Court Opinion

ID: 9843310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:32:54.896575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:38.042337
License: Public Domain

DENNIS JACOBS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the result, but I would affirm the judgment on a different ground. The holding of the majority opinion — that administrative leave with pay during the pen-dency of criminal charges or an investigation does not, without more, constitute an adverse employment action, ante, at 91-93 is in my view unnecessary and unsound.
A
There is an alternative ground for affirming the dismissal of the complaint. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services explained that Gregson Joseph (i) was placed on paid administrative leave because of the pen-dency of criminal charges indicating serious misconduct and (ii) was kept on paid administrative leave pending an internal FDA investigation into that conduct. These constitute legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons — regardless of whether the placement or retention on paid administrative leave amounted to an adverse employment action. Because Joseph has utterly failed to demonstrate that the reasons were pretextual, the complaint was properly dismissed. See Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 143, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000); Mario v. P & C Food Mkts., Inc., 313 F.3d 758, 767 (2d Cir.2002). The majority opinion implicitly recognizes that this alternative ground of decision is available and sound. See ante, at 91-94.
The FDA had ample justification for placing Joseph on paid administrative leave and keeping him there for the five months following dismissal of the criminal charges. Joseph had been arrested twice for assaulting his live-in girlfriend; Joseph’s girlfriend had also made serious allegations that he both used drugs and had misused government property; and the investigating officers and the FDA’s Internal Affairs investigator concluded that Joseph’s girlfriend was credible. As the majority observes, it was incumbent on the FDA, given the “important and sensitive nature of Joseph’s job responsibilities,” to suspend him upon learning of serious criminal charges and to conduct a full and thorough investigation before returning him to duty. See id. at 91. As the majority further recognizes, the FDA’s investigation was prolonged by Joseph’s refusal to cooperate with FDA investigators during the pendency of the criminal charges.
Joseph’s refusal may be understandable; but it caused the FDA’s justifiable suspension of the investigation until Joseph was prepared to cooperate. See id. at 92-94. Given the strength of the FDA’s justifications for (i) placing Joseph on paid administrative leave and (ii) leaving him there pending his cooperation with the internal investigation, Joseph has not come close to proffering evidence sufficient to “reasonably support[ ] a finding of prohibited discrimination.” James v. N.Y. Racing Ass’n, 233 F.3d 149, 154 (2d Cir.2000).
*95B
I do not subscribe to the majority’s holding that paid administrative leave pending a disciplinary investigation can never constitute an adverse employment action.2 The question is not a simple one. “A plaintiff sustains an adverse employment action if he ... endures a ‘materially adverse change’ in the terms and conditions of employment.” Galabya v. N.Y. City Bd. of Educ., 202 F.3d 636, 640 (2d Cir.2000). To be materially adverse, a change in working conditions must be “ ‘more disruptive than a mere inconvenience or an alteration of job responsibilities[ ]’ at the same time, an actionable change “might be indicated by ... significantly diminished material responsibilities’ ” or circumstances “ ‘unique to a particular situation.’” Id. (quoting Crady v. Liberty Nat’l Bank & Trust Co., 993 F.2d 132, 136 (7th Cir.1993)). Relief from job duties in anticipation of dismissal (with or without pay) would seem to be an adverse development; and a substantial reduction in duties and responsibilities can in itself be painful and humiliating for a productive person. See Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Ry. v. White, — U.S. —, 126 S.Ct. 2405, 2416, 165 L.Ed.2d 345 (June 22, 2006) (“[A]n ‘act that would be immaterial in some situations is material in others.’ ” (quoting Washington v. Ill. Dep’t of Revenue, 420 F.3d 658, 661 (7th Cir.2005))); Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., 523 U.S. 75, 81-82, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998) (“The real social impact of workplace behavior often depends on a constellation of surrounding circumstances, expectations, and relationships ... ”). The majority opinion makes plausible arguments; but there are plausible arguments on both sides, and I decline to decide such a difficult question unnecessarily and categorically.
The holding of the majority opinion is limited to “administrative leave with pay during the pendency of an investigation.” Ante, at 91 (emphasis added). The pen-dency of an investigation certainly matters; however, that circumstance bears on whether an employment action is justified, not whether it is adverse. The implication of the majority’s holding is thus that paid administrative leave can never be adverse; but I wonder what we would do in a case in which a school administrator told a teacher: “The parents do not want their children taught by a person of mixed race, so you are on paid administrative leave until you can be transferred to a comparable position at a nearby school.”
The majority reasons that the placement of Joseph on paid administrative leave pending criminal charges did not constitute an adverse employment action because “[t]he terms and conditions of Joseph’s employment did not include a right to expect that he would be allowed to continue his responsibilities while he was facing serious criminal charges.” Ante, at 91. The case support for this rule is inapt.3 More fundamentally, the breadth or *96consistency with which an employment policy is applied does not bear on whether that policy is materially adverse. Although the legitimate expectations created by an employment contract and the broad application of an employer’s policies are certainly relevant matters in determining whether a plaintiff has established discrimination, the broad and consistent application of an employment policy has little to do with whether the policy in operation inflicts a materially adverse change in employment. Thus, termination is always a materially adverse change in employment, see Terry v. Ashcroft, 336 F.3d 128, 138 (2d Cir.2003); it is no less so because the employee served at will, or because the employer made known its policy of firing employees whose work is deemed unsatisfactory.
I am consoled that the majority opinion has decided a question that may rarely, if ever, again be squarely presented. When an employee is put on paid administrative leave pending an investigation for wrongdoing, the employer will virtually always have a ready, legitimate and non-discriminatory reason for doing so; few employers will, out of animus, inflict a paid vacation.

. Given this holding, it is unclear to me why the majority considers: (i) the procedures that the FDA employed in determining whether to place Joseph on paid administrative leave, see ante, at 91-92; (ii) the FDA's decision to continue that leave for approximately five months after dismissal of the criminal charges, see id. at 91-92; and (iii) whether the placement of an employee on paid administrative leave during an exceptionally dilatory investigation might constitute an adverse employment action, see id. at 93. All these issues bear on whether an adverse employment action was taken for discriminatory reasons, not on whether the action constituted a material change in the conditions of employment.

. In formulating this basis for its holding, the majority relies on the Fourth Circuit's reasoning in Von Gunten v. Maryland, 243 F.3d 858, 869 (4th Cir.2001) (holding that paid adminis*96trative leave pending investigation does not constitute adverse employment action because "terms, conditions, or benefits of a person’s employment do not typically, if ever, include general immunity from the application of basic employment policies or exemption from [an employer’s] disciplinary procedures.”); see ante, at 91. But Von Gunten (mis)cites this proposition to McKenzie v. Illinois Dep't of Transp., 92 F.3d 473, 484 (7th Cir.1996), in which the Seventh Circuit held that the fact that an employment policy was of general applicability had relevance to whether the plaintiff had successfully carried her burden of establishing discrimination, not whether the employment action was adverse. Id. ("[B]ven if we agreed with [plaintiff] that the restriction on her break times adversely affected the conditions of her employment and that she had established a prima facie case of retaliation, it would still be apparent that she has failed to present any evidence tending to cast doubt on the testimony ... that the break policy applied to all employees.”).