Opinion ID: 4527882
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 2013 Probation Interview

Text: Starting with Brandt's first point, neither Landry's sidearm nor his considerations during the 2013 probation-side hiring process reasonably suggest that race-based bias shaded his thinking either back then or a year later, when Brandt applied for rehire. Brandt admitted in his deposition that MDOC probation officers typically carry guns, and there's no evidence that Landry or the other panelists disarmed when they interviewed other applicants, that any interviews lasted longer than Brandt's (in fact, Brandt admits they were all asked the same questions), or that other interviewees were not similarly escorted out of the room. What's more, Brandt described himself in the interview as having a black and white view on drugs and didn't dispute that, given his lack of experience on the probation side, he would indeed need close supervision and support at the beginning of the job. To round things off, he also doesn't dispute that the two candidates who got the jobs were the most qualified candidate[s] for each opening, and (unlike Brandt) both had past experience as caseworkers: again, one was a probation officer assistant at MDOC - 18 - and a former child protective caseworker, and the other was a federal probation officer.7 2. Hiring Freeze Debacle: Believing LaPlante Over Brandt So we turn to 2014, when (according to Brandt) Landry rejected his rehire request based on bad information that branded [Brandt] a liar. Brandt v. Fitzpatrick et al., C.A. No. 15-461NT, slip op. at  (Jan. 16, 2019). As Brandt's second line of attack, he insists that Landry's choice to trust LaPlante (who is white) over Brandt about the hiring freeze also shows Landry's race-based bias. We don't doubt that, as Brandt maintains, centuries-old stereotypes portraying African Americans as less trustworthy than whites can creep into employer decision-making, just as they've been documented to do in other contexts. See Sheri Lynn Johnson, Racial Imagery in Criminal Cases, 67 Tul. L. Rev. 7 In the parties' consolidated statement of material facts below, Brandt admitted that the probation officer assistant was the most qualified candidate for one of the positions. As for the defendants' statement (supported with citations to the record) that the panel recommended [the federal probation officer] for the second position because he was the most qualified candidate, Brandt responded: Qualified. [That candidate] lacked 'actual experience working w/case management.' The District of Maine's Local Rules provide that [f]acts contained in a supporting or opposing statement of material facts, if supported by record citations as required by this rule, shall be deemed admitted unless properly controverted. Rule 56(f), Local Rules of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. Since Brandt didn't deny in his response that the candidate was nevertheless the most qualified for the position, we deem that statement admitted (as we do with other statements to which the parties responded qualified but did not specifically deny). - 19 - 1739, 1756 (1993) (cataloguing examples of such stereotypes being invoked in prosecutorial summations). But on this record, we see no evidence that stereotyped thinking influenced Landry to believe LaPlante's report that FCI Berlin was always hiring over Brandt's statement that they weren't. That Landry was wrong or just unreasonable to trust LaPlante over Brandt doesn't cut it. After all, the antidiscrimination laws do not insure against an employer's inaccuracy or flawed business judgment; rather, they are designed to protect against, and to prevent, actions spurred by some discriminatory animus. Kouvchinov v. Parametric Tech. Corp., 537 F.3d 62, 67 (1st Cir. 2008). So, to survive summary judgment, '[i]t is not enough for [a plaintiff] merely to impugn the veracity of the employer's justification' or to point to flaws in [the employer's] investigation. Rodríguez-Cardi v. MMM Holdings, Inc., 936 F.3d 40, 48–49 (1st Cir. 2019) (explaining that, when faced with employment decisions that lack a clear discriminatory motive, '[c]ourts may not sit as super personnel departments, assessing the merits — or even the rationality — of employers' nondiscriminatory business decisions) (quoting Mesnick v. Gen. Elec. Co., 950 F.2d 816, 824–25 (1st Cir. 1991)). Even the most blatant unfairness cannot, on its own, support a Title VII claim . . . unless facts and circumstances indicate that - 20 - discriminatory animus, or bias, was the reason for the decision. Thomas, 183 F.3d at 64 (internal quotation marks omitted). To illustrate, if Landry had doubted Brandt's candor without any factual basis despite Brandt's clean record and high ethics ratings, in circumstances (e.g., where an equally or lessqualified white man got the job) that suggested bias was the reason, Brandt's claim might have had legs. Burns, 829 F.3d at 14–15 (holding that a female employee had a triable case that her supervisor's sex-based bias motivated him to reassign her responsibilities to male employees in part because he questioned her work ethic, but not that of her male peers, and demeaned her otherwise well-regarded work product for no apparent reason); Thomas, 183 F.3d at 64 (same where new supervisor scored the plaintiff, the only black employee, lower than her similarlyperforming co-workers on evaluations, had an unexplained general disregard for her professional abilities and status, and often became inappropriately upset or angry with [her], to the point of behaving unprofessionally). But here, Landry had a report from his deputy (who had no apparent axe to grind against Brandt) taken straight from FCI Berlin's HR department (whom he rightfully expected to know if and when that facility was hiring). That Landry believed it doesn't reasonably show a biased motive. Nor does the fact that he didn't give Brandt a chance to explain the perceived inconsistency. See - 21 - Adamson v. Walgreens Co., 750 F.3d 73, 82 (1st Cir. 2014) (rejecting employee's argument that employer's failure to let him explain his side of the story showed pretext because [w]hether a termination decision was wise or done in haste is irrelevant, so long as the decision was not made with discriminatory animus (quoting Rivera-Aponte v. Rest. Metropol #3, Inc., 338 F.3d 9, 11 (1st Cir. 2003)). 