Opinion ID: 160034
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Elements of the Prima Facie Case

Text: 15 In McDonnell Douglas, the Supreme Court enumerated the elements required in order for a plaintiff to establish a prima facie case in the failure to hire context. These are: (i) plaintiff belongs to a protected class; (ii) plaintiff applied and was qualified for a job for which the employer was seeking applicants; (iii) despite being qualified, the plaintiff was rejected; and (iv) after plaintiff's rejection, the position remained open and the employer continued to seek applicants from persons of [plaintiff's] qualifications. McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802. 16 Significantly, the Supreme Court did not indicate in McDonnell Douglas that a plaintiff is required to show that the defendant hired someone outside of the protected class in order to make out a prima facie case. 5 See Perry, 199 F.3d at 1136 n.6. In International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 358 n.44, 97 S. Ct. 1843, 52 L. Ed. 2d 396 (1977), the Supreme Court explained some of the policy reasons underlying its formulation of the McDonnell Douglas prima facie case: 17 The McDonnell Douglas case involved an individual complainant seeking to prove one instance of unlawful discrimination. An employer's isolated decision to reject an applicant who belongs to a racial minority does not show that the decision was racially based. Although the McDonnell Douglas formula does not require direct proof of discrimination, it does demand that the alleged discriminatee demonstrate at least that his rejection did not result from the two most common legitimate reasons on which an employer might rely to reject a job applicant: an absolute or relative lack of qualifications or the absence of a vacancy in the job sought. Elimination of these reasons for the refusal to hire is sufficient, absent other explanation, to create an inference that the decision was a discriminatory one. 18 The Court recognized in McDonnell Douglas that although the articulation of the plaintiff's prima facie test might vary somewhat depending on the context of the claim and the nature of the adverse employment action alleged, McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802, the essential purpose served by a prima facie test remains the same. The prima facie case serves . . . [to] eliminate[] the most common nondiscriminatory reasons for the plaintiff's rejection. Texas Dep't of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 253-54, 101 S. Ct. 1089, 67 L. Ed. 2d 207 (1981). The critical prima facie inquiry in all cases is whether the plaintiff has demonstrated that the adverse employment action occurred under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination. 6 Id. at 253. As the very name 'prima facie case' suggests, there must be at least a logical connection between each element of the prima facie case and the illegal discrimination for which it establishes a legally mandatory, rebuttable presumption. O'Connor v. Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U.S. 308, 311-12, 116 S. Ct. 1307, 134 L. Ed. 2d 433 (1996) (citation and quotations omitted). 19 The Supreme Court has never addressed the question of whether comparison to a person outside of the protected class is required as part of the fourth-prong showing of plaintiff's prima facie case in discriminatory discharge cases. See St. Mary's Honor Center, 509 U.S. at 527 n.1 (Souter, J., dissenting) (The majority . . . mentions that [the plaintiff's] position was filled by a white male. This court has not directly addressed the question of whether the personal characteristics of someone chosen to replace a Title VII plaintiff are material, and that issue is not before us today.) 20 This circuit's earliest discriminatory discharge cases all adopted the four-part prima facie test as articulated in McDonnell Douglas. That is, the fourth prong only required the plaintiff to show that his or her job was not eliminated after the discharge. None of our earliest cases required that the replacement employee be a member of a nonprotected class as part of the plaintiff's case, nor indeed was any comparison to nonprotected employees required as part of a prima facie case. See Carlile v. South Routt Sch. Dist., 739 F.2d 1496, 1500 (10th Cir. 1984) (Title VII); Crawford v. Northeastern Oklahoma State Univ., 713 F.2d 586, 588 (10th Cir. 1983) (Title VII); Trotter v. Todd, 719 F.2d 346, 349 (10th Cir. 1983) (Title VII; demotion claim); Williams v. Colorado Springs, Colo., Sch. Dist. # 11, 641 F.2d 835, 843 (10th Cir. 1981) (Title VII; nonrenewal of employment contract claim); Lujan v. State of New Mexico Health & Soc. Servs. Dept., 624 F.2d 968, 970 (10th Cir. 1980) (Title VII); Ray v. Safeway Stores, 614 F.2d 729, 730 (10th Cir. 1980); EEOC v. University of N.M., 504 F.2d 1296, 1305 (10th Cir. 1974) (Title VII). 