Opinion ID: 164384
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Default Tenure

Text: 31 Dr. Meiners claims that the University's refusal to accept her claim of entitlement to default tenure was in retaliation for her filing of discrimination charges. The district court determined that the denial of default tenure was an adverse employment action independent of the denial of merit-based tenure (which Dr. Meiners does not contest), despite the fact that Dr. Meiners was no worse off after the denial than she was before the denial. Meiners, 239 F.Supp.2d at 1192-93. The University does not challenge this finding on appeal. Both parties therefore agree that Dr. Meiners has established the first two elements of the required prima facie case. 32 The final element of the prima facie case is a causal connection between Dr. Meiners's protected conduct and the denial of her default tenure request. Dr. Meiners argues that the close temporal proximity between her filing of discrimination actions and the University's rejection of her tenure claim supports an inference of causal connection. We have held that unless the [adverse action] is very closely connected in time to the protected activity, the plaintiff must rely on additional evidence beyond mere temporal proximity to establish causation. Anderson v. Coors Brewing Co., 181 F.3d 1171, 1179 (10th Cir.1999) (emphasis in original). A six-week period between protected activity and adverse action may be sufficient, standing alone, to show causation, but a three-month period, standing alone, is insufficient. Id. 33 Dr. Meiners filed her EEOC complaint on February 6, 2001. Three and a half months passed before the University denied her default tenure claim, on May 18, 2001. Dr. Meiners attempts to shorten this time period by arguing that the relevant starting point is not the date of her protected activity (i.e. the day she filed the EEOC charge) but rather the date that the retaliating officials at the University became aware of her charge. But this argument only helps Dr. Meiners's case at the margins. The EEOC sent a Notice of Charge of Discrimination to the University on February 23, which required a response by the University by March 7. Provost Shulenberger testified that, although he could not remember when he first became aware of Dr. Meiners's case, it was likely that he was consulted about the University's response. Thus, it seems likely that he found out about the discrimination filing sometime between February 23 and March 7. Therefore, the elapsed time between his awareness of the protected conduct and the adverse action was a minimum of about two months and one week and a maximum of just under three months. These events are, under our precedents, probably too far apart for Dr. Meiners to establish causation by temporal proximity alone. 34 Moreover, any inference as to retaliatory motive raised by temporal proximity is undermined by the fact that the May 18 tenure denial occurred only two weeks after Dr. Meiners's May 4 letter requesting default tenure. Temporal proximity is much less suspicious when the adverse action is the denial of an affirmative request the plaintiff made subsequent to the protected activity. See Kelley v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., 220 F.3d 1174, 1179 (10th Cir.2000) (holding that close temporal proximity is less likely to support an inference of retaliation in failure-to-hire cases because employers naturally make hiring decisions soon after receiving applications). Dr. Meiners must therefore provide evidence other than temporal proximity to establish a prima facie case. 35 Dr. Meiners points to two additional facts that she claims establish a causal connection. First, she claims that she can establish a causal connection by demonstrating a pattern of retaliatory conduct that began soon after the protected activity and culminated finally in the denial of default tenure. See Marx v. Schnuck Mkts. Inc., 76 F.3d 324, 329 (10th Cir.1996) (holding that the close temporal proximity requirement should not be read too restrictively where a pattern of discrimination begins soon after protected activity and only culminates later in actual discharge). Here, the alleged pattern consists only of the denial of graduate faculty status and the denial of default tenure itself. Two instances, one of which is not even an independently adverse action, that occur four months apart do not constitute a particularly impressive pattern of retaliatory conduct. In addition, the pattern did not begin soon after Dr. Meiners engaged in protected activity, as almost four months elapsed between the filing of the KHRC complaint and the denial of graduate faculty status. This so-called pattern therefore does not support an inference of a causal connection. 36 Finally, Dr. Meiners claims that the University's denial of default tenure violated its own policies or practices, and that this suggests a causal connection between the denial and her protected activity. As evidence of the University's policy on default tenure, Dr. Meiners refers to the incident from 1973, when the University granted tenure to certain faculty members who had been hired under a 5-year probationary period and were not given timely notice and tenure reviews because the University switched to a 7-year period. However, as the district court pointed out, this 30-year-old incident does not support any inferences about the motives of the University in Dr. Meiners's case: 37 For obvious reasons, plaintiff is not similarly situated to any of these faculty members; the University did not lengthen the tenure track or otherwise change the tenure rules in any relevant respect during plaintiff's probationary period. Furthermore, the University's treatment of [them] reveals no unwritten policy or practice on the relevant issue in this case: whether less than full time teaching for one semester should extend the probationary period for one academic year or merely for one semester. Plaintiff cannot seriously contend that the University has an unwritten policy or practice of granting tenure by default in all cases which involve disputed probationary periods. 38 Meiners, 239 F.Supp.2d at 1194. Thus, the events of 1973 do not establish a causal connection between the denial of default tenure and Dr. Meiners's discrimination complaints. Dr. Meiners therefore failed to establish a prima facie case, and the district court properly granted summary judgment to the defendants on this claim. 2