Opinion ID: 806387
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Donnelly’s Qualifications for Tenure

Text: The District next argues that the district court correctly ruled that Donnelly failed to adduce sufficient evidence that he was qualified for the tenured position that he was denied, on the authority of our decision in Zahorik. We disagree. To establish a prima facia case of FMLA retaliation, a plaintiff must establish that (1) “he exercised rights protected under the FMLA,” (2) “he was qualified for his position,” (3) “he suffered an adverse employment action,” and (4) “the adverse employment action occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of retaliatory intent.” Potenza v. City of New York, 365 F.3d 165, 168 (2d Cir. 2004). There is no dispute that Donnelly’s failure to be promoted to tenure was an adverse employment action and we have rejected above the only disputed issue as to whether Donnelly properly exercised FMLA rights. Thus, only the second and fourth factors remain in dispute.
Ordinarily, a plaintiff-employee challenging an adverse employment action as discriminatory or retaliatory need not do much to establish his qualification for the position he holds or seeks. As we have held in the related context of employment discrimination, “the qualification necessary to shift the burden to defendant for an explanation of the adverse job action is minimal; plaintiff must show only that he possesses the basic skills necessary for performance of the job.” Slattery v. Swiss Reinsurance Am. Corp., 248 F.3d 87, 92 (2d Cir. 2001) (internal quotation marks and 25 brackets omitted). Moreover, “the qualification prong must not be interpreted in such a way as to shift into the plaintiff’s prima facie case an obligation to anticipate and disprove the employer’s proffer of a legitimate, non-[retaliatory] basis for its decision.” Gregory v. Daly, 243 F.3d 687, 696 (2d Cir. 2001). It is unusual for a plaintiff to fail to meet this standard. The district court held the plaintiff here, however, to a much higher standard. The district court concluded that, in order to show that “he was qualified for his position,” Potenza, 365 F.3d at 168, Donnelly must meet the exacting standard we have applied in the context of allegations of discriminatory denial of tenure to university professors. Donnelly, 2011 WL 1899713 at , citing Zahorik, 729 F.2d at 93-94. Because of Zahorik’s centrality to this case, we review it in some detail. The four plaintiffs in Zahorik – assistant professors at Cornell in the Departments of Psychology, Sociology, Russian Literature, and Community Service Education, alleged that “each was the victim of discriminatory treatment on the basis of sex in Cornell’s decisions to deny them tenure and that Cornell’s tenure criteria and procedures have an illegal disparate impact within the meaning of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971).” 729 F.2d at 88. Although we acknowledged that “[t]enure decisions are not exempt under Title VII,” id. at 93, we held that, in order to survive summary judgment, a university professor seeking to challenge a tenure denial must show that “some significant portion of the departmental faculty, referrants, or other scholars in the particular field hold a favorable view on the question” of the scholar-plaintiff’s tenure candidacy. Id. at 93-94. In crafting 26 this standard, the Zahorik court expressed its and other courts’ concerns that “[w]here the tenure file contains the conflicting views of specialized scholars, triers of fact cannot hope to master the academic field sufficiently to review the merits of such views and resolve the differences of scholarly opinion.” Id. at 93, citing Lieberman v. Gant, 630 F.2d 60, 66 (2d Cir. 1980). In other words, because the academic expertise needed to adjudge a scholar worthy of tenure is so technical, courts and juries will in many cases have great difficulty determining whether a tenure denial was based on legitimate or discriminatory considerations. Zahorik identified five specific factors that make the review of university tenure denials by judges or juries particularly difficult. First, “tenure contracts entail commitments both as to length of time and collegial relationships which are unusual.” Id. at 92. Tenured university professorships are thus unusual not simply because of the duration of the commitment involved, but also because “collegial or professional relationships” among tenured scholars cannot “be eased by transfers among departments. Professors of English . . . remain in that department for life and cannot be transferred to the History Department.” Id. Second, “academic tenure decisions are often noncompetitive,” as “a denial of tenure to one person does not necessarily lead to tenure for another.” Id. Third, “university tenure decisions are usually highly decentralized,” in that the “decision at the departmental level is of enormous importance both because of the department’s stake in the matter and its superior familiarity with the field and with the candidate.” Id. Fourth, “the number of factors considered in tenure decisions is quite 27 extensive. The particular needs of the department for specialties, the number of tenure[d] positions available, and the desired mix of well[-]known scholars and up-and-coming faculty all must be taken into account.” Id. And fifth, “tenure decisions are a source of unusually great disagreement. Because the stakes are high, the number of relevant variables is great and there is no common unit of measure by which to judge scholarship, the dispersion of strongly held views is greater in the case of tenure decisions than with employment decisions generally.” Id. at 93. We have no occasion to question Zahorik’s correctness in the context for which it was designed. Whatever the merits of that analysis in the university context, however, neither we nor any other appellate court we have identified has ever applied the standards Zahorik pronounced to teachers denied tenure in elementary or secondary schools. We decline to do so now. Although both university and high-school teachers may be awarded “tenured” positions that provide long-term employment and protections against arbitrary dismissal, the two contexts have very little in common. While high school teachers and scholars at universities and colleges are both subject to individual performance evaluations at a predetermined stage of their careers that can lead either to the significant reward of protected long-term employment or to adverse employment events, subjecting those two processes to the same analysis in the face of allegedly unlawful denial of promotion does not logically follow. 28 The distinction between the two situations is apparent from an examination of the five factors cited in Zahorik. First, while it is true that high school and university tenure contracts both afford long-term job security to those teachers or scholars who enter into such contracts, high school tenure contracts are not impossible to break for the very reasons that the District now cites as necessary to prevent Donnelly from receiving tenure. The record in this very case reveals that a tenured teacher in the District was dismissed for excessive absences, his tenure notwithstanding. See also N.Y. Educ. Law § 3012 (explaining that tenured public school teachers are removable for cause, which includes inter alia “conduct unbecoming a teacher[,] . . . inefficiency, incompetency, physical or mental disability, or neglect of duty”). It is thus not clear that the “tenure” offered to teachers in the District offers materially more job protection than is common to unionized public sector employees outside the educational context. Moreover, transfers of the kind that the Zahorik court noted are impossible in universities, in which tenure is awarded in a particular department, can and do occur in the context of secondary schools. High school teachers of one subject do not necessarily “remain in that department for life.” Zahorik, 729 F.2d at 92. High school math teachers, for example, can sometimes be “transferred to the History Department.” Id.; see also Valtchev v. City of N.Y., 400 F. App’x 586, 590 (2d Cir. 2010) (discussing teacher who began service teaching math and was transferred to teaching history and English). And as the closing of the WMA and Donnelly’s subsequent transfer indicate, teachers in a school district may even be transferred from one school to another. Thus, the inflexibility 29 imposed on administrators by tenured positions, and the importance of collegial relationships in small departments, are not necessarily factors in high school hiring. The second factor noted in Zahorik, the non-competitive nature of tenure decisions, may apply in some degree in Donnelly’s situation. Probationary teachers like Donnelly are evaluated on their own merits, and are promoted to tenure if they meet the requirements set forth by statute, regardless of the fates of other similarly-situated probationary teachers being considered for tenure at the same time. See N.Y. Educ. Law § 3012(2). In this regard, however, we think that some language in Zahorik overstated the relevance of non-competition even in the context of university tenure decisions. In many universities, the number of tenured positions in a department is strictly limited, whether by resource constraints or by the number of tenured positions assigned to a particular department. Thus, university tenure decisions often are in effect competitive, with assistant professors not only vying for promotion with each other, but on occasion even competing for a particular tenured position against lateral applicants from other institutions, including already established scholars holding tenured positions. This fact – as the Zahorik opinion recognizes in connection with its fourth factor – considerably complicates university tenure decisions. Whether a non-tenured university professor is “qualified” for tenure may well not be a question that can be answered in the abstract, by reference to some fixed minimum criteria of quality or quantity of scholarly output, but one that varies over time depending on shifting pools of available talent. There is no evidence of similar complications in Donnelly’s case. By statute, if he performed 30 satisfactorily during his probationary period, he was qualified for promotion to a tenured position. The third factor – the deference given to a university department’s own recommendation regarding a candidate’s tenure – is completely irrelevant in this case. In Zahorik, each of the plaintiffs was subject to a vote of tenured faculty in her respective department. Zahorik, 729 F.2d at 89-91. This “decentralized” decision-making, combined with the small number of tenured appointments in each department, makes statistical evaluations across a university’s departments or over time relatively uninformative. The District’s own description of its tenure review process includes no such element. Indeed, by statute, only one person’s tenure recommendation ultimately matters: the superintendent alone is tasked to report a recommendation to the Board of Education of each district. N.Y. Educ. Law § 3012(2). This difference is of critical importance in deciding whether to extend the Zahorik standard to the high school context. The standard we ultimately applied asked whether anyone in the tenure process thought that the candidate was worthy of promotion. It is reasonable, in a case in which the university’s ultimate decision may be made by a committee, in