Opinion ID: 1204480
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Assistant Principal Positions

Text: Humphries first contends that the district court erred by finding that she presented no direct evidence of unlawful discrimination. In particular, she points to evidence of the District's affirmative action policies. The District does not dispute that it has affirmative action policies. For example, the District does not dispute that its policy is to use biracial committees to conduct interviews when filling above-entry-level positions, and it concedes that it used biracial committees to select the candidates for the assistant principal positions sought by Humphries. The District also does not deny that its job postings for the two assistant principal positions announced in August 2005 included the following language: THE DISTRICT WILL MAKE SPECIAL EFFORTS TO EMPLOY AND ADVANCE WOMEN, BLACKS, AND HANDICAPPED PERSONS. Further, the District's published hiring goals include having at least one minority administrator at each elementary school and attain[ing] a ratio of black administrators in the [District] in proportion to the ratio of black certified personnel in the [D]istrict in the preceding year. Members of the biracial interview committees are trained to abide by the District's racial equality policies. The District does, however, dispute Humphries's assertion that it has a policy of hiring assistant principals such that at least one assistant principal at each school is of a different race than that school's principal. Humphries contends that she presented sufficient evidence to create a question of fact about whether the district has such a policy. She points to evidence that from October 2002 to August 2005, black applicants were hired for twelve out of fourteen assistant principal openings and, in eleven of those instances, the principal at the school was white. In the twelfth instance, the school's principal was black, but the school already had one white assistant principal. The two white assistant principals were hired at schools where the principals were black. Humphries's expert concluded that a statistical analysis of this evidence showed that the District has a policy of biracially pairing principals and assistant principals because black applicants were selected at schools with white principals in excess of 5.64 standard deviations above what would have been expected in the absence of such a policy, based on the relevant labor market. Cf. Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 309 n. 14, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977) (suggesting that standard deviations between 2 and 3 constitute acceptable statistical proof of discrimination). The District argues that Humphries's statistical evidence is unreliable, challenging several aspects of her analysis, particularly whether Humphries's expert used the appropriate applicant pool. Humphries's expert used the number of certified teachers in the District as the comparative applicant pool. The District's expert used the number of applicants for each job as the comparative pool and concluded that the statistical evidence did not support the proposition that the District had such a policy. As the Supreme Court has noted, when a job requires special qualifications, comparisons to the general population (rather than to the smaller group of individuals who possess the necessary qualifications) may have little probative value. Id. at 308 n. 13, 97 S.Ct. 2736. Humphries argues that all certified teachers possess the necessary qualifications for an assistant principal job, while the District asserts that only certain teachers possess the necessary administrative certification. The parties' different methods of analysis create an issue of fact, and the determination of the appropriate comparative figures in this case will depend upon further evaluation by the trial court. See id. at 312, 97 S.Ct. 2736 (Statistics come in infinite variety. Their usefulness depends on all of the surrounding facts and circumstances. Only the trial court is in a position to make the appropriate determination after further findings. (internal citation and alterations omitted)). The district court made no findings regarding Humphries's statistical evidence. It did not, for example, conclude that Humphries's expert's analysis was flawed because the analysis failed to control for relevant variables. Cf. El Deeb v. Univ. of Minn., 60 F.3d 423, 430-31 (8th Cir.1995) (affirming the district court's grant of summary judgment where the district court found that the plaintiff's statistical analysis was insufficient as a matter of law because it failed to control for relevant variables). We cannot say as a matter of law whether one analysis is superior to the other. Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Humphries, a reasonable jury could conclude that the District has a policy of pairing assistant principals with principals of different races. The District next argues that each of its affirmative action policies was properly promulgated in response to various court orders requiring the District to implement procedures to desegregate and make itself attractive to minority administrators. While this court has not addressed the issue of whether reliance on a court-sanctioned affirmative action plan may be direct evidence of discrimination, several of our sister circuits have suggested that an affirmative action plan may be direct evidence of discrimination if the challenged employment action resulted from the employer acting in connection with that plan. See Frank v. Xerox Corp., 347 F.3d 130, 137 (5th Cir.2003) (also requiring a showing that the plan is invalid); Bass v. Bd. of County Comm'rs, 256 F.3d 1095, 1110 (11th Cir.2001) (same); McGarry v. Bd. of County Comm'rs, 175 F.3d 1193, 1200 (10th Cir.1999); Brown v. McLean, 159 F.3d 898, 904 (4th Cir.1998); Cerrato v. S.F. Cmty. Coll. Dist., 26 F.3d 968, 976 (9th Cir.1994). We now join our sister circuits in concluding that evidence that an employer followed an affirmative action plan in taking a challenged adverse employment action may constitute direct evidence of unlawful discrimination. If the employer defends by asserting that it acted pursuant to a valid affirmative action plan, the question then becomes whether the affirmative action plan is valid under Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause. See Bass, 256 F.3d at 1113, cf. Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 2658, 2673, 174 L.Ed.2d 490 (2009) (holding that a city's making promotion decisions based on race would violate Title VII without a valid defense); Donaghy v. City of Omaha, 933 F.2d 1448, 1458 (8th Cir. 1991) (holding that satisfaction of the four-part McDonnell Douglas test will not necessarily show a prima facie violation of § 1983 in a reverse discrimination case where the employer was acting pursuant to a bona fide affirmative action plan, but not discussing whether evidence of an employer's acting pursuant to the affirmative action plan would constitute direct evidence of unlawful discrimination). Because the District does not dispute the existence of several of its affirmative action policies, Humphries must next show that the District acted pursuant to those policies in failing to promote her to the assistant principal positions. See Fields, 520 F.3d at 863 (requiring a specific link between the alleged discriminatory animus and the challenged decision). We conclude that Humphries has raised a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether there was a specific link between the District's decision not to promote her and the District's various affirmative action policies. Humphries presented evidence that the District's interview committees are instructed to abide by the District's affirmative action policies. The District's published hiring goals include hiring at least one minority administrator at each school and attaining a ratio of black administrators in proportion to the number of black certified personnel in the District. And, as explained above, Humphries created a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether the District has a policy of hiring assistant principals who are of a different race than the principal at a particular school. A reasonable jury could conclude that interviewers, who had been trained in the District's racial equality policies, effectuated those policies through their scoring and ranking of applicants and that the District therefore acted pursuant to its affirmative action policies when it failed to promote Humphries to one of the assistant principal positions. See Bass, 256 F.3d at 1112-13; Frank, 347 F.3d at 137 (finding direct evidence of unlawful discrimination where the employer explicitly identified racial goals and managers were evaluated on how well they complied with the affirmative action policy's objectives). The District argues that Humphries cannot show that she was adversely affected by its affirmative action policies because her low scores during her initial interviews precluded her from reaching the final stage of interviewing. The District relies on Donaghy, in which we held that the plaintiff, a white male, did not have standing to challenge his employer's decision to interview and promote a black applicant because the plaintiff's scores on a multiple choice test left him ranked below several other applicants. Donaghy, 933 F.2d at 1454-55. However, there was no allegation in Donaghy that the multiple choice test was biased against whites or subjective in any other way. By contrast, Humphries asserts that the District's interviewers were influenced by the District's affirmative action policies and that their rankings were therefore biased by their desire to comply with those policies. Thus, Donaghy does not support the District's position. As explained above, Humphries has met her burden of raising a genuine issue of material fact about whether there was a specific link between the District's failure to promote her and the District's affirmative action policies. Finally, to defeat summary judgment, Humphries must show that the District's affirmative action policies are invalid. See Bass, 256 F.3d at 1113; cf. Johnson v. Transp. Agency, 480 U.S. 616, 626-27, 107 S.Ct. 1442, 94 L.Ed.2d 615 (1987) (explaining that the burden is on the Title VII plaintiff to show that an affirmative action policy is invalid). An affirmative action