Opinion ID: 1222650
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Sex Discrimination Claim

Text: The plaintiff contends she was the victim of sex discrimination because she received approximately $4,000 less in salary than a comparable male employee, Chriss Kiess, who served as the Board's purchasing agent. The ALJ rejected the contention on two grounds. First, the ALJ found the contention was time barred by W.Va.Code, 18-29-4(a)(1), which requires a grievant to file her grievance within fifteen days following the occurrence of the event upon which the grievance is based, or within fifteen days of the date on which the event became known to the grievant[.] The ALJ concluded the salary discrimination claim was not timely filed because the salary gap between the plaintiff and Mr. Kiess was created in 1990 and the plaintiff did not file her grievance until July of 1992. Furthermore, the ALJ rejected the plaintiff's claim that the 1990 Board actions and the 1992 transfer were part of a continuing practice of hostility toward the plaintiff. We do not disturb the ALJ's conclusions that the 1990 and 1992 actions were discrete events, that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate a continuing practice of hostility, and that the plaintiff therefore cannot piggy-back the entirety of her salary discrimination complaint on top of the 1992 transfer decision. Nevertheless, we find the plaintiff's complaint about the discrepancy in salaries is not completely time barred. In West Virginia Institute of Technology v. West Virginia Human Rights Commission, 181 W.Va. 525, 534, 383 S.E.2d 490, 499 (1989), we held: Unlawful employment discrimination in the form of compensation disparity based upon a prohibited factor such as race, gender, national origin, etc., is a `continuing violation,' so that there is a present violation of the antidiscrimination statute for as long as such compensation disparity exists; that is, each paycheck at the discriminatory rate is a separate link in a chain of violations. Therefore, a disparate-treatment employment discrimination complaint based upon allegedly unlawful compensation disparity is timely brought if it is filed within the statutory limitation period after such compensation disparity last occurred. Although that opinion was decided under the Human Rights Act, W.Va.Code, 5-11-1, et seq. (1967), we see no reason not to apply the same analysis to W.Va.Code, 18-29-2 (1992). As a result, the plaintiff's July 1992 grievance was timely filed as to any salary disparity between her and Mr. Kiess that existed within the fifteen-day statutory period preceding the filing of her grievance in July, 1992, and thereafter. The statute of limitations thus restricts the length of the back pay period, but it does not bar the claim entirely. Accordingly, if the plaintiff proved the discrimination, she would have been entitled to be made whole retroactive to June 30, 1992 (fifteen days preceding the filing of the grievance), and to receive prospective relief. That brings us to the ALJ's second reason for rejecting the salary disparity claim: the plaintiff failed to prove her case on the merits. The entirety of the ALJ's findings and conclusion on that issue was: The evidence does not support Grievant's claim that she has received disparate treatment. By her own admission, another employee [Joyce Hutton] was RIFFED and scheduled to receive a salary reduction in excess of $4000 in 1990. That employee would have received exactly the same treatment as Grievant but for the fact that she transferred to another professional position.... [E]ven though intervening factors ultimately left Grievant as the only employee to incur a salary reduction, the Board has apparently never singled her out for disparate treatment. As we explain below, this conclusion must be set aside as a matter of law. The evidence focused on three employees who were similarly situated in the Board's central administrative office as of the 1989-90 school year: the plaintiff, Ms. Hutton, and Mr. Kiess. Each performed (so far as we can tell) jobs involving comparable levels of skill, effort, and responsibility. Ms. Hutton had been in the Board's employ for eleven years through the 1989-90 year, and the plaintiff and Mr. Kiess each had ten years of service. Ms. Hutton and the plaintiff had education degrees; Mr. Kiess did not. As of 1989-90, their salaries were as follows: Sarah Martin  $28,494 Joyce Hutton  $29,567 Chriss Kiess  $28,070 At this point, the plaintiff and Ms. Hutton were informed they were to be RIFFED unless they accepted salary reductions. Ms. Hutton then sought and received a teaching position, which permitted her not only to avoid the reduction but also to secure an increase in salary for the 1990-91 school year. Because she has remained a teacher since then, her salary figures from that point are not relevant. As for plaintiff and Mr. Kiess, their salaries for the relevant years were: 1990-91 1991-92 1992-93 Sarah Martin $25,964 $25,952 $26,456 Chriss Kiess $29,805 $29,852 $30,356 Thus, the plaintiff showed that in the year she took a pay cut of approximately $2,500, a similarly situated male, Mr. Kiess, received an increase of approximately $1,800, creating a disparity of about $4,000, [8] which has continued through the succeeding years. A plaintiff can establish a prima facie case of intentional salary discrimination if she proves that she is a member of a protected class and that she receives a lower salary than an individual who is not a member of the plaintiff's class and who is similarly situated to the plaintiff in terms of experience and the comparability of