Reeder v. Wasatch County School District , 359 F. App'x 920 ( 2009 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS December 23, 2009
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
KAREN REEDER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 08-4048
(D.C. No. 2:03-CV-00226-DS)
THE WASATCH COUNTY SCHOOL (D. Utah)
DISTRICT,
Defendant-Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
Before HARTZ, Circuit Judge, BRORBY, Senior Circuit Judge, and TYMKOVICH,
Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff Karen Reeder appeals from the district court’s grant of summary
judgment to defendant Wasatch County School District (“WCSD”) on her claim that
WCSD terminated her because of her age, in violation of the Age Discrimination in
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of this
appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered
submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent,
except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may
be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th
Cir. R. 32.1.
Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634. We exercise jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.
I.
We review the grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same legal
standard as the district court must apply under Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). See Timmerman v.
U.S. Bank, N.A., 483 F.3d 1106, 1112 (10th Cir. 2007). “Summary judgment is
appropriate only ‘if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions
on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any
material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’” Id.
at 1112-13 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)).
In reviewing the grant of summary judgment, we view the evidence in the light
most favorable to Mrs. Reeder and we give her the benefit of any reasonable inferences to
be drawn from the facts. See Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 670 (10th Cir.
1998). We conduct our review, however, “from the perspective of the district court at the
time it made its ruling, ordinarily limiting our review to the materials adequately brought
to the attention of the district court by the parties.” Id. at 671. “The district court has
discretion to go beyond the referenced portions of these materials, but is not required to
do so.” Id. at 672. Therefore, “where the [nonmovant’s] burden to present . . . specific
facts by reference to exhibits and the existing record was not adequately met below, we
will not reverse a district court for failing to uncover them itself.” Id.-2-
On appeal Mrs. Reeder seeks to present new evidence and raise new arguments
that were not before the district court. We will not consider evidence presented for the
first time on appeal. See West Coast Life Ins. Co. v. Hoar, 558 F.3d 1151, 1156-57
(10th Cir. 2009). Likewise, we generally will not consider an argument that was not
raised before the district court, and there are no unusual circumstances here that would
lead us to vary from our general rule. See United States v. Jarvis, 499 F.3d 1196, 1201
(10th Cir. 2007). Accordingly, we will consider only those arguments that were also
presented to the district court, and we will rely exclusively on the appellate record
prepared by the district court in accordance with Tenth Circuit Rule 10.2(C) and filed
with this court on January 6, 2009.
II.
Mrs. Reeder was hired by WCSD as a teacher’s aide in November 1993, when she
was 46 years old. She worked as a teacher’s aide until December 1999, first at Central
Elementary and then at Heber Valley Elementary (HVE). In December 1999 Mrs. Reeder
was hired as a classroom teacher to finish out the school year for a first-grade teacher who
resigned mid-year. Mrs. Reeder continued teaching first grade for the 2000-2001 and
2001-2002 school years. On March 15, 2002, she was given a preliminary notice that her
contract would not be renewed for the following school year. She was then 54 years old.
During the two-and-one-half years that she was a classroom teacher, Mrs. Reeder
was considered a provisional employee. According to WCSD policies, any full-time
employee who has not yet achieved career status is a provisional employee. To achieve
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career status (i.e., tenure), an employee must successfully complete three consecutive
academic school years with WCSD. If the employee starts after the beginning of an
academic school year, she must successfully complete that year and three more full
academic years to qualify as a career employee. A provisional employee is hired on an
individual, one-year contract and has no expectation of continued employment beyond
each contract’s one-year term. Further, a provisional employee is considered an at-will
employee and can be discharged at the discretion of the Board of Education, although she
cannot be discharged during the term of her contract except for cause. If WCSD decides
not to renew the contract of a provisional employee, it must give the employee notice at
least two months before the end of the contract term that the employee will not be offered
a contract for a following term of employment.
Brian Bentley, the principal at HVE, testified that the principal generally makes
the initial decision whether a provisional teacher’s contract should not be renewed and
then makes a recommendation to the superintendent. In Mrs. Reeder’s case, he believed
that he had recommended to the superintendent, Terry Shoemaker, sometime in early
March 2002 that Mrs. Reeder’s contract not be renewed. Mr. Bentley testified that under
WCSD’s policy, Mrs. Reeder had to be notified that her contract would not be renewed
by approximately April 1, which was two months before the end of her contract for that
school year.
The written preliminary notice that Mrs. Reeder received did not state a reason for
nonrenewal. She testified, however, that when Mr. Bentley met with her to give her the
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notice, he said that her contract was not being renewed because of incompetence relating
to classroom discipline. WCSD also declined to renew the contracts of three other
provisional teachers for the following school year. One of the teachers taught at HVE,
but the other two did not. All three were over the age of 40. Although the record showed
that Mrs. Reeder was replaced by someone who was younger than her, there was no
evidence presented about who replaced the other three provisional teachers.
