Court Opinion

ID: 9491561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:17:23.335904+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:48.971788
License: Public Domain

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join Judge Limbaugh’s thorough opinion for the Court fully, but write separately to offer a few thoughts about our dissenting colleague’s observations, especially his invocation of our recent opinion in Lacks v. Ferguson Reorganized School Dist. R-2, 147 F.3d 718, suggestion for rehearing en banc denied, 154 F.3d 904 (8th Cir.1998) (9—2 vote).
Let me begin by indicating the points on which I agree with the dissent. All of the following is true: Ms. Kramer presented no evidence of sex discrimination at the hearing before the school board; the hearing was full and fair; there is no evidence that any member of the board was personally biased; the board is the sole authority empowered to make a non-renewal decision; Ms. Kramer did not exercise her right under state law to have the board’s decision reviewed by a state court; and, if she had gone to a state court, the review would have been limited to the record of the hearing before the school board and would have been governed by a deferential standard. In my view, none of these points is fatal to Ms. Kramer’s action under federal law. There is no requirement that administrative remedies, other than those before the EEOC or a state counterpart agency, be exhausted as a condition precedent to a suit in a federal court under Title VII. That the plaintiff did not claim sex discrimination before the school board may lessen the credibility of her later assertions, but that was a question for the jury, as Judge Limbaugh rightly says, ante, at 624-625. Ms. Kramer was under no obligation to pursue any state-law remedy. She has an independently created federal right to sue under Title VII, and in that forum the defendant’s motives are reviewed de novo, though the burden of persuasion of course remains always with the plaintiff. And, finally, the action is against the school district, the governmental unit, not against the members of the school board or the board as an entity. Certainly the board’s good motives, uncontested here, are relevant, but they are not invariably dispositive, as orn-eases, see ante, at 624-625, clearly state.
Crucial to the present ease is evidence that the two top administrators of the district, Mr. Apple and Mr. Broadbent, were motivated by gender in recommending the non-renewal of plaintiffs contract. Without this recommendation, the school-board hearing would never have occurred. Some of the facts supporting these conclusions are recounted in Judge Limbaugh’s opinion. Among other things, there was evidence, apparently persuasive to the jury, that the two top administrators treated women teachers less favorably than men, and that coarsely disparaging remarks, the details of which need not be recounted, were made about women teachers. There was also evidence, presented by the defendant, that men and women received equal treatment. It was up to the jury to decide which side to believe. In addition, the jury was given a chance to *627decide whether Ms. Kramer would have been terminated in any event, regardless of gender, and it found that she would not have.
With deference to my dissenting colleague, I do not think that any of this reasoning, in the context of the record in this case, is inconsistent with our opinion in Lacks. (As it happens, both Judge Hansen and I were members of the Lacks panel.) As I read the Lacks opinion, it is very fact-specific. It does not erect any general rule that a fair hearing before an impartial board immunizes a school district from the consequences of discrimination on the part of the district’s administration, if that discrimination is the proximate cause of adverse employment action. The evidence of bias on the part of the administrators in Lacks was very weak, and the misconduct of the plaintiff teacher (or what the board regarded as misconduct) was egregious. In those circumstances, it was our view that the jury verdict was wholly unreasonable. Lacks is not authority com-peEing us to overturn the jury verdict in the quite different circumstances of the present case.