3. Cat's Paw This bring us to Brandt's third angle. Unable to show that bias warped Landry's thinking, he falls back on a so-called cat's paw theory, under which an employer can be held liable when a decision-making official (like Landry) relies on false information that is manipulated by another employee who harbors illegitimate animus to take an adverse employment action. Ameen v. Amphenol Printed Circuits, Inc., 777 F.3d 63, 70 (1st Cir. 2015) (quoting Cariglia v. Hertz Equip. Rental Corp., 363 F.3d 77, 86– 87 (1st Cir. 2004)); see also Staub v. Proctor Hosp., 562 U.S. 411, 422 (2011) (holding that if an employee's supervisor performs an act motivated by [illegitimate] animus that is intended by the supervisor to cause an adverse employment action, and if that act is a proximate cause of the ultimate employment action, then the employer is liable under [the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act]). Brandt argues that even if Landry himself wasn't biased, he acted as a conduit for LaPlante's - 22 - racial prejudice when he relied on LaPlante's report about the hiring freeze at Berlin (or lack thereof). Appellant's Br. at 28. This claim trips over the same stumbling block: Brandt still had to show that LaPlante, himself, acted out of race-based animus. Ameen, 777 F.3d at 71. He tries to clear that hurdle by arguing that LaPlante was looking for an excuse not to rehire him, knew the Berlin staffer gave him bad information, and relayed it to Landry anyway to make him think that Brant lied. Appellant's Br. at 29. In other words, says Brandt, LaPlante's fact-check was a sham or pretext to mask his real reason for urging Landry to shut the door on Brandt. Robinson, 950 F.3d at 26. The problem is that Brandt admitted below that LaPlante genuinely believed FCI Berlin was not under a hiring freeze and believed that Brandt had lied to Valerie Norman about it. Those admissions doom Brandt's contrary argument that LaPlante lied to cover up the real (race-based) reason he wanted Brandt rejected. See Kouvchinov, 537 F.3d at 67 (explaining that to show pretext, i.e., that the employer engaged in a deceit . . . to cover [its] tracks, it is not enough for a plaintiff to show that the decisionmaker acted on an incorrect perception or information that . . . later prove[d] to be inaccurate; instead, he must show that the decisionmaker did not believe in the accuracy of the reason given for the adverse employment action). - 23 - Nor is there proof that racial stereotypes or bias spurred LaPlante to reach out to Berlin HR or accept what the staffer there told him. Brandt points to LaPlante's testimony that this was the first time LaPlante made a call to fact-check an applicant's story, that LaPlante didn't have friends at FCI Berlin, and that he can't remember why he knew they were hiring correctional officers. From that evidence, Brandt says, the jury could conclude LaPlante assumed Brandt was lying because he is black. However, Brandt accepts that LaPlante, whom Brandt describes as a broker of information in corrections circles, got the scoop that Berlin was hiring from his contacts in the correctional field. And at the time — when Brandt told Norman about the hiring freeze on March 11 — those contacts were right: the hiring freeze had ended a month earlier (on February 10). LaPlante didn't just rely on the rumors, though; he confirmed them with a reliable source. True, Berlin HR (we must assume) was wrong to say they'd had a waiver when the freeze was in force. But it wasn't unreasonable, let alone evidence of bias, for LaPlante to rely on facts he got straight from the horse's mouth — even if the horse turned out to be mistaken.8 8Brandt seizes on LaPlante's testimony that the HR staffer was evasive when he asked her about Brandt's job application. When asked to elaborate, LaPlante explained that she didn't want to offer any information related to [Brandt]. A reasonable jury could not infer that an HR rep's refusal to disclose information - 24 - 4. John Doe Comparator Fourth and last, but not least, Brandt protests that there was at least one other MCC corrections officer who left for a short time before reapplying for his old spot, and he was treated differently. In his deposition, Landry testified that this John Doe went through a similar re-interview process: a staff member like Valerie Norman asked him why he left and now wanted to return. In John Doe's case, he'd left for a warehouse job of some type, found the work not challenging and uninteresting, and regretted his decision to leave. Brandt complains that unlike Brandt's, Doe's reason for wanting to return . . . wasn't questioned or checked. Appellant's Br. at 25. But there's a simple reason for that: unlike with Brandt, Landry had no reason to suspect that John Doe's explanation wasn't true.9 In contrast, as Landry testified, Brandt left to seek out better career opportunities, but it wasn't clear what happened that made him want to come back: Brandt said there'd been a hiring freeze, but according to LaPlante (parroting a reliable source), that wasn't true. Unlike with Doe, the hiring team had asked [Brandt] a pretty straight question and, according to Landry's unrebutted about an individual job applicant over the phone so undermined her reliability that LaPlante should not have trusted her information about the prison's hiring practices in general. 9 So far as we can tell, there's no evidence that LaPlante was involved in John Doe's rehiring process. - 25 - testimony, they didn't feel like [they] were getting a straight answer. Since the undisputed facts show that Doe's situation was distinct in that key way from Brandt's, a reasonable jury could not infer from Brandt's and Doe's disparate treatment that Landry or LaPlante were biased against Brandt because of his race. See Adamson, 750 F.3d at 82 (explaining that disparate treatment between the plaintiff and other employees is not probative of discriminatory animus when, as here, the comparators are not similarly situated to the plaintiff in all material respects). To cinch matters, Brandt offers no evidence based on which the jury could conclude that Doe wasn't also African American.