Opinion ID: 793559
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Discriminatory Adverse Employment Action

Text: 7 In discrimination claims brought under the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws, the burden-shifting framework established by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), applies. See N. Shore Univ. Hosp. v. Rosa, 86 N.Y.2d 413, 633 N.Y.S.2d 462, 657 N.E.2d 483, 485 (1995). That framework requires a plaintiff in a disability-discrimination case to establish a prima facie case of discrimination, after which the burden shifts to the defendant to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse employment action in question. Once the defendant provides such a reason, the plaintiff shoulders the burden of showing sufficient potential proof for a reasonable jury to find the proffered legitimate reason merely a pretext for discrimination. See Richardson v. N.Y. State Dep't of Corr. Servs., 180 F.3d 426, 443 (2d Cir. 1999). 8 We need not decide whether the district court was correct in holding that Ferraro failed to demonstrate a prima facie case of disability discrimination because, in any event, Ferraro has failed to produce evidence to carry her burden of rebutting Kellwood's proffered nondiscriminatory reason for demoting Ferraro and reducing her salary. Kellwood produced evidence that Gordon merged Vintage Blue into Kellwood's larger ENC division because Vintage Blue's low and declining sales volume did not justify its existence as a freestanding Kellwood division. Kellwood also produced evidence that the restructuring was motivated by the goal of achieving economies of scale through the combining of certain duplicative functions and that the changes in Ferraro's job description and salary resulted from this restructuring. Kellwood further introduced evidence that Gordon held Ferraro, as the manager in charge of Vintage Blue's sales, merchandising, and sales projections, partially responsible for the poor sales volume. 9 Ferraro produced no evidence showing that the reasons offered by Kellwood are a pretext for discrimination. Ferraro points out that other divisions with poor financial performance were not reorganized. Ferraro, however, has produced no evidence that the other divisions had sales volumes insufficient to support their overhead, that Vintage Blue did not in fact have poor sales volume, or that efficiencies did not result from folding Vintage Blue into ENC. 10 To survive a motion for summary judgment, Ferraro need not show evidence definitively proving that Kellwood reduced her rank and salary because of her illness. She must, however, offer some evidence, such as the falsity of Kellwood's stated legitimate reason, from which one may infer the ultimate fact of discrimination. See Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 149, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000) (holding that [a] prima facie case and sufficient evidence to reject the employer's explanation may permit a finding of liability in an employment-discrimination action); Fisher v. Vassar Coll., 114 F.3d 1332, 1339 (2d Cir.1997) (en banc) (requiring an employment-discrimination plaintiff to show that the employer's articulated reason is a pretext and noting that the pretext finding itself [may] point[] to discrimination). This she has not done. We therefore affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment in Kellwood's favor on Ferraro's claim of discriminatory adverse employment action. 11