Court Opinion

ID: 9491562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:17:23.338481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:48.973612
License: Public Domain

HANSEN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfuUy dissent. In my view, Ms. Kramer has produced no evidence which can support a reasonable inference of discrimination on the part of the Stapleton school board, and a verdict in her favor therefore cannot stand. “In reaching that conclusion, [I am] mindful that the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, and that all reasonable inferences in support of the verdict must be allowed.” Lacks v. Ferguson Reorganized Sch. Dist R-2, 147 F.3d 718, 724 (8th Cir.1998). The instant opinion correctly states, “Kramer does not suggest that the evidence presented indicates that the individual board members elected not to renew her teaching contract because of her gender.” Supra at 624. Since Ms. Kramer sued to recover damages for discriminatory discharge by the school board, one might suspect this failure should be fatal to her ease. However, if she could show that unlawful gender discrimination on the part of the administrators who initiaUy recommended her separation to the school board poisoned any subsequent board action, so that the board’s decision to terminate her simply “rubber-stamped” the administrators’ gender-based recommendation, the jury’s verdict could stand. See Kientzy, 990 F.2d at 1057. But allowing her to prevail on the facts of the present case is a great departure from our precedents. The Staple-ton school board did not, by virtue of exercising its statutory authority to hire and fire teachers, thus become a cat’s paw, “one used by another to accomplish his purposes.” Webster’s International Dictionary, 354 (3d ed.1986). Unfortunately, the court’s opinion today transforms our “cat’s paw” cases into a cat o’ nine tails that wiE be used against every school district whose board provides a thorough, independent, statutorily mandated, fuE-blown adjudicatory review before acting on termination recommendations.
To present a submissible “cat’s paw” claim, Ms. Kramer must proffer evidence tending to demonstrate “that the school board was influenced by the bias of the administrators, and that the board consequently served as the conduit, or ‘cat’s paw,’ of the ... animus of the school administration.” Lacks, 147 F.3d at 725. Since Ms. Kramer “produced no evidence that the school board deferred to the opinion or judgment of [the administrators] in making its determination,” id., she has not shown that the board was “influenced” by any gender bias on the part of the administrators, except to the extent that the school board resolved the dispute raised by the termination recommendation — which, of course, Nebraska law requires the board to do. The elected Stapleton school board accorded Ms. Kramer her statutory hearing at which she was represented by counsel and presented witnesses and evidence on her own behalf, and cross-examined witnesses who appeared against her. There is not a hint that the hearing itself was other than full and fair. The trial-type hearing continued for nearly five hours before the board retired, Eke a jury, into executive session to consider the evidence and arguments which had been presented. Here, as in Lacks, “no members of the administration were present during the board’s dehberations.” Id.
*628Ms. Kramer claimed at trial that bias infected the hearing, because the administrators “made material misrepresentations and omissions in presenting their recommendation to the board,” supra at 624, and that these errors poisoned the board’s decision. She contends that Principal Apple and Superintendent Broadbent misrepresented to the school board the contents of her performance evaluations. The testimony to which she refers in fact indicates that, when Mr. Broadbent recommended that the school board send a nonrenewal letter to Ms. Kramer, he requested that the board members not review her evaluations until a hearing was , held, and the evaluations were presented at the hearing in Ms. Kramer’s presence. (Trial Tr. at 987, 996-97.) Ms. Kramer does not claim that she made any effort at the hearing to correct any alleged misrepresentations made to the school board, or to expose any unfair, gender-based treatment. She most certainly did not indicate to the school board that either of the administrators had intentionally misled the board about her record because of a bias against women. It strains credulity to its breaking point to believe that, over the course of a long adversarial hearing and while represented by counsel, Ms. Kramer would not challenge what she believed to be false statements made by her supervisor, or make the charge that the statements were in fact bottomed on gender bias. In any case, the evaluations themselves do not indicate gender bias, but contain legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for not renewing Ms. Kramer’s contract — the very reasons proffered at trial. The board considered these evaluations in making its decision. This evidence does not require us to make a credibility determination. More importantly, it does not raise an inference that the board was influenced by any hidden, undisclosed, and uncomplained about underlying gender bias on the part of the principal and superintendent.
Ms. Kramer asserts that her evaluations reflected her supervisor’s bias because they contained criticisms for misconduct which similarly situated male teachers did not receive. However, to show bias through disparate treatment, Ms. Kramer must demonstrate that similarly situated male teachers were treated differently than she. See Ward v. Procter & Gamble Paper Products Co., 111 F.3d 558, 560-61(8th Cir.1997). She was a probationary employee but she alleged disparate treatment of tenured male teachers. Needless to say, tenured teachers are not similarly situated to probationary teachers. See Neb.Rev.Stat. §§ 79-828(4), 79-829 (1996). Further, many of her specific allegations were completely and unequivocally refuted at trial, where administrators, board members, and the teachers themselves all testified that the male teachers had in fact been disciplined over misconduct for which Ms. Kramer claimed they had not.
