Court Opinion

ID: 9496283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:22:24.308392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:28.466607
License: Public Domain

CLAY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I agree with the outcome reached in this case, as well as much of the reasoning expressed in the lead opinion, I write separately to express my disagreement with Part II.B of the lead opinion, which seeks to discourage district courts from utilizing the burden-shifting test enunciated in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973) when giving jury instructions.1
Ordinarily, a district court should give a requested jury instruction when such instruction offers a correct statement of the law and is not irrelevant, redundant, or confusing. See King v. Ford Motor Co., 209 F.3d 886, 897 (6th Cir.2000) (holding that the “district court had discretion to instruct the jury in any manner it deemed appropriate, as long as it correctly stated [the appropriate] substantive law, instructed on the issues relevant to the case at hand, and did not mislead the jury”); Kitchen v. Chippewa Valley Schs., 825 F.2d 1004, 1011 (6th Cir.1987) (“A judgment can be reversed if the instructions, viewed as a whole, were confusing, misleading and prejudicial.”) (citing DSG Corp. v. Anderson, 754 F.2d 678, 679 (6th Cir.1985)). No one contests that the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting test offers a correct description of the prima facie case required to establish circumstantial evidence of employment discrimination. Moreover, the test is not irrelevant, redundant, or confusing.
Certainly, this Court has never forbidden the use of the McDonnell Douglas test. In Kitchen, the issue was whether the district court committed reversible error in refusing to instruct a jury in a retaliation case, brought under Michigan state law, on the burden-shifting test. This Court decided that the district court did not err “because the jury’s proper concern was with the ultimate question of retaliation and not with the potentially confusing shifting of evidentiary burdens.” Kitchen, 825 F.2d at 1012. But affirming the district court’s decision not to give an instruction cannot be equated with reversing a district court’s decision to give the instruction. Kitchen’s comment about potential confusion amounts to no more than dicta. Similarly, in In re Lewis, 845 F.2d 624, 634 (6th Cir.1988), this Court affirmed the district court’s decision not to give the McDonnell Douglas instruction. The Court made no finding that giving a McDonnell Douglas instruction would have been legally erroneous. It should not be gleaned from either of these cases that a district court errs in giving a McDonnell Douglas instruction on the basis of its *596allegedly confusing nature, since holding that an instruction is unnecessary or superfluous is quite different from holding that an instruction is actually detrimental to the jury’s understanding of what it is to decide.
In determining that juries are not sufficiently sophisticated to understand the McDonnell Douglas test, the lead opinion essentially relies on dicta from other circuits disapproving of including the McDonnell Douglas test in jury instructions, but declining to reverse on such grounds.2 Sharkey v. Lasmo (AUL Ltd,.), 214 F.3d 371, 374 (2d Cir.2000); Dudley v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 166 F.3d 1317, 1321-22 (11th Cir.1999); Cabrera v. Jakabovitz, 24 F.3d 372, 380-84 (2d Cir.1994); Walther v. Lone Star Gas Co., 952 F.2d 119, 126 (5th Cir.1992); Messina v. Kroblin Transp. Sys. Inc., 903 F.2d 1306, 1308-09 (10th Cir.1990); Mullen v. Princess Anne Volunteer Fire Co., Inc., 853 F.2d 1130, 1137 (4th Cir.1988); see also Gordon v. New York City Bd. of Educ., 232 F.3d 111, 118 (2d Cir.2000) (observing that the inclusion of the McDonnell Douglas test in the jury instructions was erroneous but reversing on other grounds). The largely conclusory rationales detailed in those cases are less than persuasive.
Two main reasons generally are advanced in support of excluding the McDonnell Douglas test from jury instructions. The first rationale, based on the idea that judges should only use language that jurors can understand, implies that lay persons do not easily understand such terms as “prima facie case,” “shifting burden,” and “burden of proof.” See Cabrera, 24 F.3d at 381; Loeb v. Textron, Inc., 600 F.2d 1003, 1016 (1st Cir.1979); Gerrilyn G. Brill, Instructing the Jury in an Employment Discrimination Case, 1998 Fed. Cts. L.Rev. 2, 4.5-4.6 (March 1998). Yet, as the partial dissent in Loeb noted, “[t]he difficulties involved in instructing a jury in a products liability case, where liability is alternately premised on the three theories of strict liability, negligence, and warranty are no less complex than the shifting burdens outlined in McDonnell Douglas.” Loeb, 600 F.2d at 1024 (Bownes, J., concurring and dissenting). Similarly, complicated terminology abounds in such areas of law as medical malpractice. See, e.g., Joseph H. King, Jr., Reconciling the Exercise of Judgment and the Objective Standard of Care in Medical Malpractice, 52 Okla. L.Rev. 49, 69-70 (1999) (noting the potential confusion of “best judgment” language in jury instructions for medical mal*597practice lawsuits). Yet courts have not jettisoned these frameworks from jury instructions on the theory that juries are incapable of comprehending sophisticated nomenclature. Indeed, no legitimate distinction has been asserted between the products liability and medical malpractice contexts and the present context of employment discrimination. Thus, if a jury is capable of understanding the terms used in contexts such as those of products liability and medical malpractice, then there is no apparent reason why a jury should not be able to understand the terms used in the employment discrimination context.
Moreover, the notion that juries are too easily confused by such terminology is unexplained and unproven. The cases advancing this viewpoint do not cite any empirical data in drawing the conclusion that juries are not sufficiently capable of understanding McDonnell Douglas. The First Circuit’s Loeb opinion was released not terribly long after McDonnell Douglas was decided, and it reflects the court’s own confusion as to what constituted the settled law of shifting burdens in an employment discrimination case. Indeed, the First Circuit backed away from its earlier misgivings, acknowledging that the Loeb decision was influenced by its own confusion:
Although this framework was considered complicated and cumbersome when it was first used in McDonnelL-Douglas, with repeated use courts have become more comfortable with it, both for their own use in ruling on Title VII claims and for the jury’s use in ruling on intentional discrimination.... It is a straightforward way of explaining how to consider whether there is intentional discrimination in situations where such discrimination is not likely to be overt.
Rowlett v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc. 832 F.2d 194, 200 (1st Cir.1987) (citation omitted), abrogated on other grounds by Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14 (1st Cir.1999). Thus, the First Circuit, which was the first to question the wholesale importation of McDonnell Douglas into jury instructions in Loeb, backed off and embraced its use just a few years later.
