Court Opinion

ID: 9885067
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:28:51.786147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:43.647234
License: Public Domain

LANSING, Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion holding that appellant was not discriminated against in the promotion and advancement policies of the Isanti County Assessor’s office. The facts presented at trial were essentially undisputed. A number of these relevant facts are omitted from the majority opinion and the trial court’s findings. Other facts are presented in a light that is not fairly representative of the evidence. Consequently, a fuller fact statement is necessary.
FACTS
The Isanti County Assessor’s office had few employees when Renja Sigurdson was hired in February 1975. Aaron Boettcher was the county assessor. His son, Dean Boettcher, was the deputy assessor. Annette Beilin, another relative of Boettcher’s, was the clerk. Neither of the Boettch-ers had a college degree.
In October 1975 Curtis Becker and Duane Johnson were hired as appraisers. Becker had a degree in parochial school teaching; Johnson had a degree in social work. Neither of them had any experience in assessing. Although Sigurdson had assessing experience by that time, she was not notified of the job openings. Boettcher testified that he hired Becker and Johnson because of their farming and educational backgrounds, although he admitted that a college degree was not a requirement for the position. He also knew that Renja Sigurdson and her husband lived on a farm and that she had college credits which he estimated were equivalent to two years of college attendance.
After Becker and Johnson were hired, they performed the same work as Sigurd-son but were occasionally taken along to do field work with the Boettchers. As soon as *484they were certified in early 1976 they were made deputy assessors, and Dean Boettcher was promoted to chief deputy assessor. Virginia Loren, a certified assessor, was also hired in October 1975 to do part-time office work.
Sigurdson became a certified assessor in December 1976. She repeatedly asked to do field work from that time through June 1979. Aaron Boettcher denied those requests. He also denied her requests for computer training on the recently installed computer system, although he allowed Becker and Johnson to be trained on the computer. Duane Johnson left the office in April 1976 to accept a social work position with Nicollet County. No one replaced him as a deputy assessor.
Aaron Boettcher testified that “deputy assessor” was the job description used for anyone who did field work. He further testified that everyone in the office did essentially the same work except for three months in the fall when the field work was performed.
Sigurdson and Boettcher had no problems getting along until June of 1979. Dean Boettcher had quit, and at a staff meeting Aaron Boettcher announced his intention to hire two men to replace Dean. Sigurdson asked why he would do that when “there were two women in the office willing and able to do the work” (Virginia Loren and herself). She testified that his response was “assessing is no job for a woman” and “his wife wouldn’t like it if he went out in the country with a woman.” At trial Boettcher testified that he did not recall his responses to her question. Curtis Becker also said at the meeting that his wife wouldn’t like it either if he were to drive around with a woman.
Boettcher then asked the women if they would be willing to do the computer work that his son had formerly done. Sigurdson said, “That’s funny, I was never good enough for it before,” referring to his prior denials of her requests for computer training. He became angry, thought she was trying to “make a fool” out of him, and told her to get out of the office if she didn’t like it there. He showed her the door. Sigurdson took her purse and left for the day. She did not clean out her desk.
The next day she returned and was told that Boettcher would be out of the office for a week. She did not know whether she was fired or not so she told a secretary that she would take vacation time for the rest of the week. She straightened out her desk but left personal effects there. When she returned the following Monday, her desk and telephone were gone. Boettcher told her that as far as he was concerned she had quit and that he would see that she did not qualify for unemployment benefits.
In July 1979 Sigurdson was notified that she could return to her job. No one ever explained to her why the County had changed its position about her termination. Boettcher asked her to sign a typed statement that she would perform all her job duties and do certain tasks. She refused because no one else was asked to sign a similar statement. Boettcher became angry, left the office, and came back with a county judge to witness Sigurdson’s “insubordination.” The judge refused to get involved. Sigurdson never got her typewriter back, and it took a year and a half to get a telephone. However, Boétteher allowed her to begin doing field work.
In the spring of 1979 Sigurdson had received Boettcher’s permission to attend a course in the fall. The day before the course was to begin, Boettcher told her she could not attend. She told him that he was being unfair and was “a chauvinist from way back.” This is the “name-calling” incident for which she was reprimanded.
When the union contract became effective in March 1980, Sigurdson was classified as a property appraiser, the same job title Becker had when he had been initially hired with no experience. Becker was classified as a deputy assessor. According to a union agent, Boettcher had the ultimate responsibility for assigning employees to specific job classifications under the union contract. Sigurdson brought her first complaint to the Minnesota Human Rights Department in October 1980. In April 1981 *485Boettcher retired. Frank Mennenga replaced him as county assessor in June 1981.
