Dunlap v. Kansas, Department of Health & Environment , 127 F. App'x 433 ( 2005 )


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  •                                                                               F I L E D
    United States Court of Appeals
    Tenth Circuit
    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
    APR 1 2005
    TENTH CIRCUIT
    PATRICK FISHER
    Clerk
    ELKE DUNLAP,
    Plaintiff-Appellant,
    No. 02-3331
    v.
    (D.C. No. 00-CV-4185-RDR)
    (D. Kan.)
    STATE OF KANSAS, DEPARTMENT
    OF HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT,
    Defendant-Appellee.
    ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
    Before HARTZ, HOLLOWAY and McKAY, Circuit Judges.
    Plaintiff-appellant Elke Dunlap sued her employer, the State of Kansas Department
    of Health and Environment, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§
    2000e-2000e(16), alleging discrimination based on gender and national origin and unlawful
    retaliation. The district judge granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, and
    Dunlap now appeals.
    *
    This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of
    law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. This 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.
    I
    The facts, as viewed through the prism of the defendant’s summary judgment motion,
    are set out in detail in the district court’s thorough opinion, 
    211 F. Supp. 2d 1334
     (D. Kan.
    2002), and we will present here only a summary. Plaintiff was born in 1944 in Germany and
    lived there until she was 19 years old. She then married an American and moved to this
    country in 1963. She still speaks with an accent. She is a naturalized citizen of the United
    States. She has been employed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment since
    1992. In October 1997, she began working at a location called Forbes Field in the Office of
    Information Systems.
    In the spring of 1998, she was placed under the supervision of Phil Breedlove, and
    most of her allegations come from that time. Plaintiff testified that she often overheard
    Breedlove make fun of female employees who spoke with accents. Breedlove would gather
    with other men after teaching a computer class and use a Spanish accent to mock questions
    that women had asked during the class. This would often occur close to plaintiff’s work
    station where she could hear the conversation.
    Plaintiff said that after trying to ignore this for awhile, she asked Breedlove to stop
    it. When that failed to stop the behavior, she approached Breedlove’s supervisor, Pam
    Tierce. However, nothing was done and the practice continued until plaintiff’s desk was
    moved away from where this was going on.
    It is not clear how frequently this had occurred. Plaintiff testified that it would occur
    -2-
    at least weekly and sometimes three times in a single day, depending on the number of
    classes Breedlove had and the number of foreign born speakers in the classes. Breedlove
    never attempted to mimic a German accent, nor did he make any remarks about persons of
    German ancestry. Plaintiff did testify in deposition, however, that Breedlove would
    sometimes pretend not to understand her accent in order to force her to repeat words that he
    knew were difficult for her to pronounce.
    In February 1999 plaintiff became involved in a “cowboy hat incident.” A former
    high level employee who habitually wore a cowboy hat had retired. One day soon afterward,
    Tierce and Breedlove saw a cowboy hat at plaintiff’s work station with a note on it saying
    “RIP.” They interpreted this as a celebratory note. The suggested inference was that the
    retired supervisor was not popular and other supervisors knew it.
    Plaintiff was not at work that day (although the district court indicated that the hat
    with the note had been at her station for some days by this time) and denied knowing
    anything about the hat and note. Tierce immediately called and reported the “incident” to a
    personnel officer. Plaintiff received a letter, which she now contends was a reprimand but
    which defendant characterized as a letter of concern, from the Secretary of the Department.
    The letter said that the display was “disrespectful” and had caused “undue disruption to the
    workplace.” The letter was not placed in plaintiff’s personnel file.
    Plaintiff contended that Breedlove knew that the hat did not belong to her and knew
    that she was not at work that day. Therefore, she alleged, he had lied to implicate her in the
    -3-
    incident. She also contended that she was disproportionately punished over it. The owner
    of the cowboy hat, a male, and two American -born female receptionists, who in April 1999
    had cowboy hats with RIP on them, were not reprimanded at all, Dunlap maintains.
    On June 22, 1999, plaintiff Dunlap was delayed by traffic and was late returning from
    lunch. She put a leave slip in Breedlove’s box as a result. She said that he became infuriated
    about it, for unexplained reasons. However, he approved the leave, which was at his
    discretion.
    Plaintiff also alleged two instances of disparate treatment related to leave or
    “rearranged time.” First, plaintiff testified that her request for leave to care for her seriously
    ill husband was scrutinized more closely than the request of a male employee whose pet
    ferret became mortally ill. Plaintiff testified that an American-born male was given two days
    off either to care for his sick pet ferret or to grieve over the animal’s passing, without any
    question. In contrast, when plaintiff’s husband was seriously ill and she requested leave to
    care for him, she was questioned about the need for it.
    The second incident occurred after Tierce became plaintiff’s direct supervisor instead
    of Breedlove, and this incident involves “rearranged time.” Although we have not been
    given a definition of this term, from the context it clearly seems to mean a flexibility in an
    employee’s hours provided for the employee’s convenience. Thus, for example, an employee
    who was an hour late for work because of a dental appointment could, we infer, make up the
    time by staying one hour later than usual, avoiding the necessity of using accumulated leave
    -4-
    for such a minor contingency. One day when Dunlap was late to work because of traffic, she
    requested “rearranged time” but this was refused by Tierce. In contrast, males “got away
    with anything they wanted to,” according to plaintiff’s testimony.
