted salary. So, too, did the University of Minnesota when faced with a similar problem. See Maitland, 155 F.3d at 1015. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REPORT 35 We recognize that Hughes did not rely solely on the Chambers study when inferring discrimination. In particular, he also justifies his salary decisions by pointing to the disproportionate flight of minority faculty that became apparent upon his review of the federal affirmative action report. See Gay, 694 F.2d at 553 (circumstantial evidence of discrimination can be used to bolster otherwise inconclusive statistical proof by bringing the cold numbers convincingly to life) (quoting Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 339, 97 S.Ct. 1843). But as reasonable as it may have been to infer discrimination from these figures, the fact remains that the report itself did not attempt to isolate the reasons for the University's failure to retain these faculty. Making all inferences in Rudebusch's favor, as we must at this stage, Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, there could be numerous nondiscriminatory reasons for the minority faculty's flight. Thus, this additional evidence cannot save Hughes from our conclusion that at least as matter of law that is now clearly established, Hughes' actions would not survive strict judicial scrutiny. 36 We conclude that Rudebusch established an equal protection violation. There can be no compelling government interest in adjusting salaries on the basis of race when the differences in pay are neither statistically significant nor conspicuously out of balance overall; there is little or no evidence of de jure discrimination; and no anecdotal examples of discriminatory treatment are offered. For sure there was evidence that NAU was subject to a federally mandated affirmative action plan that, among other things, required it to ensure pay equity to integrate minority faculty into the University, and that some minority members of the faculty had left (although there is no indication why). However, the main evidence of pay inequity, and the study upon which the University acted in making the 1993 pay adjustments, was the flawed Chambers study.
37 Although Rudebusch has established an equal protection violation, we must still ask whether a reasonable official in Hughes' position would understand that what he is doing violates that right, Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, keeping in mind that officials will not be liable for mere mistakes in judgment, whether the mistake is one of fact or one of law. Butz, 438 U.S. at 507, 98 S.Ct. 2894. With this perspective in mind, we conclude that Hughes is entitled to qualified immunity. Our conclusion rests on a single factor — timing. The law in this area was not clearly established at the time Hughes made his decision nor did Hughes have the benefit of post-decision analyses and information. 38 We start with the proposition that at the time of the decision, the general rules were well enough established, for example, that the Fourteenth Amendment requires all racial classifications to survive strict scrutiny. See City of Richmond, 488 U.S. 469, 109 S.Ct. 706, 102 L.Ed.2d 854; Coral Constr. Co., 941 F.2d at 915-16 (applying strict scrutiny to county minority set-aside program). This is what we held on Hughes's interlocutory appeal. But the specific contours of the law pertaining to pay equity were not well developed or sufficiently clear at the time. See Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034 (no qualified immunity only if contours of the right are sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right). Saucier makes it clear that this is the level at which we are to measure Hughes's response, because determining whether the law was clearly established must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition. 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151. 39 Although there are numerous cases involving salary discrimination, many of them in educational institutions, most arise in the context of Title VII. These cases shed a fair amount of light on the persuasiveness of various regression analyses, but not much on applicable constitutional constraints. While these cases (and others) point up the serious weaknesses in NAU's approach, they do not necessarily indicate that the Constitution was implicated. One need only look at the complexity of the models at issue in reported cases, and the discussion on statistics and multiple regression in the Federal Judicial Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, 3 to realize how tricky it is to measure whether sex and ethnicity are a significant determinant of salary. Two more recent opinions, Maitland, 155 F.3d 1013, and Smith, 84 F.3d 672 (4th Cir. 1996), refine the parameters, but neither was around to guide Hughes's decision. 40 Rudebusch suggests that the law clearly prohibits adjustments to minority salaries without also giving consideration to non-minority faculty whose compensation falls below their predicted salaries for reasons wholly unrelated to racial discrimination. To begin, as a matter of law, courts have yet to consider for purposes of equal protection whether pay adjustments focused solely on disparities stemming from perceived discrimination in minority salaries violate the rights of those individuals whose salaries are not considered for adjustment. Thus, it cannot be said that the law was clearly established on this nuance of pay equity at the time Hughes implemented these adjustments. 41 It should now be clear, however, that a conspicuous imbalance in salaries is not manifest by a salary disparity which is not statistically significant and that, absent other evidence, it will not be objectively reasonable for a university official to approve a salary plan based on a flawed multiple regression analysis which shows no statistically significant salary discrimination. However, because qualified immunity is to protect `all but the plainly incompetent,' Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151 (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)), Hughes should not be denied his right to seek it on account of the statistical infirmities alone. 42 Our conclusion with respect to qualified immunity also rests on identifying what information was available to Hughes at the time he made his decision, as distinguished from analyses and information brought to light after the fact and in litigation. Rudebusch makes much of the district court's conclusion that the correct regression analysis of the Gantz/ Miller follow-up reveals that there is no statistically significant disparity between the salaries of males and females, but he fails to recognize — as the district court did not — that the relevant inquiry is not whether, in hindsight, Hughes acted unreasonably, but instead whether his decision was reasonable in light of the information that he possessed at the time of implementation. See Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641, 107 S.Ct. 3034; cf. Brewster, 149 F.3d at 977 (in order to ensure that government officials receive necessary guidance, courts should focus the qualified immunity inquiry at the level of implementation). 43 At the time Hughes made his decision, he was faced with a federally mandated and approved affirmative action plan that required him to increase the retention of minority faculty and to ensure pay equity as a means of integrating minority faculty into the University's community. He was faced with a situation where, despite a significant number of new hires, NAU still lost over a quarter of its minority faculty in the two years preceding the adjustments. Against this backdrop, Hughes was presented with the University's annual equity analysis. But in making his decision, Hughes did not have the Gantz/Miller report or any of its related analysis. 44 Because we recognize that the overriding purpose of the qualified immunity defense is the need to protect officials who are required to exercise their discretion, Butz, 438 U.S. at 506, 98 S.Ct. 2894, in light of the undeveloped state of the law at the time and the lack of the more compelling Gantz/Miller study, we are hesitant to second-guess Hughes' judgment, much less play the role of überstatistician only after all the results are in. Therefore, whether Hughes could have been legally mistaken as to the degree of statistical certainty required to demonstrate actual discrimination or whether he could have been factually mistaken as to the true extent of disparity justifying his decision, neither the law nor the facts were so clearly established at the time of his decision that Hughes reasonably should have known he was violating Rudebusch's constitutional rights. 45 Likewise, we conclude that Hughes reasonably exercised his discretion in tailoring the adjustments to address the perceived disparities. As a preliminary matter, we recognize that the district court allowed the issue of narrow tailoring to go to the jury, despite the Supreme Court's repeated efforts to stress the importance of resolving immunity questions at the earliest possible stage in litigation. Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 227, 112 S.Ct. 534, 116 L.Ed.2d 589 (1991) (per curiam). Nevertheless, because the issue was resolved by the jury, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50, we review the evidence in the light most favorable to Hughes and reverse only if the evidence permits but one reasonable conclusion, one that is contrary to the jury's finding. Monroe v. City of Phoenix, 248 F.3d 851, 861 (9th Cir. 2001). Given the standard, reversal is not justified on this score.