Opinion ID: 2973065
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: termination and immediate reinstatement

Text: I agree with the majority that an employee who is illegally discharged, but who secures immediate reinstatement without the loss of any benefits, has not suffered an “adverse employment action” for purposes of the federal anti-discrimination laws. Maj. Op. at 3-4. Starting with the decision in Kauffman v. Allied Signal, Inc., 970 F.2d 178, 187 (6th Cir. 1992), this court has recognized a de minimis exception to the general rule that an adverse employment action following discriminatory conduct gives rise to employer liability under Title VII. The plaintiff in Kauffman was a female machine operator who took medical leave to undergo breast enhancement surgery, and who was harassed by her male supervisor upon returning to work. When she told her supervisor that she had had “enough” of his overtures, he briefly assigned her to a manual machine that was difficult to operate and that was called “torture” by other employees. This court rejected the company’s argument that an adverse employment action must be economic in nature, but remanded the case to the district court because the one-day transfer might fall into “a de minimis exception for temporary actions, such as . . . where further remedial action is moot and no economic loss occurred.” Id. at 187. Our decision in Bowman v. Shawnee State University, 220 F.3d 456, 462 (6th Cir. 2000), on which the majority properly relies, is an on-point application of the principle first articulated in Kaufmann. The plaintiff in Bowman was the Coordinator of Sports Studies at a university, and he claimed that a female dean had stripped him of his duties as Coordinator after he resisted her sexual advances. Ten days after the dean’s actions, however, the school provost rescinded the dean’s decision and removed the termination letter from Bowman’s personnel file. This court held that the ten-day removal from the Coordinator position, with no loss in salary or benefits, was “properly characterized as a de minimis employment action that does not rise to the level of a materially adverse employment decision.” Id. Although the loss of Coordinator responsibilities might be No. 04-6023 Keeton v. Flying J, Inc. Page 7 “materially adverse if permanent,” the court said that the “very temporary” nature of the action placed it within the de minimis exception carved out by Kauffman. 220 F.3d at 462. The majority, therefore, correctly concludes that Bowman disposes of Keeton’s argument that a temporary termination, even if followed by immediate reinstatement, comprises an adverse employment action. Our unanimous conclusion on this point should, in my opinion, end our review of the present case because the “termination theory” of liability is the only one that Keeton advanced in his appellate brief. See Radvansky v. City of Olmsted Falls, 395 F.3d 291, 311 (6th Cir. 2005) (stating the general rule that “failure to raise an argument in [an] appellate brief constitutes a waiver of the argument on appeal”) (citation omitted). But instead of deciding the present case on “the best and narrowest ground available,” Air Courier Conference v. American Postal Workers Union, 498 U.S. 517, 531 (1991) (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment), the majority reaches out and affirms the jury verdict on the basis of a theory that even Keeton does not defend. This theory of liability—that a purely lateral transfer can constitute an adverse employment action when undertaken as a solution to a supervisor’s unlawful conduct—departs from existing caselaw and the policies underlying Title VII.