Court Opinion

ID: 9491780
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:23:50.960712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:56.720385
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully suggest that the court has erred in concluding that Mr..Vaughn did not produce sufficient evidence of pretext to survive summary judgment. In the first place, I am not at all sure that the court has correctly stated the governing legal principles. Ryther v. KARE 11, 108 F.3d 832, 836-37 (8th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 2510, 138 L.Ed.2d 1013 (1997), requires only that the plaintiff produce evidence that the business reason that a defendant articulates for making an adverse employment decision is a pretext for the kind of discrimination of which the plaintiff is complaining. No more than that is required. In any case, the plaintiff has presented a great deal of evidence of pretext here, all of which the court outlines in its opinion. The court’s conclusion that it is insufficient to allow the plaintiff to avoid summary judgment is, in my view, incorrect: The evidence raises a clear inference that the stated reason for Mr. Vaughn’s termination was not the real one, and Mr. Vaughn has therefore made out a submissible case.
One of the court’s statements deserves, I think, some particular comment. It is no doubt true, as the court says, that we do not “sit as super-personnel departments reviewing the wisdom or fairness of the business judgments made by employers.” That is an unexceptionable proposition, one to which all judges would agree, but it has no application to the context. Mr. Vaughn is not claiming that he cannot be terminated for a particular reason; he is asserting that if the reason given for his termination is one that is contrary to the self-interest of the employer, an inference is raised that it is not the real reason. In other words, it is a pretext.
For those reasons, and others, I respectfully dissent from the judgment of the court.
Affirmed.