54 | Developments in Equal Pay Litigation ©2023 Seyfarth Shaw LLP reason for her termination—the way she managed her classes—was a pretext. The record showed that the decision-maker responsible for the investigation had been unaware of her complaints.445 The Fourth Circuit came to a similar conclusion in Coleman v. Schneider Electric USA.446 In that case, the Fourth Circuit held that “the relevant date is when the decisionmakers learned of [plaintiff’s] protected activity,” and noted that the adverse action happened more than one year after they learned about Plaintiff’s EEOC charge, the alleged cause for retaliation.447 On the other hand, when an adverse action follows closely after a plaintiff’s protected activity, this can be powerful evidence to establish a causal link between the two events. For example, in Donathan v. Oakley Grain, Inc.,448 a female employee alleged that her employer terminated her in retaliation for complaining that she had not received bonuses in line with other employees in similar positions, and that new employees were starting at higher rates of pay. Plaintiff was laid off approximately eight days later.449 The Eighth Circuit held that: “[plaintiff] was terminated from her office position even though [employer] had not included the office position in its seasonal layoffs any of the prior three years that [plaintiff] had worked for the company (or during the years when [plaintiff’s] predecessor held the post). Plaintiff’s termination occurred despite the absence of negative reviews, and [employer] hired [replacement] to fill the position the very next working day.”450 Retaliation claims under Title VII and the EPA are often analyzed under the same burden-shifting framework. The outcome under either statute often comes down to the credibility of the employer’s reasons for the alleged adverse action. For example, in Carlson v. Qualtek Wireless LLC,451 the court rejected a retaliation claim because it was unwilling to second guess the business judgment of the employer. In that case, a Finance Manager alleged a claim for retaliation under Title VII and the EPA, arguing that she was refused a promotion and then fired due to her complaints about gender-based discrimination. The court analyzed the claims under Title VII and the EPA the same way, using the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.452 Regarding the failure to promote allegations, the court held that plaintiff failed to demonstrate a causal connection between her complaint about her promotion and the denial of her promotion. Although those events happened within about a month of each other, under Eighth Circuit precedent, “temporal proximity 445 Id. See also Oulia v. Florida Dep’t of Transp., No. 18-cv-25110-Scola, 2020 WL 2084998, at *5 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 30, 2020) (granting summary judgment in favor of an employer because, although the plaintiff had complained about unequal opportunity to work overtime to her manager, she had not produced evidence that her manager had communicated that complaint to her supervisor, who was the decision-maker regarding her termination; this was “fatal to her attempted prima facie retaliation claim”); Sharkey v. Fortress Sys., Int’l, No. 3:18-cv-19-FDW-DCK, 2019 WL 3806050, at *5 (W.D.N.C. Aug. 13, 2019) (granting summary judgment against a female employee who alleged she was terminated after she refused to agree to a new compensation plan that would have reduced her base salary and increased her commission; plaintiff claimed she was terminated because she would not agree to the reduced compensation, but the court held that she was selected for the reduced compensation package before she complained about it, even though her termination occurred after); Desai v. Univ. of Mass., Mem. Med. Ctr., Inc., 415 F. Supp. 3d 236, 240 (D. Mass. 2019) (denying motion to dismiss because plaintiff—a doctor employed by a medical school—had pled at least three adverse actions and: “[b]ecause any discriminatory motivation underlying these actions may be attributable to Defendant Medical School, the Court finds that Plaintiff has shown a plausible entitlement to relief on her discrimination claims”); Yearns v. Koss Constr. Co., No. 17-cv-4201-C-WJE, 2019 WL 191656, at *5 (W.D. Mo. Jan. 14, 2019) (holding that the length of time between the alleged protected activity and adverse action showed that the two were not causally connected because her complaint came two months before her layoff: “Even assuming the June 2015 Complaint occurred on the last day of June, over eight weeks passed until her August layoff. This lengthy time period weakens any potential causal link”). 446 Coleman v. Schneider Elec. USA, 755 F. App’x 247 (4th Cir. 2019). 447 Id. at 250. Moreover, plaintiff had been unable to point to any other evidence of retaliatory animus. The court noted that she had been given an above-average performance review after her EEOC charge, which “undercut[] any inference that [plaintiff’s supervisor] acted with retaliatory animus when he issued the disputed performance evaluation.” Id. 448 Donathan v. Oakley Grain, Inc., 861 F.3d 735 (8th Cir. 2017). 449 Id. at 737. As further evidence of the time-causation connection, the Eighth Circuit noted that ten minutes after Plaintiff put her complaints in an email to the president of the company, the president forwarded her email to plaintiff’s manager, and they discussed her complaint by phone. Id. 450 Id. at 740-41. 451 Carlson v. Qualtek Wireless LLC, No. 22-cv-125, 2022 WL 3229399 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 10, 2022). 452 Id. at *9.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTkwMTQ4