Cases & Developments

Memorandum Opinion and Order denying Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former Executive Vice President for Advancement with the Tarrant County College District (TCCD), brought a retaliation claim against TCCD after its then-Chancellor placed her on an executive development plan and declined to renew her contract following her decision to counsel a subordinate employee related to a workplace conflict. Plaintiff offered, but attempted to withdraw her resignation, and was subsequently placed on administrative leave after she filed an internal grievance against the Chancellor. Prior to her last day, she also filed discrimination and retaliation charges with the Texas Workforce Commission and the EEOC. In denying TCCD’s motion for summary judgment, the court found, first, a genuine issue of fact as to whether plaintiff could reasonably expect to be able to rescind her resignation, noting that multiple officials had assured her she had done nothing wrong and that an investigation of her grievance was ongoing. It further held that a delay of roughly a month in its notification to plaintiff that TCCD would not permit her to rescind her resignation, together with the support of other TCCD officials, was sufficient to raise an issue of fact as to whether TCCD’s reason for not reappointing plaintiff was pretextual.  

Opinion reversing summary judgment in favor of the University and remanding. In 2018, after Plaintiff, a tenured professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, emailed concerns about discrimination against Hispanic members of the department, the department chair appointed him to head a new “Equity Committee.” Plaintiff produced and circulated a report alleging inequality in salaries. Thereafter, along with other adverse events for which he did not exhaust his administrative remedies, the chair removed plaintiff from the Equity Committee and accused him of making anti-Semitic remarks and remarks disparaging female co-workers. The district court granted summary judgment to the University, finding that only plaintiff’s emails were protected activity and that since almost a year passed between them and the adverse actions he experienced, he was unable to establish causation. In reversing and remanding, the Fifth Circuit held that (1) creating the report was also a protect activity because it opposed alleged pay inequity and (2) when considered alongside the chair’s statements that she was going to disband the Equity Committee and her creation of subcommittees to dilute plaintiff’s responsibilities, the six months between the report and the alleged adverse actions was not so great as to preclude an inference of causation.   

Order granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a candidate for a tenured faculty position at the University of Houston-Downtown, brought retaliation claims against the University alleging that it denied her application in retaliation for her opposition to alleged discrimination at her previous university where she was denied tenure and promotion. In granting summary judgment to the University, the court found that plaintiff had established a prima facie case of retaliation because the reasons for her tenure denial were discussed during her interviews and a member of the search committee had called her former department chair. Nevertheless, it held that (1) concern over a previous tenure denial was a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason not to hire a candidate, even for a position in which prior tenure was not listed as a requirement, and (2) plaintiff had offered no evidence to suggest that this concern was pretextual.