policy is valid if the policy is remedial and narrowly tailored to meet the goal of remedying the effects of past discrimination. Donaghy, 933 F.2d at 1458. A policy may be considered remedial if the employer has identified a manifest imbalance in the work force. Maitland v. Univ. of Minn., 155 F.3d 1013, 1016 (8th Cir.1998) (quoting Johnson, 480 U.S. at 631, 107 S.Ct. 1442). A policy may be shown to be remedial through evidence that it was implemented in adherence to a court order, whether entered by consent or after litigation. Donaghy, 933 F.2d at 1459; see also Maitland, 155 F.3d at 1017. But a policy may not unnecessarily trammel the rights of non-minorities, and it must be intended to attain a balance, not to maintain one. Maitland, 155 F.3d at 1016 (internal quotation and alteration omitted). The District contends that its policies are consistent with Plan 2000 and with previous court orders, as well as with mandates from the ODM in response to its findings concerning the District's implementation of Plan 2000. Although the district court found that the District's policies were valid, it did not discuss the basis for that finding. The court merely noted that [w]hile Humphries argues that the District is no longer subject to monitoring as to its administrative staffing and has met or perhaps exceeded its goals, the Court is not prepared to say that the District's plan is invalid and that the District is no longer subject to an agreement approved by the court in the Little Rock School Desegregation Case. If the District's affirmative action policies were implemented pursuant to court orders, that would not guarantee that the [policies] serve a remedial purpose, but the heightened judicial oversight inherent in a properly entered [court order] would support the District's argument that its polices are remedial. See id. at 1016-17 (internal quotations and citations omitted). However, at oral argument the District could not identify with specificity which court orders, besides Plan 2000, that it was bound by or whether the ODM had required it to implement other policies in response to the ODM's monitoring. Without this information, we cannot determine whether the District's affirmative action policies are consistent with court orders or ODM mandates. Moreover, the District's assertion that its policies were implemented in adherence to Plan 2000 does not support its argument that its polices are remedial. Many of the District's policies seem to be aimed at increasing the number of minority administrators hired. However, Plan 2000 merely requires the District to attain a racially diverse applicant pool for administrative positions; it does not set hiring goals. As the District conceded at oral argument, there is nothing in Plan 2000 related to biracial interview committees or hiring quotas for particular positions. Additionally, Humphries showed that there is an issue of fact regarding whether the District has a policy of pairing assistant principals with principals of different races. If such a policy exists, it is not a part of Plan 2000. Thus, the District cannot rely on Plan 2000 to show that its policies were remedial. We turn, then, to the question whether the District's policies were remedial because they addressed a manifest racial imbalance in the District's work force. See Maitland, 155 F.3d at 1016. We conclude that there are genuine issues of material fact related to the questions whether the District's affirmative action policies addressed a manifest racial imbalance in the workforce and, relatedly, whether the policies were aimed at attaining a balance in the workforce. See id. at 1018 (reversing a grant of summary judgment to an employer because the plaintiff demonstrated that there is a genuine issue of material fact on the question of whether there was a manifest ... imbalance in faculty salaries based on gender). The parties did not focus on this issue in their briefs on appeal or in the district court, though Humphries did present evidence that the District's annual reports claim that the District continues to meet its racial quotas for administrators. Humphries contends, and we agree, that this evidence creates a genuine issue of material fact about whether there was a manifest imbalance in the workforce and whether the District is impermissibly maintaining, rather than attaining, a racial balance. See id. Because there are genuine questions of material fact remaining, we are unable to determine whether the District's affirmative action policies are valid as a matter of law. See id. Accordingly, we find that Humphries has presented sufficient direct evidence of unlawful race discrimination by showing that there are genuine issues of material fact regarding the District's affirmative action policies, regarding whether the District acted pursuant to those policies when it failed to promote her to the assistant principal positions, and regarding whether the District's affirmative action policies are valid. We therefore reverse the district court's grant of the District's motion for summary judgment with regard to Humphries's claims that the District discriminated against her when it refused to promote her to the assistant principal positions. [4]