Filed: Patrick Fisher
Filed: Patrick Fisher
Filed: Patrick Fisher
DEC 29 1999
PATRICK FISHER
TENTH CIRCUIT
Clerk
CONNIE MARION,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
No. 98-6286
(W.D. Oklahoma)
Defendant - Appellee.
KIMBALL , ** District
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
*
The Honorable Dale A. Kimball, United States District Judge for the
District of Utah, sitting by designation.
**
Slaughter Company, a division of R.E. Phelon Co., Inc. (TSC), alleging genderbased job and wage discrimination. The case went to trial on the issue of
disparate treatment. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury returned a verdict
against the plaintiff, answering no to the following question on the verdict
form: Has plaintiff Connie Marion proved that her sex was, more likely than
not, a motivating factor in establishing her rate of pay? Appellants App. at 68.
Subsequently, the plaintiff filed post-trial motions for judgment as a matter of law
and seeking a determination in equity by the court that despite the absence of
intentional discrimination, the gender distribution in TSCs work force violated
Title VII under a disparate impact theory. The district court ruled that neither the
pleadings, the law, nor the evidence supported a disparate impact claim, and it
denied relief on the plaintiffs post-trial motions.
On appeal, the plaintiff contends that the district court erred by failing to
rule that the gender composition of the departments in question constituted a per
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq., as
amended by the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 42 U.S.C. 1981A.
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se violation of Title VII, and by failing to hold or to instruct the jury that the
gender distribution in the workforce amounted to a facially neutral policy having
a prohibited disparate impact. The plaintiff seeks either outright reversal and
entry of judgment in her favor, or a new trial. For the reasons stated below, we
affirm.
BACKGROUND
TSC manufactures electronic testing equipment in a small facility
employing approximately fifty people. The process involves sheet metal work
fabricating cabinets of various sizes, and the assembly of components in the
cabinets. This work has been departmentalized into sheet metal and assembly. In
addition to the shop foreman, the sheet metal department usually includes two
machinists, two or three sheet metal workers, and until recently, a painter. The
assemblers are not further designated by job category.
The work force in both departments is small: on average, six people or less
each, including a supervisor in assembly and a plant foreman in sheet metal.
Turnover is rare in the sheet metal department. In the fifteen-year period from
1983 to 1998, only two or three openings occurred, each filled by a male
applicant. A larger turnover occurred among the assemblers, although no exact
numbers for this same period are furnished by the parties. All those vacancies
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were filled by women. Except for two instances a number of years ago, the work
force in the sheet metal department has been entirely male, and entirely female in
the assembly department. Overall, the wages paid in the sheet metal department
are higher than those paid to the assemblers, but some assemblers make more than
some of the employees in the sheet metal department. The salary of the plant
foreman has always been higher than the salary paid to the supervisor of the
assemblers.
The plaintiff, Connie Marion, started with the company in 1967 following
her graduation from high school. Throughout her career she has worked in the
assembly department. In 1985, following the purchase of the company by R.E.
Phelon Co., Inc., the plaintiff was promoted to the position of assembly
supervisor. Beginning in 1990, she began participating in the hiring process for
assembler positions. In recent years, employees working as assemblers included
the plaintiffs sister, sister-in-law and a woman recommended by the plaintiffs
father. At the time of trial, only three employees other than the plaintiff were
working as assemblers.
Howard Reed started with TSC in 1972 as a sheet metal worker. In 1985,
he was promoted to plant foreman, supervising the sheet metal department. He
was paid more than Mrs. Marion, a fact she discovered and contested in 1995.
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The plaintiff demanded that TSC raise her pay to equal Mr. Reeds pay. That
demand was refused and this suit resulted.
