Cases & Developments

Memorandum Opinion reversing and dismissing. Plaintiff, an unsuccessful candidate for a tenure-track position in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston who described herself as Canadian and of “Northern European extraction,” brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after it hired a white, Italian male instead. During her on-campus interview, a member of the search committee questioned her ability “as a white person” to understand the topic of her lecture presentation, which prompted another member of the search committee to initiate a complaint with the University’s Office of Equal Opportunity. In dismissing plaintiff’s national-origin discrimination claim, the Court of Appeals of Texas held that she was unable to raise a question as to whether the scores assigned to the successful candidate were pretextual. In dismissing her retaliation claim, it found she was unable to show denial of proper consideration of her application because (1) the committee member who had questioned her was reprimanded and (2) the University had also calculated her interview scores without those of the questioning committee member.   

Order accepting the Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendation of the U.S. Magistrate Judge and granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former part-time instructor with the Tarrant County College District (TCCD), proceeding pro se, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against TCCD alleging that after she complained to HR that an African American instructor had allegedly bullied special needs students, she began receiving fewer hours than African American instructors. Plaintiff’s discrimination claim failed because her asserted comparator was not similarly situated and because she otherwise failed to refute TCCD’s evidence that her hours varied greatly and that she sometimes worked more hours than non-white instructors. Her retaliation claim similarly failed because her asserted reduction of hours was not in close temporal proximity to when she filed her complaint.   

Order granting summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, a former Research Nurse Coordinator in the Clinical Research Unit of the Washington University School of Medicine’s Division of Infectious diseases, who is an African American female, brought Title VII race discrimination and retaliation against the University after it eliminated her position. Plaintiff was hired for a grant-funded position, and her offer letter stated “your employment will be contingent upon continued receipt of these grant funds.” Plaintiff received poor ratings in her first two annual evaluations after she got into a verbal altercation with a colleague during which she raised her voice and a hand, five patients complained about her venipuncture skills and requested she not draw their blood in the future, and errors were found in untimely submitted patient charts. Between the unsatisfactory evaluations, plaintiff complained of race-based discrimination as she and two African American female colleagues were forced to share an office referred to as the “closet.” An investigation found no evidence of discrimination, and she was offered a new office. Plaintiff also challenged the performance evaluation score in the second evaluation, it was adjusted slightly upward. But after she confronted a co-worker and left the latter in tears, plaintiff was placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP), which she asserted was either retaliatory or discriminatory, claims an investigation determined were unfounded. Ultimately, she was furloughed along with 1,300 employees, and her position was eliminated due to cost cutting during the coronavirus pandemic. The court reasoned that plaintiff’s failure to meet the legitimate expectations of the University coupled with the fiscal impacts of the pandemic were legitimate non-discriminatory reasons to eliminate her position. The court found significant that the University gave plaintiff the opportunity to course correct, and thus dismissed her claim for race-based discrimination. Likewise, the court found a one-year gap between plaintiff’s first complaint and the elimination of her position did not establish sufficient causal nexus and dismissed her retaliation claim.