Opinion ID: 2976929
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Hall’s retaliation claim

Text: Hall also alleges that he was denied the promotion to sergeant in retaliation for the civil rights lawsuit that he filed in 2000. In order to establish a prima facie case of retaliation under Title VII, an employee must establish that (1) he or she engaged in protected activity, (2) the employer knew of the exercise of the protected right, (3) an adverse employment action was subsequently taken against the employee, or “the plaintiff was subjected to severe or pervasive retaliatory harassment by a supervisor[,]” and (4) “there was a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse employment action or harassment.” Morris v. Oldham County Fiscal Ct., 201 F.3d 784, 792 (6th Cir. 2000) (emphasis omitted). This court has explained that “where some time elapses between when the employer learns of a protected activity and the subsequent adverse employment action, the employee must couple temporal proximity with other evidence of retaliatory conduct to establish -7- No. 06-2116 Hall v. Michigan State Police causality” under the fourth element. Mickey v. Zeidler Tool & Die Co., 516 F.3d 516, 525 (6th Cir. 2008). Once a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of unlawful retaliation, “the burden shifts to [the defendant] to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions.” Gribcheck v. Runyon, 245 F.3d 547, 551 (6th Cir. 2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Even though the burden of going forward with evidence to answer [the] prima facie case . . . moved to the [defendant], the ultimate burden of persuasion never shifted from the plaintiff.” Id. at 552 (citation omitted) (alterations in original). If the employer satisfies this burden, the employee must then demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the legitimate reason offered by the employer was in fact only a pretext designed to mask retaliation. EEOC v. Avery Dennison Corp., 104 F.3d 858, 862 (6th Cir. 1997) (citing Tex. Dept. of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 253 (1981)). “A plaintiff can demonstrate pretext by showing that the proffered reason (1) has no basis in fact, (2) did not actually motivate the defendant's challenged conduct, or (3) was insufficient to warrant the challenged conduct.” Dews, 231 F.3d at 1021. In the present case, four years passed between Hall’s first complaint to the MDCR and his failure to get the promotion in 2003. Hall must thus provide other evidence of retaliatory conduct to establish causality. See Mickey, 516 F.3d at 525. The only evidence relevant to Hall’s retaliation claim is the statement allegedly made by Crampton before the initial interviews that Dietrich would not promote Hall because she was still upset about the earlier lawsuit. This court has explained that “[t]he burden of establishing a prima facie case in a retaliation action is not onerous, but one easily met.” Id. at 523. So even if we were to assume that Hall’s -8- No. 06-2116 Hall v. Michigan State Police evidence establishes the necessary causal connection between the 2000 lawsuit and his failure to obtain the promotion in 2003, he has still failed to show that the MSP’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its decision was simply a pretext designed to hide discrimination. Specifically, the MSP points to Hall’s lower score on the Targeted Selection Process than the score of the individual initially selected for the position and the fact that Hall declined to participate in the second round of interviews. Crampton, the only person who provided evidence in support of Hall’s retaliation claim, also stated in his affidavit that “[a]t no time during the interview process that resulted in the promotion of Officer Johnson were the impermissible factors of race and retaliation used as a consideration.” Hall has not offered any evidence that calls into question the scoring during the first round of interviews and, as discussed above, the other statements that he claims persuaded him not to participate in the second round of interviews do not implicate either his race or his earlier lawsuit. In other words, he has failed to “produce sufficient evidence from which the jury could reasonably reject [the defendants’] explanation and infer that the defendants intentionally discriminated against him.” See Braithwaite v. Timken Co., 258 F.3d 488, 493 (6th Cir. 2001) (internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original). Hall’s retaliation claim is therefore without merit.