Court Opinion

ID: 9493947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:24:12.199081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:07.446090
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This case illustrates how McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), has become so encrusted with the barnacles of multi-factor tests and inquiries that it misdirects attention. Could a reasonable trier of fact conclude that Gordon is the victim of age or race discrimination? If yes, then summary judgment must be denied; if no, then the grant of summary judgment for the employer must be affirmed. Instead of addressing this question straightforwardly, however, my colleagues follow a tortuous path to the conclusion that Gordon is entitled to a trial because United Airlines, the employer, does not have a *894written policy defining “unauthorized deviation,” so that people may in good faith debate whether Gordon committed that infraction. I grant that United is not petrified with bureaucracy and does not cover every topic with reams of paper, as my colleagues believe that an employer must to prevail in an employment-discrimination case. United can only gaze toward the heights occupied by the Postal Service, the Social Security Administration, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But what has the state of its manuals and handbooks to do with race or age discrimination?
The majority’s long discussion of legal criteria and prima facie cases diverts attention from the question whether a sensible trier of fact could infer that age, race, or some other forbidden characteristic, made a difference. The Supreme Court set out in McDonnell Douglas to identify circumstances that would support an inference of discrimination, throwing a burden of explanation on the- employer. Today’s case shows how that program has failed. In every large firm it is possible for almost every employee to make out a prima facie case. United employs thousands of flight attendants, of all ages, races, religions, sexes, and so on; some were retained while others were fired. Gordon met the airline’s minimum standards, or he would not have been hired; he had received good reviews as a probationary flight attendant until the incident that precipitated his discharge; and from this it follows (he says) that all elements of McDonnell Douglas have been satisfied and it is more likely than not that his discharge was caused by his age or race. Only a lawyer trapped in a warren of “tests” and “factors” could make such a connection. Everything true about Gordon is true about United’s other employees; can all of them be victims of discrimination?
Appellate judges must apply McDonnell Douglas while the Justices support it, and I therefore do not quarrel with my colleagues’ conclusion that Gordon has established a prima facie case of discrimination. United provided an explanation for discharging him — that instead of appearing in Los Angeles for a flight to Seattle, Gordon flew to Chicago and told the crew desk that he had legally insufficient rest and therefore could not serve as a flight attendant that day. United understandably wants to discourage such conduct by its probationary employees, because weaseling out of flight assignments does not bode well for future performance. Unless this nondiscriminatory explanation is a fraud on the court — not just an overreaction, but a lie-United must prevail. See Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 146-48, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 2108-09, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000); Wade v. Lerner New York, Inc., 243 F.3d 319, 323 (7th Cir. Mar. 5, 2001); Ritter v. Hill ’N Dale Farm, Inc., 231 F.3d 1039, 1044-45 (7th Cir.2000); Kulumani v. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, 224 F.3d 681 (7th Cir.2000); Hartley v. Wisconsin Bell, Inc., 124 F.3d 887, 890 (7th Cir.1997) (employer prevails if it “honestly believed in the nondiscriminatory reasons it offered, even if the reasons are foolish or trivial or even baseless”).
What evidence could justify a reasonable trier of fact in concluding that United is trying to pull the wool over judicial eyes? In a word, none. My colleagues emphasize that United lacks formal policies defining “unauthorized deviation” and that its supervisors did not agree among themselves when asked what Gordon should have done. This is a fair appreciation of the record. But how does it support an inference that United (or any of its managers) is trying to bamboozle the court? “No company needs to have a set procedure for what action it will take when *895adjudicating every single employee problem.” 6 West Limited Corp. v. NLRB, 237 F.3d 767, 778 (7th Cir.2001). Uncertainty and disagreement existed within the company, both about how employees were supposed to behave and about what supervisors should have done in response. There is additional doubt about what Gordon told the crew desk at O’Hare, as there is apt to be about every oral exchange. Gordon insists that he told United that he was unable to fly only at the moment of the conversation; United responds that this made the conversation pointless (why was Gordon at the crew desk except to get out of duty scheduled for later that day?); but no matter which inference is drawn, race and age play no role. What could anyone at United be trying to hide by taking one view of the conversation rather than another? Nothing in this record suggests that anyone is lying (let alone prevaricating to conceal reliance on Gordon’s race or age). Disagreements about the characterization of ambiguous acts are part of the human condition, not proof of deceit or unlawful discrimination. A demonstration that United’s practices bore more heavily on black or older workers might supply what is missing, see Bell v. EPA, 232 F.3d 546, 552-54 (7th Cir.2000), but Gordon has not adduced statistical evidence.
Instead of meeting head on the question whether United’s explanation might have been fabricated, the majority resorts to a quotation from Adreani v. First Colonial Bankshares Corp., 154 F.3d 389, 395 (7th Cir.1998), which said that a plaintiff may demonstrate pretext with “evidence tending to prove that the employer’s proffered reasons are factually baseless, were not the actual motivation for the discharge in question, or were insufficient to motivate the discharge.” This sounds like a conclusion that pretext may be demonstrated by showing that the employer’s reason was mistaken, wrong, inadequate under the collective bargaining agreement, and so on. Yet Reeves and many other cases have emphasized that an error won’t do; a truthful, nondiscriminatory explanation, right or wrong, ends the case. See also Anderson v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 13 F.3d 1120 (7th Cir.1994); Pollard v. Rea Magnet Wire Co., 824 F.2d 557 (7th Cir.1987). My colleagues recognize this — and then add that a trier of fact may equate mistake with deceit. How else could it be that an “insufficient” reason shows pretext? Allowing debate about the adequacy of the explanation to support an inference of pretext removes the need to prove discrimination from the law of employment discrimination and confuses federal restrictions on employers’ deeds with a quest for “just cause” under collective bargaining agreements. To conclude that blunders and intra-corporate disarray support an inference of deceit is to countermand the instructions of Reeves.
