Opinion ID: 3056072
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rawls’s Claim

Text: We assume, as the district court did, that Rawls established a prima facie case of race discrimination. Thus, we focus on whether Rawls presented evidence that DHR’s reasons for reprimanding and transferring her were pretextual. DHR presented evidence that Rawls was reprimanded and transferred for three reasons. First, Rawls did not respond promptly or adequately to DHR’s Hendrix’s requests to review the two DPS claims before the BOA so that Hendrix could formulate a legal response. Rawls took weeks to respond to Hendrix’s 7 Case: 12-13665 Date Filed: 02/11/2013 Page: 8 of 12 requests, and Hendrix found the information Rawls provided incomplete and unhelpful. Second, Rawls sent unauthorized emails to Evans, a DPS employee, about one of the DPS claims pending before the BOA. In her emails, Rawls said she worked in the Legal Division, which was not true, and also advised Evans that DPS would be eligible for an $8,330.00 payment after the BOA hearing. DHR’s Hendrix, the attorney representing DHR before the BOA, was unaware of and did not authorize Rawls to send these emails, which Hendrix viewed as a binding promise to pay. Rawls’s unauthorized emails to DPS’s Evans exacerbated tensions between DHR and DPS and led a BOA employee to express concern that DHR was trying to circumvent the BOA’s claim process. Finally, Rawls failed to devise and implement a system for the timely payment and processing of DPS invoices. Both DPS and OCHC had tried for several years to develop software programs to track DPS invoices and OCHC’s payments. However, by the time of Rawls’s reprimand, OCHC did not have such a system in place. Several DHR or OCHC employees testified that while Rawls was the Director of OCHC, the office was disorganized, had problems paying DPS invoices in a timely manner, and received complaints about backlogs. DHR chief counsel Ficquette’s reprimand stated that Rawls’s actions violated several Rules of the State Personnel Board, including Rule (1)(a) 5, for 8 Case: 12-13665 Date Filed: 02/11/2013 Page: 9 of 12 failing to perform her job properly, Rule (1)(b) 6, for making a false statement, and Rule (1)(b) 10, for serious violation of any other department rule. The reprimand then listed six specific ways Rawls had violated work rules, including (1) failing “to put in place processes to allow for quick processing, tracking and monitoring of requests for clearances”; (2) failing “to put in place adequate processes to ensure obtainable identifiable results in a timely manner”; (3) failing “to correct broken processes that [she] knew and [had] known about since as early as 2006”; (4) making “a false statement to the BOA without authority to do so”; 4 (5) violating “Department policy by keeping money orders in the OCHC overnight and for as long as several months”; and (6) compromising “the Department’s relationships with other agencies.” We conclude that Rawls’s evidence did not create a genuine issue of material fact as to the credibility of these reasons. See Alvarez v. Royal Atl. Developers, Inc., 610 F.3d 1253, 1265 (11th Cir. 2010) (stating that to prove pretext, the plaintiff must show that there were “such weaknesses, implausibilities, inconsistencies, incoherencies, or contradictions in the . . . proffered legitimate reasons . . . that a reasonable factfinder could find them unworthy of credence.” (quotation marks omitted)). Rawls does not dispute the timing and substance of 4 Although this list states that the false statement was made to the BOA, this appears to be a typographical error as other portions of the reprimand make clear that the false statement was made to DPS employee Evans. 9 Case: 12-13665 Date Filed: 02/11/2013 Page: 10 of 12 any of the email communications with Hendrix, Lista, Long or DPS employee Evans. Nor does Rawls dispute that there were longstanding problems at OCHC with unpaid DPS invoices and with developing a new system to track and reconcile DPS billing. While Rawls presented evidence that she and Long were in the process of implementing a new system for billing reconciliation, Rawls does not dispute that this new system was not yet up and running when she and Long were reprimanded. Rawls submitted evidence that she and Long believed their reprimands were discriminatory and orchestrated by DHR’s Ficquette to give Rawls’s job to Crabtree. However, conclusory allegations, without more, do not raise an inference of pretext. Mayfield v. Patterson Pump Co., 101 F.3d 1371, 1376 (11th Cir. 1996). Rawls also submitted evidence that she and Long believed that Rawls’s responses to Hendrix’s requests were adequate and that the delays in reconciling unpaid DPS invoices were DPS’s fault. However, Rawls’s own beliefs about her performance do not establish pretext. See Alvarez, 610 F.3d at 1266 (explaining that the pretext inquiry centers on the employer’s beliefs, rather than the employee’s beliefs). Moreover, when an employer’s proffered reason for the employment action is poor performance; the question is not whether the plaintiff’s performance was actually poor, but whether the employer believed the plaintiff’s performance was poor, “even if mistakenly or 10 Case: 12-13665 Date Filed: 02/11/2013 Page: 11 of 12 unfairly so, or instead merely used those complaints about [the plaintiff] as cover for discriminating against her because of her [protected characteristic].” Id. Rawls did not present any evidence that DHR’s Ficquette or DHR Commissioner Buckner did not honestly believe that Rawls had performed poorly. In any event, Rawls cannot survive summary judgment unless her evidence rebuts all of DHR’s proffered reasons. See Chapman, 229 F.3d at 1037. Perhaps the pivotal reason Rawls was reprimanded and transferred (it certainly appears to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back) was that she communicated directly with Evans, a DPS employee, about the disputed claims pending before the BOA and, without authorization, stated (falsely) that she worked in the legal office and that DPS was entitled to additional payment. Rawls does not dispute the substance of her email communications with Evans or the consequences, including that a BOA official was concerned that DHR was circumventing the claim process and that DPS officials became angry and questioned DHR’s leadership. Rawls’s comparator evidence also does not show pretext. For all but one of Rawls’s comparators, Rawls claimed only that the comparators generally mismanaged their offices, which does not establish that they engaged in “nearly identical” misconduct. See Rioux, 520 F.3d at 1280-81. The remaining comparator, Cheryl Martin, was the Director of the Center for Information Services, the office Rawls testified was tasked with creating software to reconcile 11 Case: 12-13665 Date Filed: 02/11/2013 Page: 12 of 12 DPS invoices. As such, Rawls claimed that Martin was equally responsible for the failure to address the backlog of unpaid DPS invoices, yet Martin was not reprimanded. However, Rawls was not reprimanded simply for failing to implement a reconciliation system, but also for failing to timely and completely respond to Hendrix’s requests to review the DPS claims before the BOA and, more importantly, for communicating, without authorization, with DPS employee Evans about those claims. Rawls did not present any evidence that Martin or any of the other comparators engaged in this kind of misconduct. For all these reasons, we cannot say that the district court erred in concluding that Rawls failed to present evidence that DHR’s reasons for reprimanding and transferring her were pretext for racial discrimination. 5 Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order granting summary judgment to DHR on Rawls’s Title VII and § 1981 claims. AFFIRMED. 5 The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Rawls’s motion to alter or amend the judgment, which merely attempted to reargue matters already decided by the district court, raised arguments that could have been, but were not, raised in response to the summary judgment motion and sought to introduce new evidence that could have been discovered prior to summary judgment. See Michael Linet, Inc. v. Vill. of Wellington, Fla., 408 F.3d 757, 763 (11th Cir. 2005); Mays v. U.S. Postal Serv., 122 F.3d 43, 46 (11th Cir. 1997). 12