Court Opinion

ID: 9473855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:41:18.982935+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:45.841736
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join fully in the majority’s holding, and in much of the reasoning supporting its holding, that the district court properly granted summary judgment and costs to the defendant in this case. I write separately to express my disagreement with the majority’s conclusion that in order to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination in reduction-in-force (“RIF”) cases, a plaintiff must “produc[e] circumstantial or direct evidence from which a factfinder might reasonably conclude that the employer intended to discriminate in making the employment decision in issue.” Ante at 1217. By substantially increasing the prima facie burden that a plaintiff must carry, I believe that the majority’s burden of *1220proof formula departs from the teaching of McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). Rather than creating this additional burden, I would allow a plaintiff to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination in a RIF case by showing that he was in the protected age group, that he was performing according to his employer’s legitimate expectations, and that he was nevertheless discharged while younger employees were either retained to perform the plaintiff’s job or permitted to transfer into some similar job for which the plaintiff was also qualified. Applying this test, I would affirm the summary judgment in this case not on the ground that the plaintiff failed to establish a prima facie case of discriminatory discharge under the ADEA, but rather on the ground that the defendant provided a nondiscriminatory justification for the discharge and the plaintiff offered no evidence to show that this justification was a pretext for discrimination.
I.
As the majority opinion notes, the burden of proof formula set forth by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas has been our touchstone in deciding disparate treatment claims in this circuit, whether brought under Title VII or the ADEA. See also Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 613, 622, 83 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985) (assuming without expressly deciding that McDonnell Douglas formula applies to ADEA suits). The Court in McDonnell Douglas, which involved a claim of racially discriminatory refusal to hire, held that a plaintiff could establish a prima facie case by showing: (1) that he belongs to a racial minority; (2) that he applied and was qualified for a job for which the employer was seeking applicants; (3) that, despite his qualifications, he was rejected; and (4) that, after his rejection, the position remained open and the employer continued to seek applicants from persons of complainant’s qualifications. 411 U.S. at 802, 93 S.Ct. at 1824. This circuit has applied a slightly modified version of this formula in cases involving discriminatory discharge under the ADEA, requiring the plaintiff to show: “(1) that he was in the protected class, (2) that he was doing his job well enough to meet his employer’s legitimate expectations, (3) that in spite of his performance he was discharged, and (4) that the employer sought a replacement for him.” La Montague v. American Convenience Products, Inc., 750 F.2d 1405, 1409 (7th Cir.1984) (footnote omitted); Huhn v. Koehring Co., 718 F.2d 239, 243 (7th Cir.1983).
The McDonnell Douglas formulation of the plaintiff’s prima facie burden in discrimination cases serves two significant functions. Jayasinghe v. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 760 F.2d 132, 134-35 (7th Cir.1985). First, the burden “eliminates the most common nondiscriminatory reasons for the plaintiff’s rejection,” and thus “[t]he employer is spared unnecessary litigation expense by its ability to file a motion to dismiss, a motion for summary judgment, or a motion for directed verdict where the plaintiff fails to distinguish his or her case from the ordinary, legitimate kind of adverse personnel decision____” Id. at 134. Second, the McDonnell Douglas formula allows a plaintiff to establish a prima facie case without directly proving discriminatory intent. See Jayasinghe, 760 F.2d at 135; La Montague, 750 F.2d at 1409-10. This function is critical because of the manifold difficulties facing a plaintiff attempting to prove any kind of unlawful discrimination, and in particular discrimination based on age:
Age discrimination may be subtle and even unconscious. Even an employer who knowingly discriminates on the basis of age may leave no written records revealing the forbidden motive and may communicate it orally to no one. When the evidence is in existence, it is likely to be under the control of the employer, and the plaintiff may not succeed in turning it up.
La Montague, 750 F.2d at 1410 (citation omitted). Further, even indirect evidence that affirmatively suggests discrimination may be difficult for a plaintiff to find. As *1221the majority notes, one of the most common forms of indirect evidence — statistics showing a pattern of disparate treatment— is “generally ... not of significance in age discrimination cases ‘unless the disparities in treatment are quite large.’ ” Ante at 1218 (quoting Kephart v. Institute of Gas Technology, 630 F.2d 1217, 1224 (7th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 959, 101 S.Ct. 1418, 67 L.Ed.2d 383 (1981)).
