Opinion ID: 2650943
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Davis’s Retaliation Claims

Text: Between August 2007 and his termination, Davis filed several grievances— both internally and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). 4 Gilmore and City Manager Wendell Johnson, the decision-makers in charge of Davis’s termination, were aware that Davis had filed EEOC complaints. B. Chief Gilmore’s Tenure and Davis’s Termination The City hired Gilmore as chief on September 28, 2009. For years, the Department had been in turmoil and had lost its accreditation. Gilmore’s first order of business was to restore order in the Department and regain that 3 Gilmore, however, merely signed off on the evaluation, which her predecessor wrote. 4 The Department had several different police chiefs and interim chiefs during this time: David Allbritton (1996-2008), Steven Burch (March 2008-July 2008), Carlton Tunsil (July 2008August 2008), Robert Charles (August 2008-February 2009), Gary Laxton (March 2009-June 2009), Carlton Tunsil (June 2009-September, 2009), and Argatha Gilmore (September 28, 2009 to present). 3 Case: 13-11340 Date Filed: 01/23/2014 Page: 4 of 15 accreditation. To that end, Gilmore put in long hours, often working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. She began requiring Davis, her second-in-command, to meet with her twice a day, at the beginning of the work day and at 5:00 p.m. This increased oversight highlighted differences in Gilmore and Davis’s approaches to running the Department. Gilmore stated that she wanted to meet with Davis twice a day in part because he was not around the office much, and she wanted to know how he, as her second-in-command, was filling his days. Davis found Gilmore’s request that he stay past 5:00 every day to be unusual, and felt he was being singled out for some reason. Davis asked Gilmore why she was requiring him to stay past 5:00 every day for a routine update meeting that he felt could have been held during regular working hours. Gilmore described Davis’s attitude towards these meetings as “annoyed,” “resentful and not supportive,” and noted that Davis “did not offer suggestions for progress for the [D]epartment based on what his day had brought.” On November 3, 2009—just over one month after Gilmore started as chief— Davis met with her in a “one-on-one meeting.” Gilmore asked Davis what he thought his role as a captain was, and asked him to describe his daily activities. Davis described going out on calls with officers and staying in touch with them— tasks that Gilmore felt “were more closely aligned with the job duties of a [s]ergeant” or patrol officer, not a captain who was second-in-command. In contrast, Gilmore expected a captain to be “responsible for planning, forecasting, 4 Case: 13-11340 Date Filed: 01/23/2014 Page: 5 of 15 delegating, directing operations, resource gathering, administering and oversight of policies and procedures. . . . The [c]aptain oversees operations from an objective viewpoint and is the visionary.” Gilmore explained her expectations of a captain to Davis, while Davis took notes. Gilmore describes Davis’s demeanor during the one-on-one meeting as “annoyed,” “visibly angry,” and “seething.” The same day, Gilmore contacted the city manager, Wendell Johnson, and recommended Davis’s termination. On November 16, 2009, the City terminated Davis. The termination letter stated that Gilmore had made an assessment of the Department and the community, and determined that Davis’s services were no longer needed. The letter contained no further detail as to the reasons for Davis’s termination. Davis claims that the City gave differing reasons for his termination to different people. For all official purposes, the City characterized Davis’s termination as being driven by fundamental differences between Gilmore’s vision for the future of the Department and Davis’s understanding of his role as secondin-command. Davis, according to the City, “did not understand his role as [c]aptain and did not possess the skill set [Gilmore] was looking for as a [c]aptain. . . . Davis was functioning in the mentality of a [s]ergeant or officer.” While Gilmore was putting in long hours, Davis was a clock-watcher, resentful of 5 Case: 13-11340 Date Filed: 01/23/2014 Page: 6 of 15 Gilmore’s oversight and unwilling to do what it would take to turn the Department around. Davis, however, argues that record evidence contradicts the City’s official characterization of his termination. This other evidence, he argues, suggests that the City considered Davis’s termination to have been based on misconduct, rather than Davis’s failure to buy into