Prior to trial, the district court, in response to cross-motions for summary
judgment, ruled first that the plaintiff had not alleged any failure to hire, promote
or transfer her to the sheet metal department, so the case would be treated as one
asserting disparate pay based on gender. Second, the court ruled that the plaintiff
had not identified any facially neutral employment policy or practice which
disparately impacts women, so the plaintiffs case would be treated as one
alleging disparate treatment. The questions reserved for trial were whether the
Defendant has intentionally engaged in a practice or policy of maintaining
gender-based job categories, and of intentionally discriminating between the male
and female job categories in its pay structure, and further, whether the pay
disparity between the Plaintiff and the male supervisor was motivated by gender
discrimination. Order of Feb. 3, 1998, at 11; Appellants App. at 45.
The case was extensively prepared and fully presented to the jury. The
plaintiff called five witnesses and the defendant six, including expert witnesses
for both sides. The plaintiff focused on her claims: (1) that the work force was
invidiously segregated by gender; (2) that her job and that of the other assemblers
was as complicated and valuable to the employer and in the workplace generally
as the job performed by Mr. Reed and others in the sheet metal department, thus
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the difference in pay was based on gender; and (3) that if her job was less
valuable, then the company had intentionally placed men in the higher paying
jobs.
Both parties presented evidence regarding the job description, functions,
skill, training, and experience of positions in both departments, including the
position of supervisor and that of plant foreman. They introduced evidence
regarding the companys record of filling job vacancies and paying employees,
and expert testimony regarding the value of the various jobs to the company and
generally in the economy. The parties also introduced directly conflicting
testimony regarding alleged statements and attitudes as to gender and jobs in the
two affected departments.
As indicated above, the jury, after assessing the evidence and necessarily
making credibility determinations relating to direct collisions in the testimony,
determined that Mrs. Marion had not proved that her pay was affected by her
gender.
Subsequently, the plaintiff filed a post-trial motion for judgment as a matter
of law or for a new trial. The district court denied the motion, surveying the
evidence and ruling, in relevant part, as follows:
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The plaintiff also sought reconsideration by the court of its earlier rulings
that the case did not present a disparate impact claim. The plaintiff argued that
the question of adverse impact is one committed by statute to the court, not the
jury, and that in deciding the issue the court must defer to factual issues as found
by the jury, while making its [sic] own independent findings on [the disparate
impact claim]. Pl.s Post Trial Br. at 2; Appellants App. at 1512.
The district court responded in its order as follows: Thus, it appears from
the face of the statute that the right to a jury trial under Title VII extends only to a
claim of intentional discrimination or disparate treatment.
Petroleum Corp., ___ F.3d ___, 1998 WL 244989 (5th Cir. 1998).
Accordingly
the Court will now reconsider the Plaintiffs disparate impact theory
. Order of
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DISCUSSION
The plaintiffs brief omits a discussion of the standards that guide our
review. However, as to the disparate impact issue, it is axiomatic that statutory
interpretation and application are matters of law that we review de novo, while
crediting facts favorable to the jurys verdict and deferring to facts found by the
See Ortega v. Safeway Stores, Inc.
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A.
A disparate impact claim differs from a disparate treatment claim in that it
does not require a showing of discriminatory intent.
1242. Instead, a plaintiff may establish a prima facie case of disparate impact
discrimination by showing that a specific identifiable employment practice or
policy caused a significant disparate impact on a protected group.
U.S.C. 2000e-2(k)(1)(A)(i);
Id. ; accord 42
, 431
U.S. 324, 335 n.15 (1977) (claims that stress disparate impact involve
employment practices that are facially neutral in their treatment of different
groups but that in fact fall more harshly on one group than another and cannot be
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practice must have existed. In these arguments the plaintiff does not focus on the
supervisory jobs themselves because there has been no real turnover. Rather, she
argues that the supervisor/foreman jobs are filled from within the respective
departments so that the gender composition of the departments bears on her
situation.
We reject the plaintiffs disparate impact arguments for three reasons, each
of which is sufficient. The first reason is dispositive; the second and third are
alternative reasons for affirmance.