    Plaintiff filed her first administrative complaint with the Kansas Human Rights
    Commission on March 22, 1999. She complained about the mocking of females with accents
    and that she had been harassed and discriminated against based on her gender and ancestry
    with regard to the cowboy hat incident. Plaintiff contended in the district court that
    Breedlove began retaliatory conduct after she filed the charge. She cited the leave slip
    incident and also said that Breedlove began taking duties away from her. She alleged that
    he drafted a job description for her that appeared designed to demote her from Office
    Assistant IV to Office Assistant II. Breedlove made about five requests to have her removed
    from his supervision.
    Plaintiff filed an amended administrative charge on August 19, 1999, adding two
    instances of allegedly discriminatory treatment based on gender and ancestry. The first of
    these two alleged discriminatory acts is not discussed on appeal. The second was the June
    22nd incident described supra.
    Plaintiff allegedly suffered severe mental distress with accompanying physical
    symptoms. These include anxiety attacks, depressions, headaches, crying spells, vomiting,
    shaking and other symptoms. She could not pinpoint the onset of her ailments but said that
    it got “out of hand” after she received the letter of reprimand about the cowboy hat.
    -5-
    II
    Ms. Dunlap first argues that the district court erred in determining that defendant was
    entitled to judgment as a matter of law on her claim of a hostile work environment. In
    evaluating a discrimination claim based on an allegedly hostile work environment, a court
    must inquire whether “the workplace is permeated with ‘discriminatory intimidation, ridicule,
    and insult, . . . that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s
    employment and create an abusive working environment . . .’” Harris v. Forklift Systems,
    Inc., 
    510 U.S. 17
    , 21 (1993) (internal brackets and quotation marks omitted). Further, we
    also examine whether the harassment was based on a protected characteristic. Thus we
    inquire whether the alleged harassment was based on Ms. Dunlap’s gender or national origin.
    See Bolden v. PRC Inc., 
    43 F.3d 545
    , 551 (10th Cir. 1994) (“General harassment if not racial
    or sexual is not actionable.”).
    The district judge concluded that the incidents where Breedlove would pretend not to
    understand Dunlap’s accent were the only ones that were based on her national origin or her
    gender. We agree with the district court that these incidents were insufficient to show an
    atmosphere of severe or pervasive bias.
    Incidents which the judge found not probative of forbidden bias included the handling
    of the cowboy hat incident, the leave slip incident, and Breedlove’s reduction of plaintiff’s
    duties. These, the judge found, and we agree, do not appear related to Ms. Dunlap’s gender
    or national origin. (Although we return to some of these incidents infra in discussing
    -6-
    plaintiff’s claim of disparate treatment.) The district judge also found that the repeated
    instances of Breedlove mocking other females with Spanish accents were not gender based.
    This observation is dubious.
    Nevertheless, we agree with the district court that plaintiff’s evidence fell short of
    showing that the offensive conduct was severe or pervasive enough to constitute a hostile
    environment. We note that in spite of the observation that most of the incidents cited by
    plaintiff to support her claim were not targeted at her because of her ancestry or gender, the
    district judge did not ignore the evidence but considered it carefully. In particular, the judge
    took another look at the evidence of Breedlove’s mocking of his female students who had
    Spanish accents. The judge did not reject this evidence out of hand but observed that “in an
    appropriate case mimicking of accents could serve as indirect evidence of discrimination .
    . . .” 
    211 F. Supp. 2d at 1341
    . But in this case, the judge went on, because the accents being
    mocked were not similar to plaintiff’s, and because that conduct was not aimed at her (but
    merely overheard by her), “the causal link is simply too weak to give rise to an inference that
    plaintiff’s German ancestry or gender was somehow being targeted.” 
    Id.
     We agree with this
    analysis.
    In sum, plaintiff’s evidence was insufficient to show that she was subjected to a work
    environment of severe or pervasive hostility, and some of the meager evidence she proffered
    was of questionable relevance because it did not show a connection to her gender or national
    origin.
    -7-
    III
    On plaintiff’s disparate treatment claim, the district judge acknowledged that our
    circuit has a liberal standard as to what constitutes an adverse employment action, but
    concluded that plaintiff failed to meet even this low threshold.1 The letter of concern or of
    reprimand was not enough, the judge found. On that point, the judge cited Krause v. City of
    La Crosse, 
    246 F.3d 995
    , 1000 (7th Cir. 2001), which held that a reprimand alone is not
    enough but must be accompanied by a demotion or some other job action. The judge also
    noted that a similar conclusion had been reached in Robleado v. Deffenbaugh Indus., Inc.,
    
    136 F. Supp. 2d 1179
     (D. Kan. 2001), aff’d, 
    33 Fed. Appx. 480
     (10th Cir. 2002). He found
    these authorities persuasive and held that because there were no other consequences and the
    letter was not put in plaintiff’s personnel file, the letter did not constitute adverse
    employment action.