Ms. Kramer also claims that Mr. Broad-bent possessed a letter, written in her support and signed by many of the tenured teachers in Stapleton, which he did not present to the board. Mr. Broadbent initially testified that he could not recall passing that letter on (Trial Tr. at 655); but then testified that he did submit it to the board. (Id. at 888-89.) Mr. Apple also testified that the letter was presented to the board. (Id. at 869.) Even if neither of the administrators had submitted the letter to the board, Ms. Kramer was present at her hearing and represented by counsel. She called as witnesses on her behalf many of the teachers who signed the support letter, and she herself had a copy of it. If the board did not have the letter to consider as part of all the evidence regarding Ms. Kramer’s employment when it retired to deliberate, the reason is Ms. Kramer’s own negligence. Her proffer of evidence regarding the support letter does not permit an inference of gender discrimination by the Stapleton school board.
The school board members testified at trial that Ms. Kramer presented no indication of gender bias to them, for their consideration in reviewing her employment record. Member David Jones testified, “There was nothing brought up of any sexual innuendo or discrimination at that hearing in April.” (Trial Tr. at 683.) When asked, “Did you hear anything like [gender bias] at that hearing on April 28th of 1993?” member Linda Licking responded, “No, none of it.” (Trial Tr. at 978.) Still, Ms. Kramer insists that some hidden bias (which she joined in keep*629ing hidden by not bringing it to the board’s attention) infected the board. She would have us believe that, despite the hearing, and despite her presentation of her own witnesses to the school board, the school board simply “rubber stamped” the recommendation not to renew her contract. All evidence presented belies this, and the jury’s inference to the contrary is unreasonable.
After taking hours of evidence, the board retired into executive session with two proposed motions before them, one to retain Ms. Kramer; one to terminate her, with six reasons listed in support of the termination decision, a situation not unlike a jury retiring with special verdict forms to consider and complete. Upon review of the evidence, the board unanimously voted to terminate. They did not simply adopt the proposed termination motion, however. Their review of the evidence led them to strike two of the proposed reasons for termination. Ms. Kramer’s trial counsel pointed out the very evidence which demonstrates the board did not “rubber-stamp” the recommendation. He asked board member Jones on cross-examination, “And those lines were stricken [sic] after the board discussed the resolution, listened to the evidence and decided how to decide this matter, correct?” ' Answer: “That’s correct.” (Trial Tr. at 694.) “On this record, the inference that the school board acted because of [plaintiffs gender] is wholly unreasonable.” Lacks, 147 F.3d at 726.
Nebraska law permits Ms. Kramer to appeal the board’s decision to state district court. See Neb.Rev.Stat. § 79-833; Schaffert v. Lancaster County Sch. Dist. No. 0001, 7 Neb.App. 206, 581 N.W.2d 444 (1998). She elected not to do so. Instead, in my view, having sandbagged the board by not revealing to the board at the nonrenewal hearing her belief that the Superintendent’s recommendation to terminate her was actually based on her sex, she then proceeded to blindside the board by filing this Title VII suit in federal court. Lest the reader believe that my analogy, comparing the role of the school board at Ms. Kramer’s hearing to that of a jury, is stretched, under Nebraska law the board’s termination decision would have been reviewed under a deferential standard very similar to that used to review a jury’s verdict. See Cox v. York County Sch. Dist., 252 Neb. 12, 560 N.W.2d 138, 142-43 (1997); Boss v. Fillmore School Dist. No. 19, 251 Neb. 669, 559 N.W.2d 448, 452-53 (1997). Her state court appeal would have been limited to the record made before the school board, id., which, of course, because she completely failed to complain about it, contained not a whiff of sex discrimination at play.
After a thorough review of the record, I find no evidence that the board’s review was either perfunctory or proforma, but rather it was a thorough review, conducted by independently elected school board members conscientiously discharging their statutory duty to adjudicate the issue set before them, with no taint of gender bias. In my view, the admittedly full and fair adjudicatory hearing by independent fact-finders who possessed no personal bias (let alone a sex-based one) and who had an opportunity to hear all sides of the termination issues, served to break any causal connection between the alleged underlying sex-based bias of the two top administrators and the final decision. Here, because there was no evidence of “rubber stamping” there can be no “cat’s pawing.” “The evidence in this case unequivocally shows that the board made an independent determination as to whether [Kramer] should be terminated and did not serve merely as a conduit for the desires of school administrators. [Kramer’s] ‘cat’s paw theory must therefore fail.” Lacks, 147 F.3d at 725. Our recent precedent in Lacks demands that we set aside the jury’s verdict. In my view, “the exhaustive hearing given [Kramer] by the board leave[s] no room for anyone reasonably to conclude that [Kramer] was [terminated] because of her [gender].” Id. at 726. I respectfully dissent.