Opinion ID: 2810521
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Failure to Promote - Retaliation

Text: Finally, White asserts the district court erred in granting summary judgment to CMSI on his 2012 failure-to-promote retaliation claim. To establish a claim of 7 Case: 14-14489 Date Filed: 06/22/2015 Page: 8 of 9 retaliation under Section 1981, a plaintiff must prove that: (1) he engaged in a statutorily protected activity; (2) he suffered a materially adverse action; and (3) there is a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse action. See Butler v. Ala. Dep’t of Transp., 536 F.3d 1209, 1212-13 (11th Cir. 2008) The district court did not err in granting summary judgment to CMSI on White’s 2012 failure-to-promote retaliation claim because he failed to establish a causal connection between the May 2011 filing of his EEOC charge and CMSI’s decision to promote another African-American employee to the 2012 engineer position, which occurred ten months later in March 2012. See Clark County Sch. Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273 (2001) (noting when plaintiffs have attempted to establish causation through temporal proximity, the proximity must be “very close”). White also failed to establish a causal connection based on a pattern of retaliation because: (1) all discriminatory remarks made by his supervisor occurred before he filed his EEOC complaint; (2) he received three merit-based increases since he filed his EEOC complaint; and (3) his supervisor was reprimanded for his behavior after his EEOC complaint was filed.