Court Opinion

ID: 9483304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:16:33.135751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:32.708318
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While the issue is a very close one, I concur, with some trepidation, in the majority view on reversal of summary judgment on plaintiff’s gender claim. I would, however, affirm the decision of the district court on Hase’s ADEA claim.
This case presents the following undisputed facts. Of the ten persons considered for the position in question, only Hase was a female. One of the males not selected was older than plaintiff and seven of the ten were over forty years of age. All but one had tenure of more than ten years, although plaintiff had the longest tenure by a considerable period. Another male under forty, who was not selected, had a much higher test score than plaintiff or Otey.1 There was no evidence of any custom or practice in the Missouri Division of Employment Security to discriminate against persons on account of age, and customary promotion procedures were apparently followed in this case. Defendant Cornett testified, without contradiction, that no other employment discrimination claim, by reason of age or other improper grounds, had been successfully established by an employee during his nearly seven-year stint as Director of DES. He had promoted a number of women (as well as men) over the age of forty-five to open positions.
In her deposition, the following testimony was the only basis given by plaintiff for her contention that she had been discriminated against:
Q. Well, I’m trying to find out the reasons why you think you’ve been discriminated [against] on the basis of your sex and I don’t think that is something that is going to change over time so I’m trying to figure out what reasons you think that was a factor in the decision to promote.
A. Because I don’t think my qualifications were assessed based on the fact that I was a female.
Q. Okay. And why don’t you think that—
A. Because my qualifications for the job were not considered.
Q. And why do you think that has anything to do with your gender?
A. Because I didn’t get the job in Mexico.
*898Q. Okay. And is there anything else?
A. No.
Q. And why do you think you were discriminated against on the basis of your age?
A. The same thing.
Q. And there are no other reasons?
A. None that I know of.
In short, plaintiff maintained that she was discriminated against because she had the longest tenure of the candidates considered and had a high test score, but did not receive the job. She believed she was more qualified than Otey, who was selected, and that the selectors “knew me but they did not know me as well as they knew him.” The only basis given by Hase relating to age discrimination was that Otey “was younger than me.”
There is simply no evidence of age discrimination demonstrated here, and no reasonable inference can be drawn from plaintiffs proof in response to defendants’ summary judgment motion to show that age discrimination played any part in the selection procedure.2
This court recently in Goetz v. Farm Credit Serv., 927 F.2d 398 (8th Cir.1991), affirmed a grant of summary judgment for the defendant in an age discrimination case brought by a forty-nine year-old female who contested the selection of a thirty-five year-old female for the position in controversy. Goetz contended, as does plaintiff Hase, that defendant’s given reasons for not selecting her were pretextual. While conceding that plaintiff could show pretext by direct or indirect means, this court held in Goetz that the plaintiff “had failed to present a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether the reasons proffered by [defendant] ... were pretextual for age discrimination.” Id. at 406. Plaintiff Goetz had worked for defendant for six years while the much younger selected person had been employed for only eight months and, in addition, plaintiff presented statistical evidence which she claimed supported an inference of discrimination by the defendant against persons over forty. Id. at 404-05. After discussing the plaintiff’s burden of proof as established in Haglof v. Northwest Rehabilitation, Inc., 910 F.2d 492 (8th Cir.1990),3 this court in Goetz sustained a district court’s summary judgment on a factual record that seems to me stronger for plaintiff than does Hase’s factual record. See also Brousard-Norcross v. Augustana College Ass’n, 935 F.2d 974 (8th Cir.1991).
I would accordingly affirm the district court’s decision on the ADEA claim.

. Clay, the applicant with the highest score, had an 88, while Hase had an 84.9, and Otey had an 84.

. Plaintiff does mention — "just rumor" or “puref ] gossip” — that Cornett wanted "to get rid of all the old people." She conceded that he had appointed older women but claimed "he didn’t consider my qualifications for the job.”

. I adopt the following observations in Haglof as setting forth a correct statement of the law:
The opinion as written may be read by judges and lawyers to stand for the proposition that summary judgment for the defendant is inappropriate where the plaintiff in an employment discrimination case presents a prima facie case. I do not believe this is, or should be, the law.... I do not believe that the fact that plaintiff has established a prima facie case in and of itself is sufficient to foreclose the granting of a motion for summary judgment.
Haglof v. Northwest Rehabilitation, Inc., 910 F.2d 492, 495 (Stuart, J., concurring). I find this to be in conformity to Texas Dep’t of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981).