which outside experts are typically consulted for their opinions about the significance and quality of a candidate’s writing, and in which all the tenured members of the candidate’s department – his or her putative peers – vote on the candidate’s qualifications, to conclude that a candidate who lacks any support at all for the position from any of the multiple experts whose opinion has been sought is not qualified. Here, by 31 contrast, the record reflects that only two people, Chakar and Washington, evaluated the quality of Donnelly’s teaching in determining his qualifications for tenure, and that their negative recommendation determined the conclusions of Muhammad, and thus of the District. To ask that Donnelly, in order to proceed with his case, identify a dissenting vote in order to show that he was qualified for promotion when he had been evaluated for the promotion by only two supervisors would impose a burden that, as a practical matter, is far more stringent than that imposed in Zahorik. The fourth factor – the extensive “number of factors considered in tenure decisions,” Zahorik 729 F.2d at 92 – is also not present before us. The only factor that the District has identified in determining Donnelly’s eligibility for tenure is, generically, the “excellence” expected of a teacher in his third year in the District, which Chakar concluded Donnelly lacked. The other factors the Zahorik court identified – the department’s need “for specialties, the number of tenure positions available, and the desired mix of well[-]known scholars and up-and-coming faculty” – are all missing from this case. Id. Unlike university teachers, whose scholarly writings will often be determinative in tenure decisions, and which will certainly be heavily considered along with teaching, collegiality, and the effective execution of administrative responsibilities, high school teachers are not expected to produce writing, and are evaluated solely in light of classroom performance. We recognize the vital importance of effective teaching of elementary and secondary school students. We also recognize that evaluations of teachers' effectiveness 32 will often be subjective, and that reasonable people may differ about the quality of a teacher's work. But these factors do not distinguish teaching from many other professional contexts in which courts must assess the qualifications of employees. Here, the fact that performance must be evaluated in only one arena distinguishes the promotion of high school teachers from the award of tenure in universities, where teaching is only one, and in many cases not the most important, factor in determining promotion. Finally, while it is true that teaching is an art, not a science, and that, as with many professions, evaluations of performance may differ, there is no indication in this record or in common experience that in the high school context “tenure decisions are a source of unusually great disagreement,” or that “the dispersion of strongly held views is greater in the case of tenure decisions than with employment decisions generally.” Id. at 93. In Zahorik we concluded that such disagreement is characteristic of the university situation, and attributed that disagreement to the facts that “the stakes are high, the number of relevant variables is great and there is no common unit of measure by which to judge scholarship.” Id. Of those facts, only the significance of the stakes is present here. As noted above, the “number of relevant variables” is limited in the present situation, and the lack of a “common unit of measure by which to judge scholarship,” is irrelevant in high school tenure decisions. Id. Crucial to our concern in Zahorik was our belief that “triers of fact cannot hope to master the academic field sufficiently to review the merits of [the conflicting views of specialized scholars] and resolve the differences of scholarly opinion.” Id. Almost no one in a jury pool is likely to have experience with the sort of 33 arcane scholarly issues that, for better or worse, commonly decide university tenure battles. By contrast, nearly all jurors will have direct experience, as students, with effective and ineffective elementary and secondary school teachers, and many will have had additional experience as parents or other guardians judging teachers’ effectiveness. We therefore conclude that Zahorik is applicable only in the context of challenges to university tenure denials, and only in those cases where the Zahorik factors are independently relevant. High school tenure decisions are fundamentally a different type of employment decision, motivated by different goals and resulting in a different employment contract. As such, the requirement, in Zahorik, that a tenure candidate must show that “some significant portion of the departmental faculty, referrants, or other scholars in the particular field hold a favorable view” of the applicant, id. at 94, is inapplicable to high school tenure contexts.6
