Opinion ID: 820545
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Written Reprimand

Text: Forbes argues that the district court erred when it held that his written reprimand, received two weeks after he filed his EEOC Charge, was not an adverse employment action. An adverse employment action is one that “might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.” Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 68, 126 S. Ct. 2405, 2415 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Only those actions that have a “materially adverse effect on the plaintiff, irrespective of whether it is 1 Our precedent interpreting Title VII applies to claims arising under the FCRA, and we therefore need not analyze the FCRA separately. See Holland v. Gee, 677 F.3d 1047, 1054 n.1 (11th Cir. 2012). 6 Case: 12-12502 Date Filed: 02/14/2013 Page: 7 of 9 employment or workplace-related” will suffice. Crawford v. Carroll, 529 F.3d 961, 973 (11th Cir. 2008). We need not decide whether the written reprimand filed two weeks after Forbes’s EEOC charge constitutes an adverse employment action, because even if it did, Forbes’s claim would still fail. The City offered several legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the written reprimand. Both before and after filing his EEOC Charge, Forbes failed to enter code violations into the City’s database. Forbes was also delinquent on his end-of-month reports. Forbes argues that these reasons are pretextual, because Graham admitted that Forbes was a productive employee who opened and closed numerous cases as a code enforcement officer. That may well be true, but Forbes’s overall performance cannot be properly measured by one metric, i.e. his proficiency at opening and closing cases. The record demonstrates that the shortcomings outlined in the written reprimand had been raised by Graham, repeatedly, since November 2009. Based on all of this, we are satisfied that the City’s legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for Forbes’s termination were not pretextual.