    The judge found that the allegations of disparate treatment based on denial of
    plaintiff’s requests for leave time and rearranged time failed for the same reason. Being
    questioned about leave requests and having one request for rearranged time denied are too
    1
    To establish a prima facie case of disparate treatment in violation of Title VII in
    the circumstances of this case, Ms. Dunlap was required to show that she is a member of
    a protected class by virtue of being female and of German national origin; that she was
    subjected to an adverse employment action; and that employees who were not members of
    the protected class or classes were treated more favorably. See, e.g., Cole v. Ruidoso
    Mun. Schools, 
    43 F.3d 1373
    , 1380 (10th Cir. 1994). The elements of the prima facie case
    are flexible, depending on the circumstances of the case. See EEOC v. Horizon/CMS
    Healthcare Corp., 
    220 F.3d 1184
    , 1192-95 & nn.6-7 (10th Cir. 2000).
    -8-
    trivial, he found, noting that other courts have held that transfer and scheduling decisions of
    more significance than these were insufficient. He cited among other cases Amro v. Boeing
    Co., 
    232 F.3d 790
    , 797 (10th Cir. 2000).
    As the district judge noted, we liberally define the phrase “adverse employment
    action.” See, e.g., Hillig v. Rumsfeld, 
    381 F.3d 1028
    , 1031 (10th Cir. 2004). As we have
    applied the term, adverse employment actions “are not simply limited to monetary losses in
    the form of wages or benefits. Instead, we take a case-by-case approach, examining the
    unique factors relevant to the situation at hand.” 
    Id.
     (quoting Sanchez v. Denver Public
    Schools,, 
    164 F.3d 527
    , 532 (10th Cir. 1998)). However, “a mere inconvenience or an
    alteration of job responsibilities,” does not satisfy even our liberal standard. Sanchez, 164
    F.3d at 532.
    We think it quite clear that being questioned about a request for leave is, at least in the
    circumstances of this case, “a mere inconvenience” that does not constitute an adverse
    employment action. The same is true for the plaintiff having had to use a trivial amount of
    leave time on the one occasion that she was denied the convenience of “rearranged time.”
    The letter of concern is not quite so easily dismissed as a trivial inconvenience. But
    with our focus on the specifics of this case, and particularly in view of two circumstances –
    that the letter was not made a part of plaintiff’s personnel file and that no allegation (much
    less showing) is made of adverse consequences following from the incident – we agree with
    the district judge that this did not constitute an adverse employment action.
    -9-
    IV
    The final issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in concluding that
    plaintiff’s retaliation claim was barred by her failure to exhaust administrative remedies.2
    We affirm the district court’s ruling although we reach our conclusion on different reasoning,
    basing our holding on National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 
    536 U.S. 101
     (2002).
    As we have previously noted, that case “has effected fundamental changes to the doctrine
    allowing administratively unexhausted claims in Title VII actions.” Martinez v. Potter, 
    347 F.3d 1208
    , 1210 (10th Cir. 2003). Plaintiff’s argument in this case is based on our pre-
    Morgan case law which recognized a “narrow exception” to the exhaustion requirement –
    permitting a claim for incidents not listed in the original administrative charge to be included
    in the lawsuit if the incidents are “like or reasonably related to the allegations” of the
    administrative charge. See Seymore v. Shawver & Sons, Inc., 
    111 F.3d 794
    , 799 (10th Cir.
    1997). We had also held that “an act committed by an employer in retaliation for filing of
    an EEOC complaint is reasonably related to that complaint, obviating the need for a second
    EEOC complaint.” Ingels v. Thiokol Corp., 
    42 F.3d 616
    , 625 (10th Cir. 1994).
    2
    As noted by the district court, the alleged retaliatory conduct consisted of the
    incident mentioned supra in which Breedlove became angered about plaintiff’s
    submission of a leave slip; Breedlove’s reduction of plaintiff’s responsibilities;
    Breedlove’s attempt to “silently demote” plaintiff by preparation of a job description
    reflecting reduced duties; and Breedlove’s requests to have plaintiff placed under another
    supervisor. 
    211 F. Supp. 2d at 1339
    . We express no opinion on the merits of these
    contentions.
    -10-
    As we noted in Martinez: “Morgan abrogates the continuing violation doctrine as
    previously applied to claims of discriminatory or retaliatory actions by employers, and
    replaces it with the teaching that each discrete incident of such treatment constitutes its own
    ‘unlawful employment practice’ for which administrative remedies must be exhausted.” 
    347 F.3d at 1210
    .3
    Plaintiff’s argument is simply untenable in the wake of Morgan. The incidents which
    she alleges to have been retaliatory conduct by the employer are discrete incidents of
    allegedly unlawful employment practices and subject to the requirement of administrative
    exhaustion, unrelieved by our prior doctrine which excused the exhaustion requirement for
    acts reasonably related to the acts included in the administrative charge. The judgment is
    AFFIRMED.
    ENTERED FOR THE COURT
    William J. Holloway, Jr.
    Circuit Judge
    3
    We note that the district judge did not have the benefit of Martinez when he
    issued his opinion.
    -11-