Court Opinion

ID: 9492230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:35:42.721978+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:11.672671
License: Public Domain

HANSEN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur wholly in the court’s opinion. I write separately only to express my respectful disagreement with my brother Arnold’s reading of Ryther v. KARE 11, 108 F.3d 832 (8th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 521 U.S. 1119, 117 S.Ct. 2510, 138 L.Ed.2d 1013 (1997), as expressed in his concurring opinion in the instant case. As I read his concurrence, he believes Ryther held that once a plaintiff introduces credible evidence of pretext, that is “evidence which, if believed, would justify a rational jury in finding that the reason given by the employer was not the real reason,” ante at .912, the plaintiff will necessarily avoid summary judgment and get to the jury.
I read Ryther differently. In Ryther, eight of the then active judges of the court (including me) joined in Part I.A of Judge Loken’s dissenting and concurring opinion which rejected the argument that evidence of pretext is enough to defeat an employer’s summary judgment motion. See Ryther, 108 F.3d at 848 n. 13. Judge Fagg, Judge Beam, and I penned a separate concurrence in Ryther, stating that “an employment discrimination plaintiff must present evidence sufficient to create a reasonable inference of discriminatory intent to avoid judgment as a matter of law,” Ryther, 108 F.3d at 847, or in the context of the instant case, summary judg*913ment. Consequently, it remains my view that in order to avoid summary judgment, the plaintiff must have evidence which shows not only the employer’s stated nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse employment action to be pretextual, but the plaintiffs evidence must also be such as to permit the fact finder to find by reasonable inference that the real reason for the action was unlawful discrimination. The pretext shown must be a pretext for discrimination. See McCullough v. Real Foods, Inc., 140 F.3d 1123, 1128 (8th Cir.1998) (“As the Supreme Court clarified in [St Mary’s Honor Center u] Hicks, ‘nothing in law would permit us to substitute for the required finding that the employer’s action was the product of unlawful discrimination, the much different (and much lesser) finding that the employer’s explanation of its action [is] not believable.’ 509 U.S. [502,] 514-15, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 [(1993)].”); Rivers-Frison v. Southeast Mo. Community Treatment Ctr., 133 F.3d 616, 621 (8th Cir.1998) (“Of course, evidence that the Center’s proffered reasons for termination were pretextual will only defeat summary judgment if the evidence could persuade a reasonable fact-finder that Rivers-Frison was discharged because of intentional race discrimination.”).
I also respectfully note that my brother Arnold’s view that “evidence of pretext would, in and of itself, justify the ultimate finding ... that discrimination was the real reason behind the discharge,” ante at 912, is, in my view, directly contrary to our holding in Ryther that evidence of pretext, standing alone, will not make a submissible case unless it is consistent with a reasonable inference of discrimination. See Ryther, 108 F.3d at 837; see also Lynn v. Deaconess Med. Ctr. — West Campus, 160 F.3d 484, 489 (8th Cir.1998) (“Nevertheless, evidence of pretext, standing alone, does not invariably preclude summary judgment.”).