Opinion ID: 2732018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: USERRA Retaliation Claim

Text: Ward next argues that the district court wrongly concluded that he had failed to show evidence of retaliation under the USERRA. See 38 U.S.C. § 4311(b). He contends that UPS retaliated against him for filing his 2005 DOL complaint by holding him out of work for 14 months after he was removed from the operationsclerk position in 2009. Ward argues that a jury could find causation despite the lack of temporal proximity, because UPS retaliated against him when the “first opportunity” presented itself. The USERRA prohibits an employer from taking an adverse employment action against employees who seek to enforce the Act’s protections. 38 U.S.C. § 4311(b). An employer engages in prohibited retaliatory conduct where it takes an adverse action against an employee motivated by that employee’s efforts to enforce the USERRA, unless the employer can prove that the action would have been taken in the absence of the employee’s protected activity. Id. § 4311(c)(2); 7 Case: 14-10170 Date Filed: 09/11/2014 Page: 8 of 11 see also Sheehan v. Dep’t of the Navy, 240 F.3d 1009, 1013 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (stating that the USERRA’s enactment confirmed “that the standard of proof in a discrimination or retaliation case is the so-called ‘but-for’ test” (quotation marks omitted)). In the context of employment retaliation cases, a plaintiff’s burden to prove causation can be met by showing a close temporal proximity between the statutorily protected activity and adverse-employment action. Thomas v. Cooper Lighting, Inc., 506 F.3d 1361, 1364 (11th Cir. 2007) (per curiam). Where there was a significant time gap between the protected activity and the adverse action, the plaintiff must offer additional evidence to demonstrate a causal connection, such as a pattern of antagonism or that the adverse action was the first opportunity for the employer to retaliate. See, e.g., Kachmar v. SunGard Data Sys., Inc., 109 F.3d 173, 177 (3d Cir. 1997) (evidence of a “pattern of antagonism” following the protected activity may give rise to the inference of causation); Dale v. Wynne, 497 F. Supp. 2d 1337, 1346 (M.D. Ala. 2007) (“In this instance, a six-week gap is enough to show temporal proximity, particularly because Dale’s return to work was the first opportunity Wilson had to retaliate against her.”). Here, the district court did not err in concluding that Ward failed to point to evidence supporting his claim that his 2005 DOL complaint was the motivating factor behind UPS’s allegedly adverse actions in 2009. 38 U.S.C. § 4311(b), 8 Case: 14-10170 Date Filed: 09/11/2014 Page: 9 of 11 (c)(2). The temporal gap between the two events was too long to demonstrate causation without additional evidence. See Thomas, 506 F.3d at 1364 (“[M]ere temporal proximity, without more, must be ‘very close.’”). Although Ward claimed UPS’s employment decision in 2009 was its “first opportunity” to retaliate, the record does not support this assertion given that UPS made at least two other intervening decisions to re-employ Ward. Because Ward has not offered evidence showing a causal connection between his 2005 DOL complaint and his period of unemployment between 2009 and 2011, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment for UPS on Ward’s USERRA retaliation claim.