Opinion ID: 3032985
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Porter’s Prima Facie Case of Retaliation

Text: The district court found that Porter’s evidence was sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to the first 10160 PORTER v. CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS two prongs of the prima facie case. However, the court concluded, citing Breeden, that Porter could not show a causal link between the protected activity and the post change denials because of the temporal gap between these events. This determination misinterprets Breeden. The plaintiff in Breeden claimed her transfer was in retaliation for her complaint about a comment her male supervisor made when reviewing job applications, and for her filing a complaint with the EEOC. 532 U.S. at 273. The Supreme Court questioned the merits of the plaintiff’s underlying complaint5 and stated that there was no indication that the assistant superintendent knew about the right-to-sue letter when she proposed transferring plaintiff. Id. The Court continued: [I]f one presumes she knew about it, one must also presume that she (or her predecessor) knew almost two years earlier about the protected action (filing of the EEOC complaint) that the letter supposedly disclosed. . . . The cases that accept mere temporal proximity between an employer’s knowledge of protected activity and an adverse employment action as sufficient evidence of causality to establish a prima facie case uniformly hold that the temporal proximity must be very close. Action taken (as here) 20 months later suggests, by itself, no causality at all. Id. at 273-74 (emphasis in original, internal quotation marks and citations omitted). [5] Breeden cannot be read as holding that causality is dependent, as a matter of law, on temporal proximity. Although a lack of temporal proximity may make it more difficult to show causation, “circumstantial evidence of a ‘pattern of antagonism’ following the protected conduct can also 5 “No reasonable person could have believed that the single incident recounted above violated Title VII’s standard.” 532 U.S. at 271. PORTER v. CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS 10161 give rise to the inference.” Kachmar v. SunGard Data Sys., Inc., 109 F.3d 173, 177 (3rd Cir. 1997) (citation omitted). The Third Circuit explained: It is important to emphasize that it is causation, not temporal proximity itself, that is an element of plaintiff’s prima facie case, and temporal proximity merely provides an evidentiary basis from which an inference can be drawn. The element of causation, which necessarily involves an inquiry into the motives of an employer, is highly context-specific. When there may be valid reasons why the adverse employment action was not taken immediately, the absence of immediacy between the cause and effect does not disprove causation. Id. at 178. Our cases are consistent with this approach. In Coszalter v. City of Salem, 320 F.3d 968, 977-78 (9th Cir. 2003), we cautioned that a “specified time period cannot be a mechanically applied criterion. A rule that any period over a certain time is per se too long (or, conversely, a rule that any period under a certain time is per se short enough) would be unrealistically simplistic.” In Winarto v. Toshiba America Electronics Components, Inc., 274 F.3d 1276, 1287 n.10 (9th Cir. 2001), the majority rejected the dissent’s argument that Breeden precluded the inferences drawn by the jury below. As a valid reason for the delay between her alleged protected activities and the claimed adverse actions, Porter points out that DeSantis was not in a position to retaliate until after he became the Personnel Assignment Sergeant in the OPA. This position finds support in both controlling and persuasive authorities. See Keyser, 265 F.3d at 752 n.4; Kachmar, 109 F.3d at 178. Moreover, Porter does not rely on “mere temporal proximity,” Breeden, 532 U.S. at 273, but offers other evidence to support the inference of a retaliatory motive. 10162 PORTER v. CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS [6] For instance, the “not for you” sneers of DeSantis imply that Porter’s shift, post or vacation requests might have been granted if they were from any employee except Porter. Moreover, as noted above, Porter’s evidence permits an inference that DeSantis and Wheeler conditioned the terms and conditions of her employment, at least impliedly, on her submission to sexual conduct — which includes the connoted threat that the terms and privileges of her employment would be unfavorable if she spoke out against their propositions or otherwise refused them. Wheeler eating Porter’s food without permission, and then spitting in what was left of it, and DeSantis’s intimidating glare, are crude displays of each supervisor’s willingness to carry through on the thinly-veiled deterrents. We therefore conclude that Breeden does not foreclose the inference of a causal link in this case, and hold that Porter’s evidence established genuine issues of material fact to support her prima facie case of retaliation.6