Opinion ID: 2790185
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Loss of Scheduling Duties

Text: As noted, the Hospital relieved Plaintiff of her scheduling duties shortly after Plaintiff announced in late November 2011 that she would be taking a twomonth leave of absence. Plaintiff contends that the Hospital’s action constituted an adverse action that it took to retaliate against her for having filed an EEOC charge around the same time period. The district court acknowledged that removing Plaintiff’s scheduling duties, for which she earned additional pay at the rate of around $20,000 per year, could potentially constitute an adverse employment action under Title VII. But it also concluded that Plaintiff was hard-pressed to 11 Case: 13-14848 Date Filed: 03/31/2015 Page: 12 of 31 fault the Hospital because it was Plaintiff who brought about this result by voluntarily taking a lengthy leave of absence. 5 The district court is correct. It is difficult to understand how an employee who has taken a leave of absence can then complain when her employer takes her at her word and reassigns the duties she would normally perform. Whatever adversity she suffered, it was Plaintiff who brought it on herself by deciding to take a leave of absence. A reasonable person would not consider the reassignment of such duties in these circumstances to be an adverse action by the employer. See Hinson, 231 F.3d at 829. To the contrary, a reasonable person would understand that her employer must necessarily reassign such duties while she is absent from her job. Thus, we affirm the district court’s conclusion that Plaintiff suffered no actionable adverse employment action as a result of the reassignment of her scheduling duties while Plaintiff was on leave. 6 5 The district court further explained that Plaintiff’s scheduling duties “were not independent from her role as a physician at the hospital” because the former was not a salaried position, and Plaintiff was paid her regular hourly rate for creating the schedule. Thus, when she took a leave of absence, “she abandoned the scheduling duty.” Specifically, for all her duties, Plaintiff’s pay structure was based on the number of hours she worked. 6 Plaintiff has not asserted that she requested a reinstatement of scheduling duties once she returned from her two leaves of absence, nor has she explicitly argued that the Hospital’s failure to reinstate those duties constituted gender discrimination or retaliation. Nevertheless, to the extent that Plaintiff makes such an argument, we note that she has offered no evidence of disparate treatment of a similarly situated comparator. Further, numerous complaints by coworkers about Plaintiff’s unfairness in making scheduling assignments constitute a neutral, non-discriminatory reason for transferring these scheduling duties to the Director, and Plaintiff has not shown that this explanation is a pretext for discrimination. 12 Case: 13-14848 Date Filed: 03/31/2015 Page: 13 of 31