Court Opinion

ID: 9464358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:31:24.782981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:35.315097
License: Public Domain

Statement on Denial of Petition for Rehearing En Banc
BRIGHT, Circuit Judge.
Although I question the result reached by the panel in this case, I have not requested a rehearing en banc. The plaintiff-appellant has conceded, erroneously in my judg*1079ment, that McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), represents the appropriate test for analysis of the merits of this ease. I write my views to reflect my disagreement with the use of the McDonnell Douglas analysis here.
The McDonnell Douglas test is wholly inappropriate in this type, of case. In McDonnell Douglas, the Supreme Court provided guidelines for establishing discriminatory conduct where the employer’s conduct is so subtle that the plaintiff cannot prove discrimination directly. In the present case, the employer’s conduct is neither subtle nor indirect. The employer here openly announced its interest in employing only males for the advertised position. The panel agrees that the employer’s conduct violated section 2000e-3(b). We therefore are not confronted with the question of whether the plaintiff made out a prima facie case of discriminatory conduct. The question is whether the employer’s- discriminatory conduct injured the plaintiff, entitling her to relief.
This employer’s conduct would ordinarily deter a qualified woman from applying for the accounting position. Ms. Banks, however, was not deterred from making a telephone inquiry. At the outset of the telephone conversation, the employer’s representative erected a further roadblock to her application: “Doesn’t that newspaper ad read a young man?” When Ms. Brown pressed her cause further, she encountered a third roadblock, that of employer disinterest because her prior earnings were “way too high.”
In my judgment, Ms. Banks made a strong showing that she was deterred from making a formal application for the vacancy because the prospective employer exhibited prejudice against women with relation to that job opening.
Ms. Banks’ status as a prospective employee was akin to that of the prospective applicant for employment, Hailes, in Hailes v. United Air Lines, 464 F.2d 1006 (5th Cir. 1972), except that Ms. Banks presented a far stronger case for relief.
Under the Hailes doctrine, the question of a right to relief rests upon whether the employer’s conduct “inculcate[d] a reasonable belief” that a formal application would be futile. 464 F.2d at 1009. The McDonnell Douglas test, as applied in this case, supra at 1076, however, focuses upon whether the defendant-employer has rejected the application. That is a different test.
In another similar case, utilization of the approach followed in Hailes may very well require a result contrary to that reached by the district court in this case.
I am authorized to say that Circuit Judge Heaney joins in the foregoing statement.