Just as a plaintiff-employee can easily establish a prima facie case of discrimination under McDonnell Douglas, a defendant-employer can overcome a plaintiff’s prima facie showing merely by introducing evidence sufficient to “raise[] a genuine issue of fact as to whether it discriminated against the plaintiff.” Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254-55, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 1094, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981) (footnote omitted). “To accomplish this, the defendant must clearly set forth, through the introduction of admissible evidence, the reasons for the plaintiff’s rejection.” Id. at 255, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 (footnote omitted). Thus, the establishment of a prima facie case does no more than require the employer to provide some explanation for its employment decision, supported by a minimal amount of evidence, so that the employee “will have a full and fair opportunity” to meet the ultimate burden of proving that the employer’s explanation is a pretext for discrimination. Id. at 256, 101 S.Ct. at 1095. In sum, the prima facie showing defined by McDonnell Douglas “raises an inference of discrimination only because we presume these acts, if otherwise unexplained, are more likely than not based on the consideration of impermissible factors.” Furnco Construction Corp. v. Waters, 438 U.S. 567, 577, 98 S.Ct. 2943, 2949-50, 57 L.Ed.2d 957 (1978) (emphasis added).
II.
The majority’s analysis begins with the indisputable premise that the McDonnell Douglas definition of a prima facie case, even as modified by this circuit for discriminatory discharge cases, cannot be applied
literally in RIF cases. In particular, a plaintiff-employee who was discharged pursuant to a RIF cannot be expected to satisfy the fourth element of a prima facie case — showing that the defendant-employer sought someone to replace the plaintiff — because the. plaintiff’s position typically will have been eliminated in the RIF. Ante at 1217. See also Tice v. Lampert Yards, Inc., 761 F.2d 1210, 1215 n. 5 (7th Cir.1985) (fourth element of the prima facie case “may not be required” in RIF case). Therefore, in order to provide a meaningful opportunity for an employee to maintain a discrimination suit in RIF cases, the McDonnell Douglas test must be modified. This fact alone is of little concern, since the Supreme Court itself has noted that “facts necessarily will vary” in discrimination cases and thus that the prima facie requirements of McDonnell Douglas are “not necessarily applicable in every respect to differing factual situations.” McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802 n. 13, 93 S.Ct. at 1824 n. 13 (quoted in Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253 n. 6, 101 S.Ct. at 1093 n. 6).
After recognizing the necessity of modifying the McDonnell Douglas formula, the majority proceeds to the ultimate question of how best to modify the formula to fit RIF cases while still maintaining its essential balance between the evidentiary burdens of the plaintiff and the defendant. The majority implicitly rejects the alternative of simply omitting the fourth element and allowing a plaintiff in a RIF case to establish a prima facie case by showing the first three elements of the McDonnell Douglas formula: that he was in the protected age group, that he was meeting his employer’s legitimate expectations, and that he was nevertheless discharged. I agree completely with the majority’s rejection of this alternative, since the discharge of an employee pursuant to a RIF does not itself give rise to any inference of discrimination, regardless of the employee’s age or professional competence. See, e.g., La-Grant v. Gulf & Western Manufacturing Co., 748 F.2d 1087, 1090 (6th Cir.1984) (“The mere termination of a competent em*1222ployee when an employer is making cutbacks due to economic necessity is insufficient to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination.”); Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Western Electric Co., 713 F.2d 1011, 1015 (4th Cir.1983) (district court erred in permitting plaintiff to establish prima facie case by proving only first three elements).
The majority instead chooses to adopt the Fifth Circuit’s formulation of the prima facie requirements for RIF cases set forth in Williams v. General Motors Corp., 656 F.2d 120, 129 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943, 102 S.Ct. 1439, 71 L.Ed.2d 655 (1982), requiring a plaintiff to “produc[e] circumstantial or direct evidence from which a factfinder might reasonably conclude that the employer intended to discriminate in making the employment decision in issue.” Ante at 1217. The court in Williams further explained that in order to satisfy this requirement, “the evidence must lead the factfinder reasonably to conclude either (1) that defendant consciously refused to consider retaining or relocating a plaintiff because of his age, or (2) defendant regarded age as a negative factor in such consideration.” 656 F.2d at 130. Thus, under the Williams formulation, a plaintiff cannot establish a prima facie case merely by eliminating the most common legitimate reasons for the discharge, or by raising an inference that the employer’s actions — if unexplained — were the result of discrimination. Rather, the plaintiff must provide affirmative evidence sufficient to lead a factfinder to “conclude,” not merely infer or presume, that the employer consciously intended to discriminate. Applying this standard, the majority concludes that the plaintiff in this case failed to establish a prima facie case because he “provided no evidence, direct or circumstantial, that age in any way entered into the decision to terminate him.” Ante at 1217.