21 Some confusion regarding the fourth prong of the plaintiff's prima facie case in a discharge situation crept into our nomenclature in later cases where, occasionally, we would articulate the fourth prong of the prima facie case as requiring a plaintiff to show that the replacement employee was of nonprotected status. However, the language in most of these cases may be characterized as dicta. See Aramburu v. The Boeing Co., 112 F.3d 1398, 1403 (10th Cir. 1997) (Title VII; § 1981); Elmore v. Capstan, Inc., 58 F.3d 525, 529 (10th Cir. 1995) (Title VII); Murray v. City of Sapulpa, 45 F.3d 1417, 1420 (10th Cir. 1995) (Title VII); Cole v. Ruidoso Mun. Sch., 43 F.3d 1373, 1380 (10th Cir. 1994) (Title VII); EEOC v. Flasher Co., Inc., 986 F.2d 1312, 1316 (10th Cir. 1992) (Title VII); McAlester v. United Air Lines, Inc., 851 F.2d 1249, 1260 (10th Cir. 1988) (§ 1981); Carino v. University of Okla. Bd. of Regents, 750 F.2d 815, 818 (10th Cir. 1984) (Title VII); Whatley v. Skaggs Cos., Inc., 707 F.2d 1129, 1135 (10th Cir. 1983) (Title VII; § 1981). The language in these cases regarding the formulation of the fourth prong of the plaintiff's prima facie case may be dismissed as dicta for one of the following four reasons: either (1) this court assumed that plaintiff had established a prima facie case without deciding the issue; (2) evidence was presented by the plaintiff that his or her replacement was of nonprotected status and thus the necessity of making such a showing was not an issue; (3) the case went to trial 7 ; or (4) this court decided that plaintiff had failed to establish a different prong of the prima facie case. 22 In Allen v. Denver Public School Board, 928 F.2d 978, 985 (10th Cir. 1991), a Title VII case, the district court required a plaintiff alleging wrongful termination to show as part of a prima facie case that [n]onminorities in the same or similar situations were not disciplined the same or similarly. This court affirmed the district court's decision to dismiss the plaintiff's claim for her failure to establish a prima facie case by making this showing. See id. at 985-86. Allen's holding, however, should be disapproved as inconsistent with our earlier precedent which does not require the replacement employee to be of nonprotected status. See Haynes v. Williams, 88 F.3d 898, 900 n.4 (10th Cir. 1996) ([W]hen faced with an intra-circuit conflict, a panel should follow earlier, settled precedent over a subsequent deviation therefrom.). As noted earlier, many of our earlier cases required as the fourth prong of the plaintiff's prima facie case only that the job was not eliminated after the plaintiff's discharge without requiring that the replacement employee be of a nonprotected status. See, for example, Ray v. Safeway Stores, a Title VII case, where this court held that a plaintiff who was discharged for insubordination made out a prima facie case by showing that after his discharge the job remained available. Ray, 614 F.2d at 730; see also Crawford, 713 F.2d at 588; Williams, 641 F.2d at 843. In fact, this court observed in Brown v. Parker-Hannifin Corp., 746 F.2d 1407, 1410 n.3 (10th Cir. 1984), that some other courts had adopted prima facie tests stricter than that set forth in Ray, specifically noting the requirement in several other circuits that plaintiff show that the employer . . . assigned a non-minority person to her job. 23 The most definitive Tenth Circuit case on the formulation of the fourth prong of a plaintiff's prima facie case pursuant to McDonnell Douglas is Perry v. Woodward. There, we held that the fourth prong of a plaintiff's prima facie test in a discharge case should be the same as for a failure to hire claim. See Perry, 199 F.3d at 1140. Thus, as in a failure to hire case, a plaintiff alleging discriminatory discharge ordinarily need not show that a person outside of the protected class was hired to fill his former position in order to make out a prima facie case of discrimination. 8 See Perry, 199 F.3d at 1137-38. This is because comparison to a person outside of the protected class in the fourth prong of the prima facie case is unnecessary to create an inference of discriminatory discharge. See Perry, 199 F.3d at 1140. We explained in Perry: 24 When viewed against the backdrop of historical workplace discrimination, an employee who belongs to a racial minority and who eliminates the two most common, legitimate reasons for termination, i.e., lack of qualification or the elimination of the job, has at least raised an inference that the termination was based on a consideration of impermissible factors. The firing of a qualified minority employee raises the inference of discrimination because it is facially illogical to randomly fire an otherwise qualified employee and thereby incur the considerable expense and loss of productivity associated with hiring and training a replacement. 25 Id.; see also Crawford, 713 F.2d at 588 ([T]here is no reason to apply a stricter version of the fourth part of the McDonnell Douglas test in a suit alleging a discriminatory discharge rather than a discriminatory failure to hire or promote.). In short, Perry made clear that the elements of a prima facie case are the same in hiring and discharge cases.