Opinion ID: 2982559
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Internal review letters

Text: Nor can Plaintiff show that the internal letters from Buerki, Young, and Brueggemeier were tainted by retaliatory animus. Buerki’s October 10, 2008 letter simply summarized Plaintiffs accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, and service, plus the letters that had been received from external reviewers. The letter also included opinions about Plaintiff from five other faculty members, including one who collaborated extensively with Plaintiff. Plaintiff cannot point to evidence—as opposed to speculation—suggesting that these faculty members were biased against him. Young’s letter is also bereft of retaliatory intent. Like the Buerki letter, Young simply summarized the opinions of others—in Young’s case, the COP faculty at the tenure meeting. Plaintiff argues that the retaliatory remarks Balkrishnan made during the meeting tainted the proceedings and therefore Young’s letter. But while Balkrishnan’s remarks -21- No. 13-3029 were indisputably retaliatory, Plaintiff has not proffered any evidence that they altered the vote of a single faculty member. Finally, Brueggemeier’s December 17, 2008 letter does not reveal retaliatory animus. Brueggemeier’s review of Plaintiff’s teaching and service was generally positive, and his critiques of Plaintiffs research mirrored those that had been levied against Plaintiff since his fourth-year review. Brueggemeier concluded that Plaintiff’s funding had been inadequate—not because the funding sources were not federal agencies, but because they were not obviously peer-reviewed. C. Retaliation Was Not a But-For Cause of Alutto’s Decision After all of Plaintiff’s invective, he cannot show that any significant portion of his dossier was tainted by retaliatory animus. Since the factors that contributed to Alutto’ s decision were not retaliatory, it follows that Alutto’s decision was not caused by retaliatory actions of nondecisionmakers. See Staub, 131 S. Ct. at 1193. The bevy of collateral arguments Plaintiff presents cannot distract us from this conclusion. Plaintiff first asserts numerous procedural errors in the tenure review process, but even if the COP failed to follow some University procedures, these errors did not affect the elements of the dossier that actually influenced Alutto’s decision. Second, Plaintiffs argument that Alutto was not qualified to review Plaintiffs dossier is not well taken. The University has adopted tenure procedures that apply universally to a broad spectrum of academic disciplines. We will not pass judgment over the propriety of this system of academic review as a whole in this single case. Third, the district court’s treatment of Plaintiff’s proffered expert does not require reversal. Plaintiff does not argue that the district court made any error of law by excluding admissible portions of the expert’s testimony. Plaintiff simply asserts that the district court failed to properly consider the expert’s testimony. Even if Plaintiffs contention were -22- No. 13-3029 correct, it is moot. See Ralph ex rel. Ralph v. Nagy, 950 F.2d 326, 329 (6th Cir. 1991). We have fully considered the expert report and deposition. Neither supports reversing the district court’s judgment. Finally, Plaintiff relies heavily on our opinion in Gutzwiller v. Fenik, 860 F.2d 1317 (6th Cir. 1988), but this case does not ultimately support Plaintiff. The plaintiff in Gutzwiller was a female professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati who was on the tenure track. See Id. at 1320. She received high marks on her teaching and committee work, and had a book accepted for publication, but the plaintiffs male superiors placed higher demands on her scholarly output. See Id at 1320—21. When the plaintiff came up for tenure, her superiors rejected most of her suggested external reviewers and selected some that the plaintiff explicitly warned against. See Id. at 1322. The department then voted to deny tenure. See Id. at 1322—23. The dean, however, noted that most of the evaluations of the plaintiffs scholarship had been laudatory and voted to approve tenure. See Id at 1323. The provost ultimately overruled the dean and denied tenure after considering more evidence from the department. See Id. The plaintiff sued numerous members of the University, including individual members of the Classics Department who considered her application. A jury found that two of the plaintiffs supervisors in her department had denied her tenure because of her sex. See id. at 1324. There was no evidence that these superiors had required male professors to publish two books before receiving tenure—in fact, the plaintiff had met or exceeded the number of publications of other professors who received tenure. See id. at 1326. Most damning, one supervisor claimed that the plaintiffs work was not “rich enough or productive enough,” but “the evidence showed that he had not even read [the plaintiff SI manuscript at the time he informed her of th[eI additional requirement.” Id. -23- No. 13-3029 If Plaintiffs claims for pre-2009 conduct were still viable, Gutzwiller would have relevance. But Gutzwiller has nothing to say about applying the elements of a cat’s paw claim to a tenure decision. Plaintiff points to the parallel between the supervisor in Gutzwiller, who did not read the plaintiff’s research, and Alutto, who likewise did not to read Plaintiff’s articles. In Gutzwiller, this evidence was used to support the conclusion that the supervisor was motivated by discrimination. Plaintiff has levied no such charge against Alutto. Since Plaintiff argues that Alutto was simply a cat’s paw for the retaliation of others, Alutto’ s own motivations are