By significantly increasing the plaintiff’s prima facie burden in ADEA cases involving RIFs, the Williams approach upsets the delicate balance in burdens of proof that was struck by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas. First, the Williams test threatens to undermine the function of McDonnell Douglas in providing plaintiffs with a meaningful opportunity to litigate their discrimination claims. In essence, as one commentator has persuasively argued in rejecting the Williams test, the “practical result” of applying the test
is that in many, if not most, layoff situations the plaintiff simply will be unable to establish a prima facie case because evidence of actual age animus is rarely available, and unless there is a significant number of persons laid off any statistical data may be inherently unreliable. The defendant thus will not be required to articulate any reason for the treatment of the older plaintiff. Obviously, the absence of any articulated reason means that the laid-off older worker will be effectively deprived of any ability to focus the issue by challenging the existence, legitimacy, or uniform application of the reason.
Player, Proof of Disparate Treatment under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act: Variations on a Title VII Theme, 17 Ga.L.Rev. 621, 639 (1983) (footnote omitted). Cf Mason v. Continental Illinois National Bank, 704 F.2d 361, 367 (7th Cir.1983) (Cudahy, J., concurring) (“Racial discrimination is frequently so difficult a phenomenon to prove or disprove that drifting from the settled landmarks, such as McDonnell Douglas, may be fraught with danger.”).
This deviation from standard prima facie case requirements might be justified if additional evidence from the plaintiff was necessary to raise even an inference of age discrimination in RIF cases, or if the additional evidence was required in order to protect defendants from having to litigate clearly baseless claims. When one considers the kinds of discrimination claims that arise from RIFs, however, it becomes apparent that no such deviation is necessary. A plaintiff who brings an age discrimination suit after being discharged pursuant to a RIF generally does not challenge the RIF itself, but instead challenges the fact that younger employees were treated more fa*1223vorably in the RIF. A plaintiff in a RIF situation, for example, typically will allege that the employer retained younger employees who continued to perform either work that the plaintiff had performed, or work for which the plaintiff was qualified, after the plaintiffs discharge.
An employer’s retention of a younger employee either in the same job as the discharged plaintiff or in another job for which the plaintiff was also qualified gives rise to an inference of discrimination that is no weaker than the well-recognized inference created when an employer discharges an employee who is performing adequately and then seeks and/or obtains a replacement. While it is entirely possible, of course, that the employer in a RIF case will have decided to retain younger employees based on an evaluation of their qualifications as compared with those of the plaintiff, it is just as possible that the employer in a normal discharge case will have chosen to seek a replacement for the plaintiff because the employer believed or knew that someone else would be even better qualified than the plaintiff in some respect. In either case, the employer can rebut the plaintiff’s prima facie showing by presenting some evidence to explain the legitimate reasons for its conduct. See Davis v. Weidner, 596 F.2d 726, 730 (7th Cir.1979) (“It seems more sensible to require the employer, in his rebuttal to the complainant’s case, to offer his justification for his employment decision, rather than to force the complainant to refute hypothetical reasons why the employer might have found him relatively less qualified.”).
Furthermore, two very recent decisions in this circuit that have dealt with ADEA claims by plaintiffs who were discharged pursuant to RIFs reveal that this court has not yet embraced the Williams test. See Tice v. Lampert Yards, Inc., 761 F.2d 1210 (7th Cir.1985); Parker v. Federal National Mortgage Association, 741 F.2d 975 (7th Cir.1984). In Tice, the plaintiff alleged that he was replaced by a younger employee after he was discharged pursuant to a RIF based on the closing of one of the defendant’s millshop operations. 761 F.2d at 1214. The court expressed substantial doubt concerning whether the evidence supported the plaintiff’s allegation, but ultimately concluded that even if the plaintiff had established a prima facie case by proving that he was replaced by a younger employee, the defendant nevertheless had “offered a valid justification” for the plaintiff’s discharge. Id. at 1215. In a footnote, the court stated that the element of replacement “may not be required” for a prima facie case in a RIF case, and cited Williams for this proposition. Id. at 1215 n. 5. The rationale adopted in Tice, however, made it unnecessary to determine the nature of a plaintiff’s prima facie burden in a RIF case.
