Court Opinion

ID: 9493575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:12:03.555944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:54.748868
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent from the court’s holding today, because it establishes a general rule that any member of a protected class who is doing an adequate job in his current position makes out a prima facie case of discrimination whenever some desirable position is filled by anyone outside the protected class. This holding expands a sensible position taken by some other circuits — that an actual application is not necessary to make out a prima facie case, *1024where the existence of an opening is only revealed to certain favored persons in a comparable status — and expands it to cover all cases of promotions, whatever the logic for filing them.
Mr. Dews had a lengthy and successful career with A.B. Dick. He had been retained and treated favorably during several previous reorganizations that had affected A.B. Dick, as with many large companies in recent history. He now claims that he may pursue a discrimination claim because he did not receive one of six Regional Sales Manager positions that the company created in 1996 in response to business needs. There is no claim that the reorganization itself had any racial component or was in any way pretextual.
The company’s undisputed evidence is that the six positions were ultimately filled by four persons currently having geographical responsibility (then termed District Sales Managers) and two persons with national responsibility. Dews’s responsibilities, while considerable, were at a lower level. Under today’s holding, Dews is considered to have made out a prima facie case because:
a) He was doing an adequate job in his current position (“meeting the employer’s legitimate expectations”), thus putatively making him qualified for the position he now identifies; and
b) His not applying and not being considered should apparently be held to be the same as applying and being considered because the job was not posted, even though management had no intention of considering, and did not consider, any persons at the level Dews occupied.
The cases cited by the court do not support this holding.
Carmichael v. Birmingham Saw Works involved a classic employment discrimination situation of a company that had hired few blacks and had generally restricted those to janitorial and repair shop jobs. 738 F.2d 1126, 1131 (11th Cir.1984). The promotion at issue in Carmichael was only one part of a claim of pervasive discrimination. The promotion had gone to a white employee who held a comparable position to the plaintiff and had less seniority. In those circumstances, the waiver of the requirement of a formal application or expression of interest was sensible. Today’s case involves a general restructuring where management had decided to restrict consideration to certain levels. To allow plaintiff to meet the requirement of consideration simply because he would have liked to have had the job is a far stretch from the situation in Carmichael.
Similarly, in Kehoe v. Anheuser-Busch, 96 F.3d 1096, 1104-05 & n. 13 (8th Cir. 1996), management knew that it was abolishing plaintiffs job as a sports promotion coordinator, but plaintiff did not. Management knew that a comparable position was available, but did not inform plaintiff or consider him for that position. In those peculiar circumstances, the court did not overturn a jury verdict for the plaintiff based on the failure to apply. Again, Ke-hoe is not comparable to our case. Rather, the comparable case would be where some employee further down the chain of command in Anheuser-Busch decided that he wanted the open job when it had indeed been given to Kehoe because of his comparable experience. Kehoe does not stand for the proposition that there is a waiver of the application and consideration portions of a prima facie case in all cases where a job is not posted. Thus, precedent does not require, or even support, today’s expansive holding.
There are two mildly confounding factors that the court stresses that must be considered. One of the six positions was held open for, and occupied briefly by, a personal acquaintance of the new CEO, who had worked for the CEO in an earlier job. That person quit in a few weeks, and the job was filled as indicated above. There is not the slightest argument that the friend was brought in as a pretext to deny Dews the job, and the law is well *1025settled that personal favoritism, not tied to racial animus, does not show pretext. Second, there is the alleged remark by Dan Holland to Dews that he would not be considered for the Western Regional Manager position because it would involve relocation, when the position was ultimately filled by a person who relocated from Chicago. Holland was Dews’s then-current boss, and was in no way a decision-maker regarding the Regional Sales Manager vacancies. Thus, his alleged statement, introduced by way of Dews’s affidavit, is hearsay, and inadmissable even as an admission, as being outside the scope of his authority. See Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(D); Mitroff v. Xomox Corp., 797 F.2d 271, 275-77 (6th Cir.1986); Hill v. Spiegel, Inc., 708 F.2d 233, 237 (6th Cir.1983). Cf. Valecko v. Sterling, Inc., 89 F.3d 837, 1996 WL 205592, *3 (6th Cir.1996) (table)(unpublished).
Neither of these factors, even when taken as true, show that Dews was treated any differently than other similarly situated white employees, or that there was any racial component to the decisions made by management.
I dissent primarily because I believe that this case establishes a very broad and disturbing precedent, which will effectively force companies into a very rigid and bureaucratic system for filling all management vacancies, lest they be put to trial by any lower-level employee who has been “fulfilling the employer’s legitimate expectations” in some position plausibly connected to the position filled.
However, I also believe that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment because there was no evidence of pretext sufficient to challenge the employer’s proffered legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for not selecting Dews. He was not in a position that management had determined was the proper zone of consideration. Dews admitted in his deposition that if he had obtained the position of District Sales Manager when it was open in 1995, he would have been given one of the Regional Sales Manager positions when the reorganization occurred in 1996.
Under these circumstances, I would hold that Dews has not presented evidence sufficient to require a trial on the issue of pretext, nor has he met the requirements we have established for making out a pri-ma facie case.
With respect to the claims concerning the earlier filling of District Sales Manager vacancies, I agree with the district court that these were time-barred.