Perhaps Adreani could be rehabilitated by reading its last clause to refer only to explanations “insufficient” in the sense that they do not identify the actual cause of the discharge. Pryor v. Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson, 212 F.3d 976 (7th Cir.2000), illustrates an explanation “insufficient” in this sense. But Gordon does not deny that United’s stated reason is its actual one; the events that ended in his absence from the Los Angeles to Seattle flight led straight to his discharge. Causation is undisputed; that United was actually (and legitimately) disappointed with Gordon’s conduct also is undisputed; what Gordon argues is that these events should have led to a reproof rather than a discharge. To say that such an argument, fundamentally identical to one a labor arbitrator would resolve in response to a grievance, can be the core of a federal employment-discrimination claim is to confuse the lack of “just cause” with “discrimination.”
*896I appreciate the potential response that the odder a reason seems in light of an employer’s normal practices, the easier it is to understand the explanation as a lie. But here the explanation is not out of whack with the employer’s norms; Gordon contends, rather, that norms were applied inaccurately. He compares his situation to that of other flight attendants who overslept or missed flights by other mischance; United responds that Gordon missed this flight by choice, not by mishap, and that the difference is vital to the success of its scheduling. My colleagues’ emphasis on the fact that United did not have a written definition of “unauthorized deviation” and that different United supervisors appeared to have different understandings of that phrase simply demonstrates that the supervisors and managers could not have been lying. There was no “truth of the matter” at all. There may be material disputes about whether the supervisors were confused, or mistaken, or whether on balance Gordon should have been allowed another chance. But it is not possible to say that these considerations entail a material dispute about whether the major actors at United have committed perjury.
The majority’s opinion exemplifies the spirit of cases such as Wright v. Illinois Department of Corrections, 204 F.3d 727, 730 (7th Cir.2000), and Pitasi v. Gartner Group, Inc., 184 F.3d 709, 714 (7th Cir.1999), which proclaim: “Because issues of intent and credibility are especially crucial in employment discrimination cases, we must apply this summary judgment standard with added vigor.” (This language is from Wright; similar assertions elsewhere are not hard to find, though often, as in Pitasi, “added vigor” changes to “added rigor”. See Webb v. Clyde L. Choate Mental Health & Development Center, 230 F.3d 991, 997 (7th Cir.2000).) The majority opinion is “added vigor” in action, even though Wright does not receive a citation, and the “added rigor” passage from Pitasi (an opinion cited seven times) is not quoted. Yet I doubt that appellate judges should be “adding” any hurdles to either side in employment-discrimination cases, beyond those prescribed by Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. Summary judgment is a hurdle high enough without “added vigor.”
What does “added vigor” mean? One possibility could be that we review the district court’s decision especially carefully in employment-discrimination cases. Yet appellate review of all orders granting summary judgment is de novo. To say that we apply extra rigor in employment-discrimination cases is to imply that we are not doing our jobs in other cases — ’that we are deferential in those cases but non-deferential here. This is not an accurate statement of circuit practice.
Another possible meaning is that in employment-discrimination cases, and other subjects in which the pivotal question is the intent with which one of the parties acted, district courts must disfavor summary judgment. Poller v. CBS, Inc., 368 U.S. 464, 473, 82 S.Ct. 486, 7 L.Ed.2d 458 (1962), announced such an approach for antitrust, and appellate courts extended it to other situations in which motive mattered. That captures the spirit of the majority’s opinion. The problems with Poller, and the “added vigor” approach in general, are two. First, it has no purchase in the language of Rule 56 or the standard, announced in Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986), for implementing that rule. The summary-judgment standard is supposed to track the standard for sufficiency of evidence at trial. If a sensible jury could find in favor of the party opposing the motion, then summary judgment must be denied. That is a universally applicable standard; there is no room for a thumb on the scale against summary judgment in any class of cases. See Edward J. Brunet, *897Martin H. Redish & Michael A. Reiter, Summary Judgment: Federal Law and Practice § 9.13 (2d ed. 2000). Second, Poller itself has been conformed to the Rule 56 standard. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 256, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986), holds that no special standard is appropriate when state of mind is at issue. See also Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 595, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986).
Our “added vigor” cases do not cite Liberty Lobby or Matsushita, and it may be that our panels were unaware of the history behind this approach, the fate of Poller in the summary judgment trilogy of 1986, and the fact that earlier panels had held (relying explicitly on the decisions of 1986) that motions for summary judgment in employment cases need not surmount any extra hurdle. See, e.g., Wallace v. SMC Pneumatics, Inc., 103 F.3d 1394, 1396 (7th Cir.1997). It is not an adequate response' to say (slip op. 27 n. 15) that the “circuit has confirmed — explicitly—that there is but one standard by which we measure a grant of summary judgment.” Wohl v. Spectrum Manufacturing, Inc., 94 F.3d 353, 355 n. 1 (7th Cir.1996), the case cited for this proposition, predates the flurry of references to “added vigor” and “added rigor” during the last three years. Wohl says that there is one summary judgment standard, applied rigorously in all cases. What, then, are we to make of the multiple post-WoM assertions that in employment-discrimination cases the court applies added rigor (or vigor)? These decisions say that the standard in employment cases is higher; that is what the word “added” means. Our “added rigor” cases are incompatible with Wohl, Wallace (a decision my colleagues do not cite), and the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. We should clear up this conflict rather than continue to practice an approach disfavoring summary judgment in employment-discrimination suits.