In Parker, on the other hand, the court affirmatively decided that the plaintiff had established a prima facie case based on his discharge pursuant to a RIF that eliminated the plaintiff’s job position where the evidence showed that he was within the protected age group, that he “was a competent and respected” employee, and that several younger employees who had held the same position as the plaintiff were permitted to transfer into new positions for which the plaintiff was also qualified. 741 F.2d at 979. The court concluded that if the case had gone to trial, the plaintiff under these circumstances “would have had little difficulty establishing a prima facie case as defined in McDonnell Douglas. ” Id. The court nonetheless affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the defendant on the grounds that the defendant had proffered legitimate reasons for discharging the plaintiff and that the plaintiff failed to show that these reasons were pretextual. Id. at 981. Although the opinion contains no discussion of Williams, the fact that Parker evaluates the plaintiff’s prima facie case under a slightly modified version of the McDonnell Douglas formula rather than adopting some special formula for RIF cases raises some question about whether we should impose additional prima facie requirements on plaintiffs in RIF cases.
*1224Two recent decisions by the Third Circuit in RIF cases, while citing generally to Williams, likewise hold that in order to establish a prima facie case, “[a] plaintiff alleging a discriminatory layoff need show only that he was laid off from a job for which he was qualified while others not in the protected class were treated more favorably.” Duffy v. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corp., 738.F.2d 1393, 1395 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 592, 83 L.Ed.2d 702 (1984); Massarsky v. General Motors Corp., 706 F.2d 111, 118 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 348, 78 L.Ed.2d 314 (1983). In both Duffy and Massarsky, the court held that the plaintiff has established a prima facie case by showing that he was discharged while a younger employee who performed the same job was retained. Duffy, 738 F.2d at 1395 n. 2; Massarsky, 706 F.2d at 118.
In line with these authorities, rather than employing the Williams approach adopted by the majority, I would allow a plaintiff in a RIF case to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination by showing that he was in the protected age group, that he was performing according to his employer’s legitimate expectations, and that he was discharged while younger employees either were retained to perform the plaintiff's job or permitted to transfer into some other job for which the plaintiff was qualified.1 Like the McDonnell Douglas formula, this general prima facie standard for analyzing RIF cases will not apply in its literal terms to all such cases, but rather will likely have to be modified to fit the widely varying fact situations in which age discrimination claims arise. Nevertheless, I believe that the application of this standard or some variant thereof will better serve the policies underlying McDonnell Douglas than the application of a formula that — like Williams — requires a plaintiff as part of his prima facie case to prove a defendant’s discriminatory intent directly.
III.
Under the standard that I have described, the plaintiff in this case appears to have established a prima facie case of age discrimination. In its brief to this court, the defendant argues to the contrary solely on the ground that the plaintiff failed to show that he was replaced by a younger employee or alternatively that he failed to satisfy the Williams test. While the plaintiff may not have been fully “replaced” by another employee, the plaintiff’s supervisor Richard Killeen admitted in his deposition that the work plaintiff was performing at the time of his discharge was taken over primarily by Paul Artwohl, who was twenty-nine years old. The defendant’s retention of Artwohl under these circumstances seems to complete a prima facie case.
Notwithstanding the plaintiff’s prima facie case, the defendant has more than met its burden of providing a legitimate justification for the discharge, as the majority opinion thoroughly demonstrates. The burden then shifted to the plaintiff to show that this justification was a pretext, which the plaintiff failed to do. Even though the district court granted summary judgment based on the plaintiff’s failure to prove a prima facie case, we can affirm if the defendant provided a legitimate reason that the plaintiff failed to show was pretextual. See McCluney v. Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co., 728 F.2d 924, 926 (7th Cir.1984). See also Klein v. Trustees of Indiana University, 766 F.2d 275, 282 (7th Cir.1985) (where no issue of material fact exists, summary judgment appropriate oh question of pretext).
I therefore concur in the judgment.

. Implicit in this formula is the requirement that some job must actually have been available at the time of the plaintiffs discharge; the ADEA does not require an employer to create a job in order to accommodate employees within the protected age group. Tice, 761 F.2d at 1217-18; Trembath v. St. Regis Paper Co., 753 F.2d 603, 604 (7th Cir.1985).