Opinion ID: 614206
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Similar Violations

Text: Other employees are similarly situated to the plaintiff when they have similar jobs and display similar conduct. Vasquez, 349 F.3d at 641. The employees need not be identical, but must be similar in material respects. Hawn v. Exec. Jet Mgmt., Inc., 615 F.3d 1151, 1157 (9th Cir. 2010). Materiality depends on the context and is a question of fact that cannot be mechanically resolved. Id. at 1157-58. The Seventh Circuit has noted that it is important not to lose sight of the common-sense aspect of the similarly situated inquiry. Humphries v. CBOCS West, Inc., 474 F.3d 387, 405 (7th Cir.2007). It is not an unyielding, inflexible requirement that requires near one-to-one mapping between employees because one can always find distinctions in performance histories or the nature of the alleged transgressions. Id. Earl and all of the employees described above were Nielsen recruiters and thus had to follow the same policies and procedures. Nielsen officials oversee discipline of recruiters on a national level in an effort to ensure they are subject to consistent standards. Nielsen relies on case law from other circuits to argue that only recruiters with the same immediate supervisor should qualify as similarly situated to Earl. However, we recently held to the contrary. Hawn, 615 F.3d at 1157 (It was error for the district court to impose a strict `same supervisor' requirement.). Earl and the other recruiters violated similar company policies. The district court required an exact match between Earl's violation and those of the other recruiters. It noted that Earl recorded an incorrect household address, whereas the other recruiters signed homes that did not meet Nielsen's specified demographics. This distinction between the violations is immaterial for several reasons. First, the distinction overlooks the fact that employee 33071 failed to verify the address of a home she recruited in December 2006, just two months after Earl made the same mistake. Employee 33071 already had two previous DIPs for other performance issues. When Earl made her mistake she had only one DIP. Nielsen terminated Earl for her failure to verify an address, but employee 33071 either received a PIP or suffered no disciplinary consequence at all. Second, Nielsen itself identified the other recruiters' violations as similar to Earl's. The company produced evidence of these violations in response to Earl's discovery request for information about other recruiters whom the company disciplined for violating the same company policies and procedures. In complying with the discovery request, Nielsen's human resources manager emailed other officials in search of instances where the company disciplined or terminated employees for signing the wrong household. Company officials described the address verification violation by employee 33071 as sign[ing] the wrong home. Nielsen now argues that signing the wrong home by other recruiters is an inappropriate comparison to enrolling the wrong household for equipment installation by Earl. We fail to see any material difference between the two violations. Third, the relevant Nielsen policies and procedures all serve the same purpose. Nielsen lists the polices in its written recruiting procedures. All of them concern the proper collection and verification of household information in order to ensure accurate data. Although Nielsen can point to variations in the violations committed by Earl and the other recruiters, the violations are more alike than performance issues we have recognized as similar in other employment discrimination cases. See, e.g., Nicholson v. Hyannis Air Serv., Inc., 580 F.3d 1116, 1125-26 (9th Cir.2009) (holding that a female pilot with poor communication and cooperation skills was similarly situated to male pilots with deficient technical piloting skills because the company could address both issues through retraining). Fourth, the policy violations at issue are of comparable seriousness. See McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 804, 93 S.Ct. 1817; Vasquez, 349 F.3d at 641 (finding that an employee was not similarly situated where he did not engage in problematic conduct of comparable seriousness to the plaintiff's). The purpose of the address verification policy violated by Earl is to prevent the collection of corrupted data. However, Nielsen officials also said they were very concerned about the integrity of the data produced by employee 46432 and described him as presenting clearly a serious problem. The company had to remove the monitoring device at a home signed by employee 36082 with incorrect demographic information because of potentially corrupted data. In an internal memorandum sent to another employee, Nielsen wrote, Removing a home from the sample due to a demo-mismatch is a very serious matter. If this is repeated, disciplinary action up to and including separation may occur. Earl's violation could have resulted in the collection of corrupted data or required removal of the monitoring device, but in fact it did not. Earl has thus presented evidence that the younger recruiters' policy violations were at least of comparable seriousness to her own. Indeed, viewed in the light most favorable to her, their violations were more serious. Finally, whether the other recruiters are similarly situated to Earl is a question of fact. Hawn, 615 F.3d at 1158; Beck v. United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 99, 506 F.3d 874, 885 n. 5 (9th Cir.2007) (We agree with our sister circuits that whether two employees are similarly situated is ordinarily a question of fact.). Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Earl, we conclude that Earl has presented a triable issue that the other recruiters and their violations are sufficiently similar to hers to merit comparison.