job content. See West Virginia Institute of Technology, supra . The plaintiff has done so. The employer may rebut the inference by coming forward with some legitimate explanation for the salary discrepancy. The Board argues here, and the ALJ so held, that the plaintiff's inference of discrimination was destroyed by the fact that Joyce Hutton was also slated for a salary reduction. Thus, they reason, the plaintiff was not singled out for discriminatory treatment. The argument fails on its face, however, because Ms. Hutton is also obviously a woman and a member of the plaintiff's protected class. That the Board may have sought to reduce the salary of another woman in addition to that of the plaintiff in no way diminishes the inference from the plaintiff's prima facie case that her salary has suffered because of gender discrimination. If anything, such evidence strengthens the inference. Thus, we hold the ALJ erred as a matter of law by ruling, in effect, that the plaintiff failed to establish an inference of sexually discriminatory treatment. [9] Of course, the plaintiff's success in showing a prima facie case does not automatically entitle her to success in her grievance. The employer may rebut the inference by coming forward with some legitimate explanation for the salary discrepancy. In this case, the Board arguably attempted several explanations. First, it offered evidence of budget shortfalls which required it to make corresponding cuts in personnel and payroll. While such evidence clearly shows a legitimate reason, it is not standing alone an explanation for why the plaintiff's salary was cut and Mr. Kiess's salary was increased or why the pay disparity continued into the grievable period (after one more pay cut for plaintiff and two more increases for Mr. Kiess). That other persons working in the central administrative offices also received increases in salary over the period in question further highlights the inadequacy of the defendant's budget woes standing alone as a response to the prima facie case and as an explanation for the plaintiff's deflated salary. The Board also proffers that the plaintiff was reclassified from professional to service personnel in 1990 and, as part of her reclassification, she lost salary. Once again, the response standing alone does not explain the relevant salary disparity. A reclassification might justify a salary adjustment if, for example, a collective bargaining agreement or some other pre-set schedule required payment of certain classified workers at certain rates. We are not informed in this case of any such schedule that might have required the reduction of the plaintiff's salary. Moreover, the reclassification could hardly support the disparity that developed between the salaries of the plaintiff and Mr. Kiess because after the reclassification, they were both classified as service personnel. It is beyond our understanding how designating the plaintiff as service personnel could justify paying her $4,000 less than some other worker who has the same designation and the same number of years of service. In another argument, the Board posits that action taken toward Mr. Kiess in 1989 explained the salary discrepancy. Board employee Shannon Bennett testified at the Level IV hearing that Mr. Kiess received a pay cut in the year preceding the plaintiff's cut. Presumably, a pay cut in one year might make the Board more reluctant to cut the same employee's pay the following year  although that reluctance did not prevent the Board from reducing the plaintiff's salary in both 1990 and 1991. In any event, Ms. Bennett testified later in the Level IV hearing that she did not know the amount of Mr. Kiess's pay cut and, further, that she was not even sure whether he suffered a decrease in salary or simply a change in the manner of calculating his increment. Ms. Bennett stated: I had a conference with [Mr. Kiess] ... and he advised me that the year before these other [1989] changes were made his salary was affected. She was not aware of how much his salary was affected, however. The matter received greater attention (although not necessarily greater clarity) at the Level II hearing. The Level II hearing included the following exchange between questioners and Frank E. Deitsch, Director of Finance and the plaintiff's immediate supervisor: [Board counsel] MR. HART: ... [D]id you have any knowledge of ... Chriss Kiess being discussed as being ... an individual that might be subject to similar reductions as what Mrs. Martin went through? MR. DEITSCH: Um, let me just be candid about this. My understanding of the situation is this. Uh, when I came on board we had Chriss Kiess, Joyce Hutton and Mrs. Martin were paid at the same rate of pay and they were paid, uh, I know some people take exception to this, but they were being paid at, on, uh, Joyce Hutton's degree and experience and they were, uh, at, apparently that situation, that, uh, agreement was set up before I got here by the, by the prior administration. And, so, that's the way they were being paid. They were all paid the same, same rate. And, uh, when, uh, when this change came about in, when was it, 1990, well really 19, I guess July of 1991, 1990, I'm sorry, uh, uh, Mr. Kiess had been, uh, taken off that, it seems to me if I, if I have my dates right, Mr. Kiess was taken off that arrangement the prior, the prior July and he was put on, just as a service personnel. His rate of pay was not changed but he was no longer given the, uh, the professional increments. He was treated as, from that day forward, any other, uh, service personnel. He got whatever increases the service personnel got at that time. So he was separated from the three the prior, prior July.       [Plaintiffs' Counsel] MS. MARTORELLA: Okay. Now, at some point in, at some point in 1990, did Sarah Martin receive approximately a four thousand dollar ($4,000.00) salary reduction? MR. DEITSCH: Uh, that's yes, approximately, yes. MS. MARTORELLA: Did Chriss Kiess ever receive a similar salary reduction? MR. DEITSCH: No, no. As I said before, when his, when he was taken off the agreement, his pay remained where it was and he was, from that day forward, given the, uh, service personnel incremental increases.       MS. MARTORELLA: Okay. At any time since 1990, has Chriss Kiess gotten a salary reduction of any kind? MR. DEITSCH: Not to my knowledge, no.       [Superintendent] MR. MARCHIO: Uh, huh. Okay. Now, I'm not sure if I understand what, uh, when you referred to Mr. Kiess's being taken off of the agreement. Maybe you can, you mentioned that a couple times and I'm not real clear about that. MR. DEITSCH: Well, what I, when I alluded to the agreement, uh, what I said was that, uh, the three people in the finance department, Joyce Hutton, Mrs. Martin, and Chriss Kiess were being paid at the time I arrived on the scene, uh, the same amount of money each year. They were, it was based on Joyce Hutton's degree and experience. MR. MARCHIO: And they all were paid that same amount. MR. DEITSCH: That is correct. MR. MARCHIO: Okay. MR. DEITSCH: That's why you see'em on that sheet. They were all three at the same level. MR. MARCHIO: Okay, and what happened? MR. DEITSCH: Uh, Mr. Kiess was separated from the group and he was not reduced in pay but on a perspective basis, he was given just, uh, from that day forward, service personnel incremental increases. MR. MARCHIO: And the others continued to get the professional increments. MR. DEITSCH: No. The other two were, the other two were RIF'd and, when they signed their agreements, their salaries were then changed. They were cut approximately four thousand dollars. MR. MARCHIO: Oh. Okay, okay. I didn't understand exactly how that worked. We, too, have difficulty in understanding this position. As best we can tell, two females and one male were lumped together salary-wise and were receiving the professional personnel incremental increases. The male was removed from the group apparently because he was service personnel and should not have been receiving the professional increments. His salary remained at his then current level, but prospectively he was to receive only service personnel increments. The two women, the Board concluded, had been wrongly classified as professional. They were RIFFED. The Board then made them an offer: they could keep their jobs, but they had to agree to be reclassified as service personnel and to take a pay cut. One of the women then left for a different job, and the remaining woman took another, albeit minor, pay cut the following year, while the man got another raise. Needless to say, that is a very strange narrative. And it does not explain, at least in any rational manner, why the plaintiff received a pay cut and Mr. Kiess did not. A nonsensical and arbitrary justification for disparate treatment (such as we have here) seriously undercuts an employer's claim that it did not rely on a forbidden motive and tends to show that the purported justification was pretextual. Still, it is possible for an employer to act arbitrarily, but not necessarily on the basis of an illicit motive. See St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993); Barefoot v. Sundale Nursing Home, 193 W.Va. 475, 457 S.E.2d 152 (1995). Because the administrative law judge did not find a prima facie case of discrimination, she made no findings regarding the sufficiency of the Board's response or pretext. We, therefore, remand this matter to the circuit court with directions to remand this case to the ALJ to sort through this mess of confusion and make the appropriate findings. We leave it up to the ALJ to decide whether the record is adequate or whether it needs to be supplemented. Upon remand, the ALJ should consider that the plaintiff is not required to show that the defendant's proffered reasons were false or played no role in the employment decision, but only that they were not the only reasons and that the prohibited factor of gender was at least one of the motivating factors. See, e.g., Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 247, 249, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 1788, 1790, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989) (plurality opinion) (where employer has shown a legitimate motive the plaintiff need not show that the prohibited factor was the sole or principal reason, or the true reason). If the plaintiff proves by a preponderance of the evidence that an illicit motive entered into the challenged employment decision, then the plaintiff wins unless the defendant proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the same result would have occurred even in the absence of the illicit motive. Finally, we believe she should also consider whether the grievance established a claim under the general provision stated in W.Va. Code, 18-29-2, that allows recovery for any discriminatory or otherwise aggrieved application of unwritten policies or practices of the board[.] See Vest v. Board of Educ. of County of Nicholas, 193 W.Va. 222, 225, 455 S.E.2d 781, 784 (1995) ([o]bviously, a state education employee who is denied a job benefit solely because of her gender would have a meritorious grievance based on either `discrimination' or `favoritism' and also would have a claim for relief under the Human Rights Act).