When a trial court understands the law, it should be able to explain the law to a jury with relative ease. Trial courts are much more comfortable with McDonnell Douglas than they were twenty years ago when the Supreme Court was still road-mapping many burden of proof issues in employment discrimination law. The concerns that were present during the time Loeb was decided have largely abated. Even assuming that a jury might experience difficulty understanding an aspect of the burden-shifting structure, it can — and presumably will request — clarification from the court.
The other most frequently cited rationale is that once the case has been tried and is about to be submitted to the jury, the McDonnell Douglas analysis is no longer relevant because it is the function of the trial judge, not the jury, to engage in the burden-shifting analysis. That is, it is argued that if the judge determines that the plaintiff has not made out a prima facie case, the case is dismissed by way of a directed verdict in the defendant’s favor; if the plaintiff has established a prima facie case and the defendant has articulated no legitimate non-discriminatory reason for its adverse employment action, judgment is rendered for the plaintiff; and if the plaintiff has established a prima facie case and the defendant has articulated a legitimate non-discriminatory reason, the jury considers only whether the articulated reason is pretext for unlawful discrimination. See, e.g., Deborah C. Malamud, The Last Minuet: Disparate Treatment After Hicks, 93 Mich. L.Rev. 2229, 2323 (1995).3
*598For thirty years, the McDonnell Douglas analysis has played an important role in the framework of employment discrimination law, and that analysis might assist a jury in understanding the dispute it has been asked to resolve. For instance, if the jury in this case had simply been told, “Packaging Corporation says that it decided not to promote Mr. Brown because of his arson conviction and an incident at work involving nude photographs of his wife; you decide whether you think they are lying and that their real reason was age discrimination (which you may infer if you believe four certain facts),” the jury might have wondered why the inquiry was framed in that way and focused only on that aspect of the trial. Only an explanation of the parties’ initial respective burdens would shed further light on the reasons for the inquiry’s focus. Thus, even if the giving of the McDonnell Douglas test is not required, it is often beneficial in assisting a jury’s comprehension of the issues it has been asked to resolve.
This is particularly true when one recalls the policy grounds underlying the formulation of the McDonnell Douglas test in the first place. As the partial dissent in Loeb noted, the McDonnell Douglas test sought to “accommodate both the strong policy reasons for allowing plaintiff to proceed on the basis of a prima facie case and the further logical reason that the employer was the person best able to explain legitimate reasons for failing to hire (or firing) an otherwise qualified person who was within the protected class.” Loeb, 600 F.2d at 1024 (Bownes, J., concurring and dissenting). Bearing these policy considerations in mind, the Supreme Court has endorsed the notion that a jury may infer discrimination if (1) it finds that the plaintiff has established the four elements of the prima facie case and (2) it disbelieves the employer’s explanation for its adverse employment action(s). Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 147, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000) (citing St. Mary’s Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 511, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993)).4 The policy reasons do not disappear in the face of an employer’s ability to rebut a prima facie case by offering a legitimate, non-diseriminatory reason for its actions. Thus, “[sjome instruction to the jury on the prima facie case is necessary for a full appreciation of *599what is involved in discrimination cases.” Loeb, 600 F.2d at 1024 (Bownes, J., concurring and dissenting).
Another problem with the lead opinion is that although it does not explicitly forbid district courts from giving the McDonnell Douglas instruction, it impliedly attempts to put them on notice that giving such an instruction may place in jeopardy the validity of a jury’s verdict on appellate review. However, the lead opinion does not explain the circumstances under which a jury verdict might be overturned because of the use of the instruction, and when the verdict would not be overturned. Indeed, it does not explain why the district court did not abuse its discretion in this case, and it therefore provides little guidance to district courts in deciding whether to include such an instruction. The likely result from such a holding is that many district courts might simply refuse to give the instruction, instead determining that eliminating the risk of having a jury verdict overturned on appeal outweighs the benefit of providing a jury with a fully developed jury instruction on the applicable employment discrimination law issues.
Such a development would be unfortunate because describing the burden-shifting paradigm often can be beneficial in communicating to juries an understanding of employment discrimination law. Specifically, as discussed above, the McDonnell Douglas test provides jurors with a fleshed-out context for the purpose of resolving the factual disputes presented by the case being considered. The risk of confusion should be minimal or nonexistent when the judge explains to the jury that McDonnell Douglas provides a backdrop to the jurors’ role as factfinders, and that their ultimate duty is to determine whether (1) the employer’s proffered legitimate reason for an adverse employment action was pretextual and (2) the employer’s true motive for taking the adverse action was illegal discrimination. See, e.g., Mullen, 853 F.2d at 1137 (finding no error in the jury instructions where the trial court directed the jury to focus on the central issues of whether the employer’s asserted reason was pretext for employment discrimination).
The lead opinion is correct in stating that “it remains the responsibility of the judge to determine whether the plaintiff has presented a prima facie case capable of withstanding a motion of summary judgment or a directed verdict.” However, this does not mean that the McDonnell Douglas instruction does not provide a useful purpose, or that it is superfluous or confusing. Indeed, the average juror is not incapable of understanding such language as “prima facie case” when it is properly explained. As in any jury trial, it is the responsibility of the judge to define legal terms and to clarify any subsequent confusion during deliberations, as requested by the jury at the time. “So long as a trial court does not fall into the mistake of placing upon defendant an improper burden, its commenting on shifting burdens imports no error.” Loeb, 600 F.2d at 1024 (Bownes, J., concurring and dissenting). Therefore, the district court’s use of the McDonnell Douglas test with its burden-shifting paradigm was an appropriate tool in instructing the jury.

