Opinion ID: 2641219
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Falsified Résumé

Text: Lobato also alleges pretext in NMED’s claim that he falsified his résumé. The NMED dismissal letter reports that both in his job application and during his November 2007 interview, Lobato said he was working as an investigator for the public defender’s office. The letter alleges that these were false statements because Lobato had in fact quit his job with the public defender in August 2007. Lobato does not contest that he left the public defender before his interview for the NMED job. Rather, he suggests that, when he submitted his résumé to NMED in January 2007, he was still employed at the public defender’s office, and that, at his interview, he “was not asked and did not state that [he] was then still employed with the State Public Defender’s Office.” App. 325. Thus, he concludes that this proffered rationale for his dismissal must be pretextual because he was not technically untruthful in either his résumé or his interview. We disagree. Even accepting Lobato’s version of the facts, NMED had a good faith basis for concluding Lobato had misrepresented the truth. Bentley’s -15- investigation revealed that Lobato’s employment status at the time of hiring was not accurately reflected on his résumé—i.e., his résumé said he was employed with a state agency at that time, but a search of the state’s system showed he was not. And Lobato does not dispute that the résumé as it was reviewed in November 2007 was in fact inaccurate. “The relevant inquiry,” we have explained, “is not whether the employer’s proffered reasons were wise, fair or correct, but whether it honestly believed those reasons and acted in good faith upon those beliefs.” Luster, 667 F.3d at 1094 (internal quotation marks omitted). All Lobato has done is to allege that NMED might have relied on an unfair perception of the facts, not that NMED relied on that perception in bad faith. This is insufficient to establish pretext.