Opinion ID: 2684138
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Differences in Qualifications

Text: Hicks focuses primarily on the alleged differences between her qualifications and Krout's. See Burdine, 450 U.S. at 259. The Secretary responds with evidence that the interviewers saw Hicks and Krout as essentially equally qualified, and therefore based the promotion decision exclusively on their relative performance in the interviews. Hicks begins with a technical argument that Krout did not qualify for the position. Therefore, even interviewing him, let alone promoting him, indicated a questionable motive. This argument cites the language of the job posting, which stated that [a]pplicants must have one-year of specialized experience at the GS-09 level.7 The posting went on to define specialized experience as experience in the field of housing management that required application of a variety [of] general business principles and practices concerning the purchase, lease, rental, and overall utilization of housing facilities. Hicks contends that because Krout served only as a housing inspector in his prior position, he lacked the requisite 7 It is undisputed that although Hicks and Krout had different responsibilities in their prior positions, they had the same formal job title and GS level--Housing Specialist, GS-09. Accordingly, they both met the part of the experience requirement calling for at least one year of service at a GS-09 level. -11- leasing experience to fulfill the requirement. It is undisputed that as a housing inspector Krout was responsible for inspecting more than 330 on-base units at Otis Air Force Base; he was not responsible for the leasing or purchasing of those, or any other, housing units. Hicks's argument is premised on an overly narrow interpretation of the specialized experience requirement. That requirement is not stated so precisely that experience with the overall utilization of housing facilities would be disqualifying if it did not happen to include direct experience with leasing. The requirement gives discretion to decisionmakers to evaluate whether a candidate's previous experience in the field of housing management was relevant. Indeed, if Hicks's narrow reading were correct, she would not have been qualified for the position because she lacked direct experience purchasing housing facilities.8 Hicks further contends that even if Krout were technically qualified for the position, his experience and qualifications were so inferior to hers as to permit a reasonable jury to infer discrimination in the decision to interview him and, ultimately, to promote him over her.9 She asserts that given this 8 Hicks avers that her specific responsibilities included inspecting housing units; obtaining and administering leases for Coast Card service members; and locating new properties for the Coast Guard to lease as additional housing. 9 Hicks appears to use her superior qualifications argument in two ways. She asserts that her qualifications were so superior to -12- disparity, the interviewers' contention that they viewed the two candidates as equally qualified for the promotion could not be credited by a reasonable fact-finder. We disagree. The Supreme Court has acknowledged that qualifications evidence may suffice, at least in some circumstances, to show pretext. Ash v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 546 U.S. 454, 457 (2006) (emphasis added). We have nonetheless cautioned that subjective evidence of competing qualifications seldom provides a principled way for a factfinder to determine whether a given employment decision, even if wrong-headed, was anything more than 'a garden-variety mistake in corporate judgment.' Rathbun v. Autozone, Inc., 361 F.3d 62, 74 (1st Cir. 2004) (quoting Freeman v. Package Mach. Co., 865 F.2d 1331, 1341 (1st Cir. 1988)); see also Burdine, 450 U.S. at 259 (The fact that a court may think that the employer misjudged the qualifications of the applicants does not in itself expose him to Title VII liability, although this may be Krout's that he should not even have been interviewed. She also asserts that her slightly weaker performance in the interview should not have affected the promotion decision because her qualifications were so superior to his. For our purposes, it is not material whether the decisionmaker considered their relative qualifications before, after, or throughout the interview. Having established that both candidates were technically eligible for the promotion, the decisionmaker was free to consider their relative qualifications at any stage in the decision process. Accordingly, we will focus the remainder of our analysis on the merits of Hicks's argument about the disparity in their qualifications without parsing out the decision to interview from the decision to promote. -13- probative of whether the employer’s reasons are pretexts for discrimination.). It is true that Hicks had more years of experience in the housing office (nine years) than did Krout (one-and-a-half years). Her particular experience in the management of housing unquestionably surpassed his. However, Krout had more years of total government service (31 years) than Hicks (20 years). Furthermore, the vast majority of Krout's government service was as a Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Coast Guard. That position required him to manage the contracting office of the ship or base where he was serving, supervise as many as twelve subordinates and oversee budgets as large as $15 million. As part of this role he evaluated and awarded supply contracts. Weighing the value of this management experience against Hicks's housing management experience required the interview panel to make a judgment that it was entitled to make. Hicks's own view that her qualifications were superior to Krout's has little probative value. As the district court aptly put it, no reasonable jury could conclude that Hicks’s qualifications so outweighed those of Krout – hers were superior in some respects, but Krout’s were superior in others – that it was more likely than not, discriminatory animus provided the job clincher. Hicks v. Napolitano, No. 11–11517–RSG, 2013 WL 1992204, at  (D. Mass. May 10, 2013). If the interviewers erred in judging the candidates' -14- relative qualifications, as Hicks argues, there is nothing to suggest that the error was anything but a permissible garden-variety mistake in corporate judgment. Freeman, 865 F.2d at 1341.