and comply with Gilmore’s management philosophy. In support of this contention, Davis relies on three pieces of evidence: the testimony of a local pastor, John Edwards, the testimony of the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, John Mayo, and an EEOC Letter of Determination. Edwards recounted his conversations with Gilmore, several years earlier, in which she described her reasons for terminating Davis. Rather than reflecting an inconsistency, Edwards’s reporting of Gilmore’s reasons is consistent—she felt that she had to terminate Davis based on their differing ideas of Davis’s job responsibilities. Edwards testified that Gilmore wanted Davis, as her second-incommand, to work with her in the office, whereas Davis wanted to work in the field. Moreover, while Gilmore had hoped to work with Davis, she found he was not on her “team.” 5 Mayo also related a conversation he had with Gilmore several 5 The City’s counsel asked Edwards, “Did [Gilmore] mention anything in the conversation about needing Captain Davis to be on her team?” Edwards answered, “Yeah she—she told me that she was really depending on him and that she thought that she was going to be able to work with him because they was [sic] both Afro Americans and that she was surprised that she wasn’t able to.” In an effort to recast Edwards’s testimony to support Davis’s theory that Gilmore sometimes said she terminated Davis for misconduct, Davis contends that Gilmore said he was 6 Case: 13-11340 Date Filed: 01/23/2014 Page: 7 of 15 years earlier about the reason for Davis’s termination. Again, rather than suggest inconsistency, Mayo’s testimony reflects the City’s consistent theme—that Gilmore’s evaluation of Davis was that he did not meet her expectations as the second-in-command of her team charged with regaining accreditation of the Department. 6 Davis also relies upon the EEOC’s Letter of Determination, which reported that the City “admitted that [Davis] was terminated for being an insubordinate subordinate.” When asked in her deposition whether Davis was insubordinate during her tenure, Gilmore answered, “I guess that would be a matter of interpretation.” Davis also contends that the City characterized his termination as an “administrative termination not involving misconduct” to avoid having to afford Davis certain procedural protections. The City had a progressive discipline policy under which the City was required to follow a series of increasingly serious disciplinary actions against an officer guilty of misconduct. For example, for “loafing or inattention to duty,” the City was to start with an oral reprimand, then a terminated for “insubordination.” However, Edwards’s actual testimony does not support Davis’s contention. 6 For example, Mayo recounted that when Gilmore explained what she wanted Davis to do and discussed “some specific duties of a captain and she state [sic] that everything I was presenting to Mr. Davis, he would say: No, no, no. That’s not part of my duties. That’s not the scope of my duties. . . . She started talking about everything I asked him to do, he would always state that’s not part of my duties.” Gilmore was also concerned that she could not account for Davis’s whereabouts: “And he, many times—I don’t know where he is. We’re here; you know, where is he. . . . He’d be unaccounted for and he’ll come in and he’ll say—and she’d say he’ll come in sometimes and be here, be in the office for about two hours and then he’d disappear.” Gilmore apparently also expressed that Davis “just don’t [sic] seem to want to listen to me.” 7 Case: 13-11340 Date Filed: 01/23/2014 Page: 8 of 15 written reprimand, then demotion, then dismissal. Davis contends that had the City accused Davis of misconduct, the City would have been required to follow the progressive discipline policy rather than terminating him immediately. Davis also argues, as evidence of pretext, that the City treated him unusually harshly compared to another similarly situated employee. Davis states that around the same time that he was fired, Joe Moody—a Caucasian lieutenant—was demoted rather than terminated. Moody’s superiors had noted several performance problems. Moody claimed these performance issues were the result of health problems, and voluntarily requested a demotion, which the City granted. C. The District Court’s Opinion The district court granted summary judgment for the City. 7 Relevant here, the court concluded that while Davis succeeded in presenting a prima facie case of retaliation as to his termination, he failed to demonstrate that the City’s legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for Davis’s termination were pretextual.