The conclusion that Donnelly need not make the additional showing required by Zahorik does not end our inquiry. The FMLA-retaliation plaintiff must still establish 6 We note that the great majority of district courts in our Circuit that have addressed the question of tenure denial in an elementary- or secondary-school context have not applied the higher Zahorik standard in determining whether a plaintiff has made out a prima facie case. See, e.g., Young v. N.Y. City Dept. of Educ., No. 09 Civ. 6621, 2010 WL 2776835 at  (S.D.N.Y. July 13, 2010) (applying McDonnell Douglas, without any modification from Zahorik, to the context of high school tenure denial), Frank v. Lawrence Union Free Sch. Dist., 688 F. Supp. 2d 160, 167-68 (E.D.N.Y. 2010) (same), Augustin v. Enlarged City Sch. Dist. of Newburgh, 616 F. Supp. 2d 422, 439-40 (S.D.N.Y. 2009) (same), Helmes v. S. Colonie Cent. Sch. Dist., 564 F. Supp. 2d 137, 147-48 (N.D.N.Y. 2008) (same), But see Louis v. Bd. of Educ. of City of N.Y., 705 F. Supp. 751, 756 n.3 (E.D.N.Y. 1989) (applying Zahorik where a plaintiff-principal challenged his tenure denial). 34 inter alia that “he was qualified for his position,” and that “the adverse employment action occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of retaliatory intent.” Potenza, 365 F.3d at 168. Donnelly has made an adequate showing in both respects to warrant a jury trial. First, as we have noted above, the ordinary standard for showing qualification is not exacting: the “qualification necessary to shift the burden to defendant for an explanation of the adverse job action is minimal; plaintiff must show only that he possesses the basic skills necessary for performance of the job.” Slattery, 248 F.3d at 92 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, in the context of secondary-school tenure denials, when evaluating the plaintiff-teacher’s prima facie case, we do not determine whether the teacher was entitled to tenure; we simply assess whether the plaintiff has demonstrated that he held the basic qualifications to be eligible for promotion. See, e.g., Helmes v. S. Colonie Cent. Sch. Dist., 564 F. Supp. 2d 137, 147-48 (N.D.N.Y. 2008). Donnelly has made that showing. He held the necessary educational and licensing credentials to serve as a teacher, and he had worked as a teacher for the necessary period of time to be considered for promotion. The record indicates nothing egregious about his performance suggesting that he was manifestly unsuitable for promotion. Of the nine evaluations he received during his probationary period, Donnelly received the highest evaluation possible in six: the remaining three all occurred after the medical leave. To be sure, these evaluations included recommendations for improvement, as was standard for such evaluations, even for tenured teachers. Donnelly’s file also included two 35 questionable interactions with students that might have led the District to question his suitability as a tenured teacher. Neither the interactions with students nor the recommendations for improvement, however, establish as a matter of law that Donnelly was not qualified for his position. His basic credentials, and his record of strong performance reviews which only began to change after his medical leave, are sufficient for him to meet the qualifications standard. Second, Donnelly has also established that “the adverse employment action occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of retaliatory intent.” Potenza, 365 F.3d at 168. While we have never previously construed this requirement in the context of FMLA retaliation, our analysis of wrongful retaliation in other contexts – e.g., Title VII retaliation, see Mack v. Otis Elevator Co., 326 F.3d 116, 129 (2d Cir. 2003) – suggests that such an inference can be established when there is a basis for a jury to conclude that “a causal connection [exists] between the plaintiff’s protected activity and the adverse action taken by the employer.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hicks v. Baines, 593 F.3d 159, 164 (2d Cir. 2010). Donnelly has amply established a basis for such a causal inference. The “very close” temporal proximity required in other employment cases is present here. See Clark County Sch. Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). Before Donnelly’s medical leave, his teaching evaluations were extremely positive; after this leave, the evaluations deteriorated. Moreover, Donnelly presents more evidence than mere temporal proximity. The negative evaluations he received expressly 36 penalize Donnelly for his excessive absences, including those taken – assuming his eligibility – pursuant to the FMLA. That the District manifestly penalized Donnelly for absences that a jury could find were protected by the FMLA provides a sufficient basis to send the question of the District’s retaliatory intent to the jury to reach a final determination. We have never definitively applied the burden-shifting framework from the context of employment discrimination to FMLA retaliation, and we need not establish that application here, as Donnelly’s case must proceed to trial regardless of whether such a pretrial shift in burden occurs. Donnelly has presented direct evidence that his arguably FMLA-protected leave was held against him in the tenure process. That evidence clearly suffices to meet the “minimal” burden of showing a prima facie case.7 In reaching this conclusion, we emphasize that we neither express nor imply any view as to the ultimate merits of Donnelly’s claim. We hold only that he has presented sufficient evidence to permit a jury to decide whether the District unlawfully denied Donnelly tenure because he took a protected FMLA leave, or whether the District 7 To the extent the burden-shifting framework does apply, the District has not established as a matter of law that its decision was based on legitimate non-retaliatory grounds. We do not question the legitimacy of a school district’s goal of reducing unwarranted teacher absenteeism. But as in the context of a Title VII retaliation claim, the FMLA “is violated when an employer is motivated by retaliatory animus, even if valid objective reasons for the discharge exist.” Cosgrove v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 9 F.3d 1033, 1039 (1993). The District may not, in its efforts to address teacher absenteeism, violate the law with respect to those teachers who miss school for purposes Congress has specifically protected. 37 lawfully deemed Donnelly deficient in his performance and therefore unqualified for the position of tenured teacher.