irrelevant. One teaching of Gutzwiller is relevant to this case. We stressed in Gutzwiller that a court must not sit as a “super tenure committee.” Id. at 1326 (quotation marks omitted). Indeed, “federal courts have traditionally been wary of interfering with academic tenure decisions.” Ford v. Nicks, 866 F.2d 865, 875 (6th Cir. 1989). In order to stave off summary judgment, it is not enough for Plaintiff to show that he should have received tenure. Plaintiff must create a genuine issue of fact that retaliation was a but-for cause of Alutto’ s denial of tenure. The University’s tenure procedures are lengthy, detailed, and stringent. They attempt to ensure that invidious or petty motives of individual faculty members do not affect the University’s ultimate decision concerning the decades-long commitment it makes to tenured faculty. Conspiratorial theories based on little more than speculation cannot save a claim from summary judgment. See Muihall v. Ashcroft, 287 F.3d 543, 552 (6th Cir. 2002). Plaintiff cannot show that such an extensive conspiracy to deny him tenure existed. III. TITLE VII RETALIATION: PLAINTIFF’S INTERNAL APPEAL Finally, I turn to Plaintiffs retaliation claim arising out of the FHC’s dismissal of Plaintiffs internal appeal. The district court held that the denial of an internal appeal from an adverse employment action was not a cognizable act of retaliation. See Seoane II 2012 WL -24- No. 13-3029 6138661, at _13. This legal conclusion, which we review de novo, see Doe v. Salvation Army in the US., 531 F.3d 355, 357 (6th Cir. 2008), is wrong. The anti-retaliation provision of Title VII prohibits “discriminat[ing]” against an employee because that employee had engaged in protected conduct. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). An employer’s action constitutes discrimination if “a reasonable employee would have found the challenged action materially adverse, which in this context means it well 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 (2006) (quotation marks omitted). As a result of this standard, “a plaintiffs burden of establishing a materially adverse employment action is less onerous in the retaliation context than in the anti-discrimination context.” Michael v. Caterpillar Fin. Servs. Corp., 496 F.3d 584, 595—96 (6th Cir. 2007). Once Alutto denied Plaintiffs application for tenure, Plaintiff sought relief through the University’s internal appeals process. Plaintiff claims that he was denied the benefit of these procedures—that the FHC dismissed his appeal in retaliation for Plaintiffs internal complaint and federal lawsuit. In effect, Plaintiff argues that the FHC failed to investigate his complaint concerning the tenure review process, which Plaintiff claimed was rife with discriminatory and retaliatory animus. A failure to investigate a complaint can constitute an act of retaliation under some circumstances—for example, “if the failure is in retaliation for some separate, protected act by the plaintiff,” apart from the uninvestigated complaint itself. Fincher v. Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., 604 F.3d 712, 722 (2d Cir. 2010) (citing Rochon v. Gonzales, 438 F.3d 1211, 1219—20 (D.C. Cir. 2006)). Plaintiff has alleged precisely this type of conduct. Plaintiff asserts that the FHC failed to investigate his complaint in retaliation for Plaintiffs earlier complaints about national-origin discrimination, plus the 2007 lawsuit. Plaintiffs accusation is of particular -25- No. 13-3029 note since we have stressed the importance of internal appeal processes in the context of university tenure decisions. See Dobbs-Weinstein v. Vanderbilt Univ., 185 F.3d 542, 545 (6th Cir. 1999), overruled in part by White v. Burlington N & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 364 F.3d 789 (6th Cir. 2004) (en banc). At the very least, there is a factual dispute as to whether a tainted internal appeal “well might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.” Burlington N, 548 U.S. at 68 (quotation marks omitted). The district court reached the opposite conclusion based on its finding that the FHC did not have the power to order a new tenure process. The court believed this to be the relevant question based on two cases that addressed claims arising out of grievance procedures following denial of tenure: Delaware State College v. Ricks, 449 U.S. 250 (1980), and Lever v. Northwestern University, 979 F.2d 552 (7th Cir. 1992). The grievance procedures in these cases were purely remedial, and therefore their outcomes were not independently cognizable employment actions. See Ricks, 449 U.S. at 261; Lever, 979 F.2d at 556. But neither of these cases involved a claim for Title VII retaliation, and neither employed the standard from Burlington Northern. See Ricks, 449 U.S. at 254; Lever, 979 F.2d at 553. “The ‘materially adverse action’ element of a Title VII retaliation claim is substantially different from the ‘adverse employment action’ element of a Title VII race discrimination claim.” Laster v. City of Kalamazoo, 746 F.3d 714, 719 (6th Cir. 2014). As a result, neither Ricks nor Lever provides relevant instruction for this case. Despite the district court’s legal error, a majority of this panel affirms the court’s judgment on the basis that Plaintiff failed to develop this argument either below or on appeal. While I disagree with this assertion, I note that the panel’s majority raises no dispute with the lead opinion’s legal analysis of Plaintiff’s claim. Contrary to the majority’s holding on this -26- No. 13-3029 issue, I would therefore remand to allow the district court to consider whether the retaliatory acts of nondecisionmakers were a but-for cause of the FHC’s denial of Plaintiff’s internal appeal.