Court Opinion

ID: 9552995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:20:13.426694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:29:28.793256
License: Public Domain

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join the majority opinion except for section 11(C), from which I respectfully dissent because there is no material issue of fact as to whether Ford’s stated reasons for firing Upshaw were pretextual.
True, the parties disagree about the incidents serving as the basis for Upshaw’s termination. Upshaw produced evidence that two of Ford’s stated reasons for her firing (minor safety violations and a failure to sign a union health and safety grievance) were not, in actual practice, terminable offenses. Also, Upshaw denies falsifying the scrap reports or retaliating against the hourly employee who reported her; moreover, she presented evidence that it was common for supervisors to estimate scrap counts and to monitor employees manually operating “down” machines.
But although there are factual disputes regarding the merits of Ford’s reasons for *594firing Upshaw, the jury would not be called upon to decide whether Ford was justified in firing her. Even if Upshaw could show that Ford fired her based on a mistake, or even based on an arbitrary desire to get rid of her, she must do more: She must demonstrate that Ford’s real reason for firing her was to retaliate against her for pursuing EEOC claims.
Resolution in Upshaw’s favor of the disputes the majority characterizes as material would get us no further than the situation presented by Upshaw’s racial discrimination claims. Under the majority’s reasoning, those claims should also go to the jury, inasmuch as Upshaw presented evidence — indeed, Ford admitted — that the company promoted white employees who were unqualified. Although Ford claimed the promotions were mistakes, a jury could assume that Ford was lying to cover up its racial animus, just as a jury could assume that any error in firing Upshaw was a pretext to hide its retaliatory motive. We have held that “[t]he jury may not reject an employer’s explanation, however, unless there is a sufficient basis in the evidence for doing so.” Manzer v. Diamond Shamrock Chemicals Co., 29 F.3d 1078, 1083 (6th Cir.1994) (emphasis in original). “To allow the jury simply to refuse to believe the employer’s explanation would subtly, but inarguably, shift the burden of persuasion from the plaintiff to the defendant, which we must not permit.” Id. “[Ojnce the employer has come forward with a nondiscriminatory reason for [the challenged action], we hold that the plaintiff must produce sufficient evidence from which the jury may reasonably reject the employer’s explanation.” Id. (citations omitted).
Upshaw points to the August 26, 2003, meeting among Robert Brooks, Jim Brooks, and Gerald Taylor to discuss Upshaw’s “complaint activity” as evidence that Ford’s alleged reasons were pretextual. This meeting occurred only two weeks after Upshaw filed an EEOC charge and on the same day that Robert Brooks submitted Ford’s response. Upshaw also notes that shortly after she filed the present lawsuit in November 2004, Brandee Hughes-Sharp and Jim Brooks requested documentation from employees regarding issues that they had with Upshaw. When asked if he was “compiling that information with the view towards terminating Carolyn Upshaw,” Jim Brooks responded that he “had hoped to.” In December 2004, the Salaried Personnel office presented the documents they had accumulated to Gerald Taylor, along with a recommendation that Upshaw be fired. Taylor testified that although he thought there was a “solid case” for terminating Upshaw, some of the e-mails that Salaried Personnel had submitted made it look like the company was trying to “gunny sack” her.
Viewing this evidence in the light most favorable to Upshaw, as we must, she has not provided sufficient evidence of pretext to survive summary judgment. For one thing, Upshaw filed EEOC charges so frequently, nearly any action Ford took would have been relatively close in time to one of her filings. The August 2003 meeting to discuss her “complaints” came many months before she was fired in March 2005. The most recent EEOC charge she had filed prior to her termination was in June 2004. And Ford did not fire Upshaw until four months after she filed this lawsuit.
Moreover, Jim Brooks and Gerald Taylor both testified on deposition that the August 26 discussion was related to internal complaints from and about Upshaw and had nothing to do with her EEOC filings. Taylor’s notes on the meeting support this interpretation: He wrote that *595“almost daily people are investigating her complaints” and observed that the human resources employees at Upshaw’s facility had specific concerns with “[t]he # of complaints, time invested & outcome of these investigations.” Taylor advised “[t]hat if the data reveal excessive activity with little or no yield then write it up for termination and I will evaluate if it warrants said release.” These comments reveal that Taylor was concerned with the amount of time that the plant’s human resources department was expending in internal investigations regarding Upshaw. There is no evidence that Taylor meant “EEOC charges” when he wrote “complaints,” other than the fact that this meeting was close in time to one of those charges. There simply is not enough here from which the jury could find that Taylor must have been referring to protected activity by Upshaw.
As to the documentation compiled by human resources associates, Taylor found that although some of the e-mails he received presented insubstantial grievances against Upshaw, most of them made out a “solid case” for her termination. Even so, Ford did not fire Upshaw until three months later and did not cite any of the information in that report as a reason for Upshaw’s dismissal. Again, other than the fact that human resources associates began soliciting employee feedback about Upshaw shortly after her November 2004 lawsuit, there is no evidence that the compilation of this report had anything to do with Upshaw’s EEOC filings.
Whether Upshaw would be able “to prevail at trial on the issue of whether Ford’s rationale for her termination was pretextual,” Maj. Op. at 592, is immaterial. Because Upshaw has not presented sufficient evidence from which a jury could find that Ford’s actions were based on reasons prohibited by Title VII, I would affirm the district court’s order of summary judgment in favor of Ford.