Opinion ID: 4540613
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: First Position- Engineer I-FACE Team

Text: Gibson does not dispute that the district court correctly dismissed her Title VII claim for the Engineer I-FACE position based on her failure to include it in her EEOC charge, so we deal only with her ELCRA claim on appeal. Furthermore, MGM does not dispute that Gibson met the prima facie case for this position; as such, we examine whether the district court correctly determined that Gibson has failed to present sufficient evidence from which a jury could reasonably find in her favor on the issue of pretext. See Romans, 668 F.3d at 835. Gibson has not presented sufficient evidence to rebut the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason offered by MGM. MGM argues that it hired Weldon over Gibson for the Engineer I-FACE position because MGM believed that Weldon was more qualified for the position. Gibson responds that she had 16 years of experience as a plumber in the casino versus Weldon’s six months4 of experience working as a maintenance engineer trainee in the hotel. Gibson also argues that Valentine’s and Lewis’ failure to promote women in the past is evidence that the proffered reason was pretext. Because we do not have a specific job description for this position, we cannot know exactly what all the qualifications were for the Engineer I-FACE team position, but, in McDaniels, we held that employers could look at qualifications not expressly articulated in the job description and give greater weight to some qualifications over others. McDaniels, 755 F. App’x at 470. So, even if we assume that the job description did not include anything about hotel experience, there is nothing improper about MGM considering hotel experience if it can prove that it actually 4 Gibson fails to explain where she got this number, and the evidence shows that Weldon had worked as a maintenance trainee for approximately ten to eleven months. -13- No. 19-1467, Gibson v. MGM Grand Detroit, LLC considered that experience at the time and is not offering it now as a pretextual reason for hiring Weldon over Gibson. Looking at their contemporaneous notes, it is clear that Valentine and Lewis considered hotel experience and continuing education in their hiring decision. The notes from the interviews show that they valued the hotel experience of Weldon, who also had years of experience dealing with guests on the hotel-side through his work in housekeeping. Meanwhile, Valentine and Lewis noted that Gibson did not have hotel experience. Furthermore, Gibson has offered no evidence to demonstrate that Valentine and Gibson did not consider hotel experience important in the hiring decision, Lytle, 579 N.W.2d at 918, and Gibson testified that she had only worked in the hotel a few times. In addition to the hotel experience, Lewis also noted that Weldon was continuing his education while Gibson had not taken classes since 2003. Accordingly, Gibson has failed to offer sufficient evidence to rebut the legitimate, non-discriminatory reason offered by MGM. Furthermore, Gibson’s repeated claim that Valentine and Lewis had never promoted a female before is contradicted by the evidence. Valentine specifically testified that he was involved in the promotion of Amy Winton to Engineer III-Painter. Additionally, both Valentine and Lewis testified that they offered other positions to female applicants. Besides offering conclusory allegations in brief after brief, Gibson has failed to rebut that testimony. We, therefore, affirm the district court in its grant of summary judgment on the claims related to the Engineer I-FACE team position.