Opinion ID: 67472
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Racial animus

Text: Spears first argues that he provided evidence of Patterson’s racial animus by citing five occasions where supervisors Valencia and Gallegos directed derogatory comments or racial slurs towards him. Evidence of animus towards a protected group may indicate pretext. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 151 (2000). The district court held that evidence of the comments alone was insufficient to raise a fact issue on pretext. Spears failed to provide the Court with the dates of four allegedly discriminatory comments.3 Spears did provide the date for one comment made by Gallegos near the time Spears was discharged. Gallegos told Spears that he no longer disliked African Americans, just whites. This comment, however, is vague. This Court has explained that “comments that are ‘vague and remote in time’ are insufficient to establish discrimination.” Brown v. CSC Logic, Inc., 82 F.3d 651, 655 (5th Cir. 1996) (quoting Guthrie v. Tifco Indus., 941 F.2d 374 (5th Cir. 1991)). Spears argues that the district court took a narrow view of what comments may constitute indications of racial animus. He argues that the Seventh Circuit has given greater credit to similar evidence. See Hunt v. City of Markham, Ill., 219 F.3d 649, 652 (7th Cir. 2000) (finding that summary judgment was inappropriate where a decision-maker made repeated racist and ageist remarks). Spears argues that in the context of the other un-dated occurrences when African Americans were called derogatory names and considered bad luck, a jury could reasonably conclude that Gallegos’s comment indicates racial animus. None of this undermines the district court’s conclusion. In Hunt, the Seventh Circuit dealt with comments from decision-makers that were constant, 3 Other comments included the use of the term “mayates,” which is Spanish slang for dark skinned people and means dung beatle. Spears alleges that he was ridiculed for his “ghetto” habits and for dressing like a “gangster.” He also accuses Gallegos of saying that it was “bad luck to have blacks on a rig.” 6 No. 09-10048 specific, and proximate in time. See id. Unlike the plaintiff in Hunt, Spears has provided evidence that many employees on his oil rig made racially derogatory remarks but could neither date them nor link them to the decision-maker. As stated above, comments which are distant in time are insufficient to support a claim of discrimination. Brown, F.3d at 655. The one comment Spears can date is from the decision-maker but only reveals that Gallegos may have harbored racial animus towards African Americans at a point in the past. Such vague evidence does not raise a genuine issue of material fact suggesting pretext for discrimination. See, e.g., Petts v. Rockledge Furniture LLC, 534 F.3d 715, 723 (7th Cir. 2008); Auguster v. Vermillion Parish School Bd., 249 F.3d 400, 404 (5th Cir. 2001). Spears also argues that this Court’s approach towards comments as evidence of pretext or racial motivation as articulated in Brown was invalidated by the Supreme Court in Reeves. The Court in Reeves denounced the use of a four-part test that was articulated in Brown. Reeves, 530 U.S. at 151. The test from Brown required that the comments be (1) related to the protected class, (2) proximate in time to the adverse employment action, (3) made by an individual with authority over the employment decision at issue, and (4) related to the employment decision at issue. Brown, 82 F.3d at 655. However, Reeves and its progeny explain that derogatory comments must be analyzed according to their content and their speaker. Russell v. McKinney Hospital Venture, 235 F.3d 219, 226 (5th Cir. 2000). The only comment that is attributable to the decision-maker in this case is Gallegos’s statement that he no longer harbors racial animus towards African Americans. This statement is simply insufficient to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to pretext for discrimination because it is vague and only demonstrates past, if any, animus.