Opinion ID: 6330347
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Gosby’s prima facie case

Text: The district court found that Gosby had carried her burden to establish a prima facie case except for failing to demonstrate a causal link between her disability and her termination. Gosby had argued that she had established the necessary causal connection based on the “exceptionally close temporal proximity between” her diabetic episode that caused her to be sent home briefly and her termination. The district court rejected that there was any significance to the fact that only six days passed between her diabetic attack and layoff since Gosby’s employment was to be temporary anyway. The district court believed that if temporal proximity alone were sufficient to establish a prima facie showing in a case with only brief employment, “Apache would only be able to terminate Gosby during a small portion of her employment without being at risk of a temporal proximity argument. We disagree with the district court. “The burden of establishing a prima facie case of disparate treatment is not onerous.” Turner v. Kansas City S. Ry. Co., 675 F.3d 887, 892 (5th Cir. 2012) (quoting Texas Dep’t of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 253 (1981)). In retaliation cases, “temporal proximity between protected activity and [adverse employment action] is sometimes enough to establish causation at the prima facie stage.” See 5 No. 21-40406 Porter v. Houma Terrebonne Hous. Auth. Bd. of Comm’rs, 810 F.3d 940, 948– 49 (5th Cir. 2015). This guidance is qualified, though: “[T]he protected act and the adverse employment action [must be] ‘very close’ in time.” Id. (alterations in original). The principle holds for discrimination cases as well. A relevant precedent is our recent decision in Lyons v. Katy Independent School District, 964 F.3d 298 (5th Cir. 2020). There, we found error in a district court’s finding that a “one-week temporal proximity between” a protected activity and an adverse action was insufficient to establish a prima facie case. Id. at 306. Apache, though, of course insists the district court was correct to conclude that employment that by its very nature is to be short term must be treated differently. We can agree at least to the extent of saying that facts matter. Evaluating temporal proximity in the context of employment that is understood to be short-term cannot ignore that context. How long her employment was expected to last may have been unknown, but all we are concerned with here is whether Gosby carried her light burden of showing a prima facie case. The evidence was that Gosby was terminated immediately after an event that highlighted her ADA-protected disability. If in fact her short-term position was to end for other reasons at the same time, that can be shown by the employer as part of its response. Gosby, a new and disabled employee, was included in the reduction in force. Employment was continuing for many, and perhaps most, other scaffolding employees. The proximity of her diabetic episode on the job and her termination was sufficient to constitute a prima facie case that she was included in the group to be terminated for ADAviolative reasons. If failure to satisfy this first step in the burden shifting framework was the only reason for summary judgment, we would reverse simply for that error. Here, though, the district court also found Gosby failed to show 6 No. 21-40406 Apache’s explanation for her termination was pretextual. Thus, we continue.