Opinion ID: 3063734
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Title VII Gender Discrimination

Text: Gresham argues that the City’s male department heads had more serious problems in their departments than she did, but were not demoted. She further argues that the City’s proffered reason for her demotion, a combination of complaints, was pretextual. Title VII prohibits employers from engaging in practices that discriminate on the basis of gender. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a). Absent direct evidence of an employer’s discriminatory motive, a plaintiff may establish her case through circumstantial evidence, using the burden-shifting framework established by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S. Ct. 1817 (1973). See Wilson v. B/E Aerospace, Inc., 376 F.3d 1079, 1087 (11th Cir. 2004). Under this framework, the plaintiff may establish a prima facie case of gender discrimination by showing that she “was a qualified member of a protected class and was subjected to an adverse employment action in contrast with similarly situated employees outside the protected class.” Id. In Holifield v. Reno, we recognized that “[i]f a plaintiff fails to show the existence of a similarly situated 15 employee, summary judgment is appropriate where no other evidence of discrimination is present.” 115 F.3d 1555, 1562 (11th Cir. 1997) (per curiam). Once the employee establishes a prima facie case of discrimination, the burden shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for its treatment of the employee. Chapman v. AI Transport, 229 F.3d 1012, 1024 (11th Cir. 2000). If the employer articulates such a reason, the burden shifts to the employee to “proffer sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether each of the defendant employer’s articulated reasons is pretextual.” Id. at 1024-25. “A reason is not pretext for discrimination unless it is shown both that the reason was false, and that discrimination was the real reason.” Brooks v. County Comm’n of Jefferson County, Ala., 446 F.3d 1160, 1163 (11th Cir. 2006) (quotation marks and citation omitted). The plaintiff can meet her burden “either directly by persuading the court that a discriminatory reason more likely motivated the employer or indirectly by showing that the employer’s proffered explanation is unworthy of credence.” Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted). To discredit the employer’s explanation, the “plaintiff must demonstrate such weaknesses, implausibilities, inconsistencies, incoherencies, or contradictions in the employer’s proffered legitimate reasons for its action that a reasonable factfinder could find all of those reasons unworthy of credence.” Watkins v. 16 Sverdrup Tech., Inc., 153 F.3d 1308, 1314 (11th Cir. 1998) (quotation marks, citation, and alteration omitted). Upon review of the record and the briefs of the parties, and assuming without deciding that Gresham established a prima facie case, we conclude that Gresham has not shown that all of the City’s stated reasons for her demotion were so weak or contradictory that a reasonable factfinder could find all of them unworthy of credence. In addition, she has not pointed to sufficient evidence that would tend to show that discrimination was the real reason for her demotion. Accordingly, we conclude that Gresham failed to establish that the City’s stated reasons were pretextual.