Opinion ID: 203745
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Chadwick's Claim

Text: We turn now to the specific facts of Chadwick's claim, mindful that we are judging merely the claim's viability under summary judgment, rather than as to ultimate liability. Chadwick presses her claim under two separate, though related, theories. She puts forth a mixed motives claim, under Desert Palace, Inc. v. Costa, 539 U.S. 90, 123 S.Ct. 2148, 156 L.Ed.2d 84 (2003), [6] and a traditional discrimination claim under the familiar McDonnell Douglas burden shifting scheme. [7] Our decision here, however, is not dependent on analyzing Chadwick's claim under each of these theories, [8] because under both approaches, plaintiffs must present enough evidence to permit a finding that there was differential treatment in an employment action and that the adverse employment decision was caused at least in part by a forbidden type of bias. Hillstrom, 354 F.3d at 31 (discussing the interaction between Desert Palace and McDonnell Douglas ). In the opinion below, the district court acknowledged two important pieces of the puzzle. First, it found that sex-based stereotypes regarding women, families, and work are alive and well in our society. Chadwick, 550 F.Supp.2d at 146. Second, it concluded that the statements made to Chadwick were based on an assumption or generalization about the demands of continuing education coupled with child rearing responsibilities. Id. Yet the district court granted summary judgment to WellPoint because, as the court explained, Miller did not explicitly say that Chadwick's sex was the basis for her assumption that Chadwick would not be able to handle the demands of work and home. Id. at 147. The district court complained that the decisionmaker [did] not refer explicitly to women, id. at 146, and that nothing in Miller's words, id. at 147, showed that the decision was based on a stereotype about female caregivers, not about caregivers generally, id. Presumably, the district court was looking for Miller to say explicitly that she thought Chadwick would be overwhelmed because she is a woman with kids, rather than, as Miller actually said, you have the kids. But this critique is not an adequate basis upon which to grant summary judgment in this case. A plaintiff is entitled to prove discrimination by circumstantial evidence alone. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(m) (requiring a plaintiff merely to demonstrate[] that an employer used a forbidden consideration as a motivating factor with respect to an employment decision); Desert Palace, 539 U.S. at 98-99, 123 S.Ct. 2148 (holding in the mixed-motives context that Title VII does not mention, much less require, that a plaintiff make a heightened showing through direct evidence); Thomas v. Eastman Kodak Co., 183 F.3d 38, 58 (1st Cir.1999) (finding that under a direct evidence requirement, the McDonnell Douglas/Burdine framework would no longer serve the purpose for which it was designed: allowing plaintiffs to prove discrimination by circumstantial evidence). In Thomas, a case involving race discrimination, we rejected the district court's requirement that in order to survive summary judgment a plaintiff must allege at least one piece of evidence that explicitly referred to the plaintiff's membership in a protected class. Id. at 57 (quoting Thomas v. Eastman Kodak Co., 18 F.Supp.2d. 129, 137 (D.Mass.1998)). Instead, we concluded that [t]here can be no rigid requirement that plaintiffs introduce a separate `plus' factor, such as a negative employment comment about the plaintiff's protected class, in order to prove discrimination. Id. at 58. We apply this same lesson to Chadwick's claim. We reject the district court's requirement that Miller's words explicitly indicate that Chadwick's sex was the basis for Miller's assumption about Chadwick's inability to balance work and home. To require such an explicit reference (presumably use of the phrase because you are a woman, or something similar) to survive summary judgment would undermine the concept of proof by circumstantial evidence, [9] and would make it exceedingly difficult to prove most sex discrimination cases today. See id. at 58 n. 12 (use of circumstantial proof of discrimination is all the more important now than it was when McDonnell Douglas was written, since `smoking gun' evidence is `rarely found in today's sophisticated employment world') (citing Hodgens v. General Dynamics Corp., 144 F.3d 151, 171 n. 13 (1st Cir.1998)). Instead of adopting a mechanical formula, as the district court below proposed, we conduct a case-by-case analysis and consider the individual facts of Chadwick's claim. Thomas, 183 F.3d at 58. Given what we know about societal stereotypes regarding working women with children, we conclude that a jury could reasonably determine that a sex-based stereotype was behind Miller's explanation to Chadwick that, It was nothing you did or didn't do. It was just that you're going to school, you have the kids and you just have a lot on your plate right now. Particularly telling is Miller's comment that, It was nothing you did or didn't do. After all, the essence of employment discrimination is penalizing a worker not for something she did but for something she simply is. A reasonable jury could infer from Miller's explanation that Chadwick wasn't denied the promotion because of her work performance or her interview performance but because Miller and others assumed that as a woman with four young children, Chadwick would not give her all to her job. This inference is supported by several facts. First, the decisionmaker learned of Chadwick's three six-year-olds just two months before she denied Chadwick the promotion. The young age and unusually high number of children would have been more likely to draw the decisionmaker's attention and strengthen any sex-based concern she had that a woman with young children would be a poor worker. Second, the decisionmaker's reaction upon learning of Chadwick's three small children was, Bless you! This statement is susceptible to various interpretations, but a jury could reasonably conclude that Miller meant that she felt badly for Chadwick because her life must have been so difficult as the mother of three young children. [10] This conclusion could be bolstered by Miller's later explanation to Chadwick that the WellPoint interviewers, all female, would feel overwhelmed if they were in Chadwick's position. Third, because a plaintiff alleging discrimination infrequently has direct evidence of bias, the discrimination can be proven through the elimination of other plausible non-discriminatory reasons until the most plausible reason remaining is discrimination. Thomas, 183 F.3d at 61; see also Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 147, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (Proof that the defendant's explanation is unworthy of credence is simply one form of circumstantial evidence that is probative of intentional discrimination, and it may be quite persuasive.). In Chadwick's case, Miller explained the non-promotion in one way to Chadwick (that she had too much on her plate with her kids and school) and in a very different way in her deposition (that Chadwick had performed poorly in her interviews). A jury could reasonably question the veracity of this second explanation given that Chadwick was an in-house, long-time employee who had worked closely with her interviewers, had received stellar performance reviews, and was already performing some of the key tasks of the Team Lead position. A jury could rightly question whether brief interviews [11] would actually trump Chadwick's apparently weighty qualifications, or whether, given the other circumstantial evidence discussed above, Chadwick was really passed over because of sex-based stereotypes. In sum, we find that Chadwick has put forth sufficient evidence of discrimination that a reasonable jury could conclude that the promotion denial was more probably than not caused by discrimination. We do not opine on the ultimate balance of the evidence in this case. We only conclude that Chadwick has presented sufficient evidence of sex-based stereotyping to have her day in court. Given the common stereotype about the job performance of women with children and given the surrounding circumstantial evidence presented by Chadwick, we believe that a reasonable jury could find that WellPoint would not have denied a promotion to a similarly qualified man because he had too much on his plate and would be overwhelmed by the new job, given the kids and his schooling. See Hibbs, 538 U.S. at 736, 123 S.Ct. 1972 (Stereotypes about women's domestic roles are reinforced by parallel stereotypes presuming a lack of domestic responsibilities for men.).