Opinion ID: 202423
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The nature of Plaintiffs' and Defendants' cases

Text: 88 Plaintiffs presented an unusual case of political discrimination. They did not present any evidence of overt statements of political discrimination. They also did not present evidence that employees of their political affiliation had been replaced predominantly by employees with an opposing political affiliation. Plaintiffs did not even show that their own replacements, if any, had an opposing political affiliation. Instead, after showing that Defendants had opposing political affiliations and had knowledge of their political affiliations, Plaintiffs focused almost exclusively on the suspicious way they were treated by Defendants near the end of their probationary periods, and the allegedly spurious reasons supplied by Defendants for their failure to survive their respective probationary periods. Plaintiffs saw in this evidence a circumstantial case of political discrimination.
89 Aware of the Mt. Healthy line of cases, Defendants presented a case that also focused on the reasons for Plaintiffs' dismissal. In their view, they were attempting to establish that regardless of any political discrimination, Plaintiffs' dismissals would have occurred anyhow for nondiscriminatory reasons. When they renewed their Rule 50(a) motion, Defendants stated that [i]t is defendant's [sic] position that we have presented to the Honorable Court a strong Mt. Healthy defense. Defendants' counsel continued: Defendants produced sufficient facts about plaintiffs [sic] failure to properly perform their duties, and will [sic] have rendered the same evaluations and will [sic] have taken the same termination decision for the reasons that are nondiscriminatory, in other words, Mt. Healthy defense. 90