Opinion ID: 795721
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Briggs's Sex-Discrimination Claim

Text: 29 The district court also granted summary judgment to the Postal Service on Briggs's sex-discrimination claim. Upon review, Briggs's sex-discrimination claim is much more precarious than his claim of age discrimination. Briggs presents no direct evidence that Jendras was selected because she is female, but he merely states repeatedly without the support of any evidence that it is his opinion that [f]emales are regularly favored for promotion at the Postal Service as a matter of course and unwritten policy. J.A. at 10 (Complaint at ¶ 20); Appellant Br. at 8. As for Briggs's attempt to prove his sex-discrimination claim under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting approach, that too cannot survive the Postal Service's motion for summary judgment. 30 Both parties and the district court failed to identify Briggs's sex-discrimination claim as a reverse-discrimination claim. A reverse-discrimination claim carries a different and more difficult prima facie burden. A plaintiff in a reverse-discrimination claim has established a prima facie case upon showing that background circumstances support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority . . . and upon a showing that the employer treated differently employees who were similarly situated but not members of the protected group. Yeager v. Gen. Motors Corp., 265 F.3d 389, 397 (6th Cir.2001) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Sutherland, 344 F.3d at 614. Briggs has not produced a shred of evidence that the Postal Service is the unusual employer who discriminates against men. Furthermore, the background circumstances that only one DECC out of seven was female and relatedly, that the three other DECCs promoted to ECS were male, strongly suggest that the Postal Service does not discriminate against men. Briggs has failed to make a prima facie showing of reverse sex discrimination. We affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Postal Service on Briggs's sex-discrimination claim.