Court Opinion

ID: 9911495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-12-20 01:00:39.690499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:23.341797
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-20294        Document: 00517007513             Page: 1      Date Filed: 12/19/2023

             United States Court of Appeals
                  for the Fifth Circuit                                        United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                        Fifth Circuit

                                     ____________                                     FILED
                                                                              December 19, 2023
                                      No. 23-20294                               Lyle W. Cayce
                                    Summary Calendar                                  Clerk
                                    ____________

   Roy Lee Weeks, Jr.,

                                                                    Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                            versus

   Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company,

                                               Defendant—Appellee.
                     ______________________________

                     Appeal from the United States District Court
                         for the Southern District of Texas
                              USDC No. 4:21-CV-4138
                     ______________________________

   Before Wiener, Stewart, and Douglas, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
         Plaintiff–Appellant Roy Lee Weeks, Jr. alleges that his former
   employer, Defendant–Appellant Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company,
   discriminated against him on the basis of age and race. The district court
   granted Nationwide’s motion for summary judgment. Weeks appeals. We
   review a grant of summary judgment de novo, “applying the same standards

         _____________________
         *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 23-20294        Document: 00517007513              Page: 2      Date Filed: 12/19/2023

                                         No. 23-20294

   as the trial court.” Griffin v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 661 F.3d 216, 221 (5th
   Cir. 2011). Summary judgment is appropriate when “there is no genuine
   dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a
   matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
           Weeks first challenges the district court’s resolution of his claim of
   race discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. 1 In such cases, the court applies
   the familiar McDonnell Douglas framework, in which the plaintiff must first
   establish a prima facie case of discrimination. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v.
   Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802–03 (1973). If the plaintiff does so, the burden then
   shifts to the employer to “articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason
   for the termination.” Goudeau v. Nat’l Oilwell Varco, L.P., 793 F.3d 470, 474
   (5th Cir. 2015) (citation omitted). If the employer is successful, the burden
   returns to the plaintiff, who must demonstrate by a preponderance of the
   evidence that “the legitimate reasons offered by the defendant were not its
   true reasons, but were a pretext for discrimination.” Reeves v. Sanderson
   Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 143 (2000) (citation omitted).
           Regardless of Weeks’s ability to establish a prima facie case of
   discrimination, he fails at step three, as he cannot show that Nationwide’s
   proffered non-discriminatory reasons for its challenged employment actions
   are pretextual. For example, in 2018 Nationwide decided to assign Weeks to
   a particular team after conducting an assessment of all managers, which took
   into consideration the employees’ skills, geographic location, and personal
   preference, among other factors. Weeks claims that his performance
   reviews—higher than that of a comparator assigned to an allegedly better
   unit—reveal that Nationwide’s reason for the 2018 reassignment is “false or
           _____________________
           1
             Before the district court and again here, Nationwide raises various statute of
   limitations defenses. We do not reach those issues because we find that Weeks’s claims fail
   on their merits.

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                                    No. 23-20294

   unworthy of credence.” Vaughn v. Woodforest Bank, 665 F.3d 632, 637 (5th
   Cir. 2011) (citation omitted). But Nationwide did not decide placements
   based only on performance history, but also on other relevant factors such as
   geography, preference, technical ability, and platform skills. “Our job as a
   reviewing court conducting a pretext analysis is not to engage in second-
   guessing of an employer’s business decisions.” LeMaire v. La. Dep’t of
   Transp. and Dev., 480 F.3d 383, 391 (5th Cir. 2007). Similarly, Nationwide’s
   decision to promote an employee other than Weeks in 2020 was reasonably
   based on the other employee’s qualifications, which were stronger than those
   of Weeks. Because Weeks cannot demonstrate that he was “clearly better
   qualified” than the employee selected, he fails to meet his burden on the
   pretext prong. See Moss v. BMC Software, Inc., 610 F.3d 917, 922 (5th Cir.
   2010) (emphasis added) (citation omitted). In sum, Weeks points to no
   evidence in the record, other than his own conclusional allegations,
   suggesting that Nationwide’s legitimate reasons for its actions were instead
   a “coverup” for discrimination. McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 805. The
   district court was correct in holding that Nationwide is entitled to judgment
   as a matter of law on Weeks’s discrimination claim.
          Second, Weeks contends that the district court erred in granting
   summary judgment in favor of Nationwide on his hostile work environment
   claim. To succeed on that claim, Weeks had to show that he was subjected to
   unwelcome harassment based on race. Ramsey v. Henderson, 286 F.3d 264,
   268 (5th Cir. 2002) (citation omitted). Such harassment must be
   “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s
   employment and create an abusive working environment.” Nat’l R.R.
   Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 116 (2002) (citation omitted). It must
   also be “both objectively and subjectively offensive.” Faragher v. City of Boca
   Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 787 (1998). Relevant factors include “the frequency of
   the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening

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                                   No. 23-20294

   or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably
   interferes with an employee’s work performance.” Ramsey, 286 F.3d at 268
   (citation omitted). Weeks claims that the following events contributed to
   Nationwide’s work environment being hostile: (1) Weeks’s 2017
   reassignment to the field team, (2) his 2018 and 2020 performance ratings of
   “developing,” and (3) his receipt of a job elimination notice in 2019, leading
   to his forced demotion. However, these acts were relatively isolated and
   infrequent, did not physically threaten him, and did not “destroy[ his]
   opportunity to succeed in the workplace.” See West v. City of Houston, Texas,
   960 F.3d 736, 743 (5th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks and citation
   omitted). Weeks’s allegations of harassment thus do not constitute the
   “extreme” circumstances necessary to support a claim of hostile
   environment. See Faragher, 524 U.S. at 788. For the same reason, Weeks’s
   constructive discharge claim also cannot stand. See Brown v. Kinney Shoe
   Corp., 237 F.3d 556, 566 (5th Cir. 2001) (“Constructive discharge requires a
   greater degree of harassment than that required by a hostile environment
   claim.” (citation omitted)).
          The district court’s grant of summary judgment is AFFIRMED.

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