Opinion ID: 44905
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Title VII and Louisiana Claims

Text: The familiar McDonnell Douglas framework governs Williams’s Title VII pregnancy discrimination claim, as well as her employment discrimination claims brought under Louisiana law. See King v. Phelps Dunbar, LLP, 743 So.2d 181, 187 (La. 1999)(Louisiana employment discrimination claims are analyzed in the same manner as those brought under Title VII). To survive summary judgment, a plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of discrimination by a preponderance of the evidence. Pratt v. City of Houston, 247 F.3d 601, 606 (5th Cir. 2001) (citing McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-04, 93 S. Ct. 1817, 1824-25 (1973)). If the plaintiff succeeds in establishing a prima facie case, there then exists a presumption of discrimination by the employer, who is required to provide the court with a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the challenged actions. McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802-04, 93 S. Ct. at 1824-25. If the employer furnishes the court with a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions, the burden shifts again to the plaintiff to provide the court with evidence “that the legitimate reasons offered by the defendant were not its true reasons, but were a pretext for discrimination.” Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 143, 120 S. Ct. 2097, 2106 (2000). 4 Williams devotes a substantial portion of her brief on appeal to arguing that the district court erred in concluding that she had failed to establish a prima facie case. She urges that Sterling conceded the issue for the purposes of summary judgment, and argues in the alternative that the district court applied the incorrect legal standard to this reduction-in-force case. Such arguments are ultimately academic, however, as even assuming arguendo that Williams can make out a prima facie case, the district court correctly concluded that Williams failed to present evidence sufficient to rebut Sterling’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for terminating Williams. Sterling stated that it eliminated Williams’s job based on Omnicare’s decision to transfer Williams’s accounting functions to Oklahoma City, and that the decision to terminate Williams became final after Sterling lost one of its major clients. The evidence presented by Williams in response is conclusory and immaterial. Williams claims that other employees whose positions were allegedly eliminated by Sterling as part of the company’s cost-cutting measures in fact either resigned or were terminated for cause. Williams next claims that her performance evaluations dropped significantly after she became pregnant, and that her former assistant, Bordelon, received a pay increase after assuming some of her non-accounting duties. Finally, she alleges that she was misled regarding the elimination of her position until she returned from FMLA leave and was terminated. 5 Accepting all of these claims as true, Williams still creates no issue of pretext. At best, Williams’s evidence indicates that Sterling did a poor job in handling her termination, but her claims do nothing to call into question the veracity of Sterling’s explanation that her job was terminated as part of a reduction in force, whether brought on by a downturn in business, or by the ongoing consolidation efforts of Omnicare. The fact is that Sterling chose not to replace other employees who quit or were fired contemporaneously with Williams, and Bordelon’s replacement of Williams reduced two positions to one. Finally, because the decision to centralize accounting was a home-office decision, Williams’s conversations with or evaluations by her immediate supervisor are not probative of discrimination. “Generalized testimony by an employee regarding his subjective belief that his discharge was the result of [] discrimination is insufficient to make an issue for the jury in the face of proof showing an adequate, nondiscriminatory reason for his discharge.” Elliott v. Group Med. & Surgical Serv., 714 F.2d 556, 566 (5th Cir. 1983). As such, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to Sterling as to Williams’s Title VII or Louisiana employment discrimination claims.