In August 1981 Mennenga evaluated the job classifications of his employees and wrote on a classification report that Sigurd-son should be reclassified to deputy assessor. He listed in that report what he thought were the qualities a deputy assessor should have and stated that Sigurdson had those qualities.
He became aware of her human rights complaint in the fall of 1981. That fall he began rebuking Sigurdson for coming to work a few minutes late. He docked her pay when she left work for a doctor’s appointment. He called her a trouble-maker. All the office employees who testified said the office rules were lax regarding the time to begin work in the morning, that most people came in a few minutes late, and that Sigurdson was not late more frequently than anyone else. Another office worker testified that under the union contract employees could not be docked for leaving the office to see a doctor.
That fall Mennenga reassigned Sigurd-son to a different area of the county because Aaron Boettcher’s relatives did not want her to appraise their, property. The first day that she was assigned to work in the new area, the office secretary notified her by telephone that a resident in her old area had requested an afternoon appointment. Sigurdson had previously been to the property and asked the resident to contact her for an appointment. She was unsure whether she was supposed to follow up on her prior calls, and the secretary told her Mennenga was not available to ask. Since she was near the area, she went to the property and appraised it. When she returned to the office, Mennenga accused her of intentionally disobeying his orders.
That fall the “explosive incident” to which the majority refers also occurred. Sigurdson went to appraise a home and found that the owners were constructing a new entryway. She rang the doorbell but did not hear it ring inside. Thinking the entryway was not yet connected to the house, she opened the door a few inches and called inside to see if anyone was home. The entryway was connected, and the owners were upset that she had opened the door. Sigurdson later apologized, and even Carolyn Drude, the county personnel officer, testified that she thought the owners had “overreacted.” Although it was not the county’s policy to enter homes without permission, Minn.Stat. § 273.20 (1981) authorizes assessors to enter buildings to appraise them (“Any officer authorized by law to assess property for taxation may, when necessary to the proper performance of his duties, enter any dwelling-house, building, or structure and view the same and the property therein.”)
Sigurdson received her first reprimand from Mennenga on December 7, 1981, based on the above incidents. He characterized her actions as refusing to follow his policies. He told Sigurdson to sit at her desk and read the county manual until further notice. She was not to help with any other office tasks. The manual was 70 pages long, and she sat at her desk reading it for three weeks. When she performed a minor office task that took about 15 minutes, she received her second reprimand from him on the ground that she had refused to follow his orders. Mennenga was asked the following question at trial:
Q: [D]id you feel it would take Renja Sigurdson, in your judgment, for what her abilities are, her intelligence or experience or training, you think it took three weeks to review that [manual]?
A: No.
Sigurdson was not reclassified to deputy assessor, according to Carolyn Drude, because she was not willing to follow Men-nenga’s policies. There is no evidence that Sigurdson refused to follow any policy other than those upon which the reprimands were based.
In 1983 Mennenga allowed Becker to retake a narrative writing course. A completed paper is not a requirement of the course. The course is intended to prepare certified assessors for writing a narrative report, which is submitted to the State *486Board of Assessors for “accreditation.” Becker had written the paper once, and the Board had rejected it. He testified that he could use the same data for his second paper and agreed to a deadline because he had already done most of the work. He said it took about 200 hours to complete the paper. When Sigurdson asked permission to retake the course (she had taken it once at her own expense), Mennenga first said there was no money in the budget for it. He then said she could take it if she agreed to a deadline. She refused because she had not yet begun work on the paper.
There were no complaints about Sigurd-son’s work, other than those described above, since she was hired in 1975. Sigurd-son’s and Becker’s salaries from 1979 (when her classification under the union contract became effective) to 1983 are set forth below:
Sigurdson Becker
1979 9,429 13,482
1980 11,016 14,372
1981 12,304 16,012
1982 13,692 17,472
1983 15,228 18,864
No one testified that Sigurdson was a difficult employee. Aaron Boettcher testified that she had excellent written and verbal communication skills. He said she is personable and easy to get along with “in a social setting,” as opposed to a business setting. Mennenga testified that she has never raised her voice to him. The office secretary testified that Sigurdson is a very quiet person. Virginia Loren, who testified that she herself was not discriminated against, also testified that she was happy doing office work and did not particularly desire to do field work.
ANALYSIS
Because of the substantial similarities in the language and purpose of the Minnesota Human Rights Act and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e (1976), the Minnesota Supreme Court has applied principles developed in Title VII litigation to claims arising under the Human Rights Act. Hubbard v. United Press International, Inc., 330 N.W.2d 428, 441 (Minn.1983) (citing Fisher Nut Co. v. Lewis ex rel. Garcia, 320 N.W.2d 731, 734 (Minn.1982); Danz v. Jones, 263 N.W.2d 395, 398-99 (Minn.1978)). In Hubbard the court recognized the three-part analysis of McDonnell-Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), as the beginning point for scrutiny of a discrimination case.
This analysis, discussed at length in Hubbard, was not used by the trial court in the case before us. The majority recognizes the McDonnell-Douglas procedure as controlling but overlooks the trial court’s failure to apply it by saying that even though the court did not refer to the case or the process in its findings or memorandum, “it is clear that the court used this three-step process to arrive at its decision.” It is difficult to see how this is clear. The difficulty is compounded because the majority fails to use the McDonnell-Douglas framework in its own analysis.
Did Renja Sigurdson fail to establish a prima facie case of discrimination? The trial court appears to hold this when it concludes that there was no differential treatment based on sex. This determination, however, is erroneous. The evidence is uncontroverted that as of December 1976 Sigurdson was a certified assessor but she was never promoted to a deputy assessor position. She was not promoted because she did not do field work. She was not allowed to do field work because the assessor “didn’t like the idea of sending ladies out with a car * * *,” and although he didn’t object to women “riding out with him,” he didn’t want to have to do that every day for “three months out of the year.”
The majority attempts to establish that Sigurdson was not denied a deputy assessor position because none were available. The trial court made no such finding, although it did find that she was allowed to do field work without being promoted. The evidence shows that the majority’s determination is unsupported. When Duane Johnson left the office in April of 1976, no *487one was appointed to replace him as a deputy assessor. The trial court specifically found that deputy assessor Dean Boettcher resigned his position in June of 1979. At the staff meeting that month Aaron Boettcher stated that he intended to hire two men to replace Dean. Furthermore, promotion to the position of deputy assessor did not require an opening because the number of deputy assessors was not fixed. Minn.Stat. § 273.06 (1978) provides that a county assessor may appoint any “well-qualified citizen” as a deputy assessor. There was no limitation on the number of deputies that could be appointed, and there were no prerequisite qualifications. Both county assessors exercised considerable latitude in their appointment and promotion policies. The prima facie case is firmly established, primarily through the employer’s own testimony.
The majority acknowledges the discriminatory attitudes of Aaron Boettcher but denies that they affected his decision not to promote Renja Sigurdson. This approach suggests that Sigurdson has met her burden of presenting a prima facie case and that a nondiscriminatory basis for the employment actions must be established. Again the majority supplies its own conclusion, not included in the trial court’s conclusions, that Sigurdson was penalized for her failure to accept management decisions. This constitutes step two of the McDonnell-Douglas procedure, which Sigurdson is entitled to rebut by showing that the reason stated was not the real reason but instead a “cover” for discrimination. The McDonnell-Douglas court suggests • that evidence relevant to a showing of pretext includes the treatment of the claimant during the term of employment, the employer’s reaction, if any, to employee’s legitimate civil rights activities, and the employer’s general policy and practice with respect to employment of the protected class. 411 U.S. at 805, 93 S.Ct. at 1825. Since step two takes place at the appellate level, Sigurdson is denied the opportunity for rebuttal. However, even without the rebuttal opportunity, the facts expose the pretext. The difficulty that the Isanti County assessor had in working with Sigurdson was based on her desire to be treated equally. Sigurdson’s assertion of her rights may well have “disrupted” the County Assessor’s office, but employees are not legally obligated to enforce or abide discriminatory practices.
The trial court’s instructions to the advisory jury incorporate the concepts of McDonnell-Douglas. The advisory jury determined that Renja Sigurdson was discriminated against in the promotion and advancement policies of the Isanti County Assessor’s Office. However, the trial court failed to apply the McDonnell-Douglas framework in its own analysis of the evidence, and this results in error. The completeness of the record developed at trial does not compensate for the error because the trial court’s findings and conclusions are at odds with the evidence. The jury’s finding is supported; the trial court’s findings are not.