First, and dispositively, the plaintiff lacks standing to complain of the
gender staffing in the sheet metal department, and the jury has ruled out wage
discrimination in her pay in the assembly department. As the district court found,
the plaintiff did not seek and was not denied any position in the sheet metal
department, in particular, the job of plant foreman. Nor did she plead or establish
that she would have sought any such position but for some policy against it.
Thus, assuming for purposes of argument that TSC unlawfully excluded females
from sheet metal jobs, that fact had no effect on the plaintiff.
The district courts ruling, quoted above, correctly states that Title VII only
provides a cause of action to a person who is aggrieved by an unlawful
(...continued)
gender-based policies manifestly do not apply to this case.
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Tex. 1995). That statutory requirement reflects the requirement of standing under
the case or controversy provision of Article III. To invoke a federal courts
jurisdiction a plaintiff must demonstrate three things: (1) injury in fact; (2) a
causal relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct; and (3) a
likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.
City of Albuquerque , 150 F.3d 1271, 1274 (10th Cir. 1998);
See Byers v.
Defenders of Wildlife , 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992). The plaintiff fails these
requirements.
Second, the fact, standing alone, that TSC has all men in sheet metal
positions and all women in assembly is not a per se violation of Title VII; nor is it
self-proving as to the existence of a policy or practice, lawful or otherwise. The
section of the statute to which the plaintiff refers, set out above, refers to
segregation or classification that tends to deprive protected individuals of
employment opportunity or otherwise adversely affect employment status. Thus,
it is not the fact of separate genders in departments that is prohibited, it is the
deprivation of opportunity or adverse effect on status that is prohibited.
Cf. Vant
Hul v. City of Dell Rapids , 462 F. Supp. 828, 833 (D.S.D. 1978) (stating that the
purpose of the Civil Rights Act is not to guarantee that a definite number of
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females are employed, but to achieve equality and eliminate discrimination based
on artificial . . . barriers to employment). That is a matter of proof, and that
burden was not carried here. Furthermore, the terms segregate or classify, as
used in the statute, are verbs denoting purposeful action by the employer.
See
McDonnell v. Cisneros , 84 F.3d 256, 258 (7th Cir. 1996) (under these provisions,
there is no actionable discrimination without something that can be described as
an adverse employment action). Pure nondiscriminatory happenstance, or results
from hiring practices that are justified by business necessity do not fall in this
category.
The district court also correctly pointed out numerous times in this case
that the plaintiff failed to identify an actual policy or practice of TSC relating to
gender in hiring. Statistics alone are insufficient. They must be tied to an
identifiable practice, such as a skewed interview procedure.
Id.
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Id. at 1314,
B.
The plaintiff also claims that the district court erred by refusing to give an
inexorable zero instruction. Under certain circumstances an inference of
discrimination may sometimes be drawn from statistical evidence that no member
of a protected group has ever occupied a particular job or position.
Loyd v. Phillips Bros., Inc.
See , e.g. ,
n.23.
The proposed instruction to which the plaintiff refers us states, in part, if
you [the jury] find that defendant has maintained a segregated work force . . . then
you must find for plaintiff on her Title VII claim. Appellants App. at 86. The
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district court stated that an instruction to that effect would be improper, but that
plaintiffs counsel was free to argue the statistics and inferences from those
claimed by the plaintiff. There is no error in that ruling.
Throughout the trial the plaintiffs evidence and argument focused on the
work force distribution, including hiring, and plaintiffs counsel vigorously
pressed the contention on the jury. In addition, the court correctly instructed the
jury on the statutory provisions, on the fact that they could draw inferences from
the evidence, and on the importance of considering both direct and circumstantial
evidence.
In contrast, the plaintiffs view of 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2(a) misstates the
law, as we have explained above. The district court correctly perceived the
fallacy when it refused the proffered instruction.
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CONCLUSION
As our extensive quotes from the district courts opinions will indicate, the
district courts treatment of the issues in this case was careful and cogent. We
have considered all of the plaintiffs arguments and conclude that the district
court did not err.
AFFIRMED.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Stephen H. Anderson
Circuit Judge
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