Opinion ID: 772432
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Comparative Paper Qualifications

Text: 17 In terms of paper credentials, Byrnie was the better qualified candidate for the job. Byrnie had 21 ½ years' experience working as an art instructor at a number of different high schools. Further, Byrnie had spent six years as a substitute teacher at Cromwell High School. Mancarella, by contrast, had four years' experience teaching art at the middle school level, along with eight additional years' part-time teaching experience as an art instructor. Byrnie had a bachelor's and a master's degree in Art Education, while Mancarella had a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and some graduate study course work. Both candidates presented strong recommendations. Finally, while both candidates had credentials sufficient for the position, technically Mancarella lacked the requisite education: the position called for a bachelors degree in Art Education, while Mancarella possessed a degree in Fine Arts. 18 Courts have recognized that an employer's disregard or misjudgment of a plaintiff's job qualifications may undermine the credibility of an employer's stated justification for an employment decision. See Fischbach v. D.C. Dep't of Corr., 86 F.3d 1180, 1183 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (Evidence indicating that an employer misjudged an employee's performance or qualifications is, of course, relevant to the question whether its stated reason is a pretext masking prohibited discrimination.); Tyler v. Re/Max Mountain States, Inc., 232 F.3d 808, 814 (10th Cir. 2000) (quoting Fischbach); Alexander v. Fulton County, Ga, 207 F.3d 1303, 1340 (11th Cir.) (noting that evidence showing an employer hired a less qualified applicant over the plaintiff may be probative of whether the employer's proffered reason for not promoting plaintiff was pretextual), reh'g and reh'g in banc denied, 218 F.3d 749 (11th Cir. 2000). At the same time, the court must respect the employer's unfettered discretion to choose among qualified candidates. Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183; see also Simms v. Oklahoma ex rel. Dep't of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Servs., 165 F.3d 1321, 1330 (10th Cir.) (Our role is to prevent unlawful hiring practices, not to act as a'super personnel department' that second guesses employers' business judgments.) (citations omitted), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 815 (1999). 19 When a plaintiff seeks to prevent summary judgment on the strength of a discrepancy in qualifications ignored by an employer, that discrepancy must bear the entire burden of allowing a reasonable trier of fact to not only conclude the employer's explanation was pretextual, but that the pretext served to mask unlawful discrimination. In effect, the plaintiff's credentials would have to be so superior to the credentials of the person selected for the job that no reasonable person, in the exercise of impartial judgment, could have chosen the candidate selected over the plaintiff for the job in question. Deines v. Tex. Dep't of Protective & Regulatory Servs., 164 F.3d 277, 280-81 (5th Cir. 1999); see also Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183 (Title VII liability cannot rest solely upon a judge's determination that an employer misjudged the relative qualifications of admittedly qualified candidates.). Byrnie's credentials on their own could not meet this weighty burden. While he was well-qualified for the art teacher position, we cannot say that Mancarella was unqualified or that Cromwell was unreasonable in electing to offer her the position in light of a comparison of her paper credentials with Byrnie's. 20 Nevertheless, just because the discrepancy between Byrnie's and Mancarella's qualifications does not on its own have the strength to create a material issue of fact, that does not mean the discrepancy is stripped of all probative value. Indeed, although Cromwell claims the decision to hire Mancarella rested finally upon her superior performance in the interviews, it is worth noting that even prior to the interviews-and thus based upon paper credentials alone-she was ranked, along with two other applicants, higher than Byrnie. After an initial screening, the pool of 41 applicants was reduced to 21 who were then subjected to a second screening. During the screening meeting the applications were rated on a scale of 1-5 by each member of the Search Committee, and those applicants who received the highest number of points were invited to interview. In reviewing the applications, the Search Committee looked at whether the applications were complete, the presentation of the cover letters, and the applicants' education, experience and achievement. 2 Based on paper credentials alone, Mancarella scored highest while Byrnie came in fourth. While no doubt other factors could also be important, Nappi could not suggest what other factors might account for determining Mancarella was a more suitable candidate on the strength of her paper credentials. The credibility of the Search Committee is not helped by the fact that it needed to relax the educational requirements of the position in order for Mancarella to survive these initial screenings, let alone be selected as the most deserving of an interview. 3 Further, the Search Committee had to ignore the requirement that an application be complete in Mancarella's case because her application was missing transcripts from a number of the colleges she had attended. To be sure, this alone does not support a finding of pretext; lawful reasons can easily be found for the low ranking of Byrnie's application in comparison to his less experienced competitor-for example, his self-presentation in the application cover letter may have been off-putting. See Byrnie, 73 F. Supp.2d at 216 (suggesting a variety of lawful reasons that could explain the ranking of Byrnie's application). Similarly, the failure to screen out Mancarella's application based on its being incomplete and her lacking the appropriate qualifications is not enough on its own to call into question the good faith of the hiring process because these are not significant irregularities. See Weinstock v. Columbia Univ., 224 F.3d 33, 45 (2d Cir. 2000) (noting that procedural irregularities may 'raise a question as to the good faith of the process where the departure may reasonably affect the decision.') (quoting Stern, 131 F.3d at 313). Nevertheless, a reasonable trier of fact is entitled to find that it does bear on the credibility of the employer which must finally be evaluated from the perspective of the entire record.