. This concurring opinion, which Judge Haynes joins, constitutes the majority view regarding the use of the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting test injury instructions.

. Actually, some of the lead opinion's cited cases, like Kitchen and Lewis, rejected the notion that the burden-shifting framework is a necessary component of jury instructions in an employment discrimination case, but the cases did not expressly prohibit the framework's use. These cases merely provide some dicta suggesting that the burden-shifting approach is confusing to explain to jurors. See Loeb v. Textron, Inc., 600 F.2d 1003, 1016 (1st Cir.1979) (acknowledging that “the subtleties of McDonnell Douglas are confusing’’ for judges and juries and that "to read its technical aspects to a jury [may confuse a juror],” but then stating that the use of McDonnell Douglas is workable because "we do not equate use of McDonnell Douglas with a requirement that the full formulation be read in haec verba to the jury”); see also Gehring v. Case Corp., 43 F.3d 340, 343 (7th Cir.1994) (rejecting the plaintiff's argument that he was entitled to a burden-shifting instruction); Williams v. Valentec Kisco, Inc., 964 F.2d 723, 731 (8th Cir.1992) (affirming the district court’s refusal to include the burden-shifting test in its jury instructions); Costa v. Desert Palace, Inc., 299 F.3d 838, 854-55 (9th Cir. 2002) (en banc) (mentioning, in dicta, that "it is not normally appropriate to introduce the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework to the jury,” as part of a general discussion about the relationship between the McDonnell Douglas test and the single— and mixed-motive analyses), aff'd, — U.S. -, 123 S.Ct. 2148, 156 L.Ed.2d 84, 2003 WL 21310219 (June 9, 2003).

. It is important to note that the parties' shifting burdens of production do not form *598the entirety of a jury's inquiry, which is, at its core, whether it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the employer intentionally discriminated against the plaintiff. United States Postal Serv. Bd. of Governors v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 715, 103 S.Ct. 1478, 75 L.Ed.2d 403 (1983). Nevertheless, elements of a pri-ma facie case frequently are still relevant after the case has gone to the jury. For instance, when an issue of fact remains as to one or more of the elements in a plaintiffs prima facie case, it is sometimes necessary to ask the jury, usually as part of a special verdict form, to engage in factfinding on that particular element. Even the Loeb court had acknowledged that McDonnell Douglas would continue to be relevant in this scenario. Loeb, 600 F.2d at 1016.

. I adhere to this view notwithstanding language in Hicks, 509 U.S. at 510-11, 113 S.Ct. 2742, that some commentators have read as dampening (or even eliminating) the relevance of McDonnell Douglas once the employer asserts a legitimate explanation for its actions. See, e.g., Malamud, supra, at 2324. Hicks should not be read as attempting to supplant the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting analysis at any stage of the litigation. See William R. Corbett, Of Babies, Bathwater, and Throwing Out Proof Structures: It is Not Time to Jettison McDonnell Douglas, 2 Employee Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. 361, 386-89 (1998) (arguing that the centrality of McDonnell Douglas in employment discrimination cases, and its relevance in jury instructions, remains after Hides). Until the Supreme Court indicates otherwise, the McDonnell Douglas framework remains the driving force for burden of proof issues in cases resting on circumstantial evidence.