Mrs. Reeder testified that she began to suspect that age played a part in her
nonrenewal when she learned that for the following school year HVE had hired student
interns who had almost no teaching experience and that one of them was going to teach
first grade. Mrs. Reeder was replaced by an intern named Sarah Jensen, who was
younger than her. At the time she was hired, Ms. Jensen did not have a college degree,
any teaching experience, or a teaching certificate, though she did have an alternate
teaching license that allowed her to be a student intern.
Interns were not new to HVE. As Mr. Shoemaker explained, the internship
program was begun in the mid-80’s by Brigham Young University and five school
districts, including WCSD. The program sought to improve teacher education at BYU
and teacher performance in the public schools by putting BYU students in the public
schools as either student teachers or interns as part of their teacher training. The student
interns were used almost exclusively at elementary schools, which would hire two, or
sometimes three, interns each year. As an intern, Ms. Jensen was paid half the salary of a
regular teacher but received full benefits.
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Mr. Shoemaker testified that WCSD had already made the decision to hire interns
for HVE before Mrs. Reeder was given her preliminary notice of renewal on March 15.
He said that WCSD would have known in February whether HVE would have sufficient
openings for interns the following school year. His recollection was that HVE had
several openings. Mr. Bentley testified that he had recommended to Mr. Shoemaker that
WCSD not renew Mrs. Reeder’s contract before the hiring committee conducted its first
round of intern interviews on March 12.
III.
Mrs. Reeder contended that her replacement by a younger intern was the result of
age discrimination, not any poor performance on her part. The ADEA prohibits an
employer from “discharg[ing] . . . or otherwise discriminat[ing] against any individual
with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because
of such individual’s age.” 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1). The Supreme Court has held that “the
ADEA’s requirement that an employer took adverse action ‘because of’ age [means] that
age was the ‘reason’ that the employer decided to act.” Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., Inc.,
129 S. Ct. 2343, 2350 (2009). Thus, an ADEA plaintiff has the burden to “prove by a
preponderance of the evidence (which may be direct or circumstantial), that age was the
‘but-for’ cause of the challenged employer decision.” Id. at 2351.
This court uses the familiar burden-shifting analysis of McDonnell Douglas Corp.
v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802, 804 (1973), in assessing age-discrimination claims on
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summary judgment when the plaintiff’s case, like Mrs. Reeder’s, depends on
circumstantial evidence of discrimination. See, e.g., Sanders v. Sw. Bell Tel., L.P.,
544 F.3d 1101, 1105 (10th Cir. 2008), cert. denied., 130 S. Ct. 69 (2009).
Under the McDonnell Douglas analysis, a plaintiff bears the initial burden
of setting forth a prima facie case of discrimination. After the plaintiff
makes a prima facie case, the burden shifts to the employer to give a
legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its employment decision. If the
employer comes forward with a nondiscriminatory reason for its actions,
the burden then reverts to the plaintiff to show that there is a genuine
dispute of material fact as to whether the employer’s proffered reason for
the challenged action is pretextual–i.e., unworthy of belief.
Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Ordinarily, a showing of pretext will
permit the factfinder “to infer the ultimate fact of discrimination from the falsity of the
employer’s explanation.” Swackhammer v. Sprint/United Mgmt. Co., 493 F.3d 1160,
1167 (10th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The district court concluded that Mrs. Reeder set forth a prima facie case, and
WCSD does not challenge that conclusion on appeal. The court further concluded that
WCSD articulated a legitimate reason for Mrs. Reeder’s nonrenewal, namely
performance problems with classroom discipline. To survive summary judgment,
Mrs. Reeder had to establish that the evidence demonstrated a genuine issue of material
fact as to whether WCSD’s reason for not renewing her contract was pretextual.
Mrs. Reeder pointed to a variety of circumstances that she contended established
that WCSD’s articulated reason for terminating her was unworthy of belief. Most
importantly, she contended that the real reason WCSD did not renew her contract was
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because it wanted to save money. She argued variously that there was “an institutional,
systemic and intentional system to rid the District of teachers who were due to become
tenured and because of their age would not be as profitable to the District over the
teaching career of the teacher,” R. Vol. 1, Doc. 86 at 15; that “[t]he decision to terminate
only provisional teachers more than forty years old was motivated not only by the
District’s desire to save money on teachers[’] salaries in the next school year, but also its
desire to eliminate any obligation for retirement pay and associated benefits in the
future,” id. at 24-25; that “the District’s professed reason for terminating Mrs. Reeder for
poor classroom management is simply a pretext for firing her, in order to eliminate the
District’s obligation for future retirement pay and benefits”, id. at 27; and that “[t]he cost
of Mrs. Reeder’s salary, her future salary and benefits was the real reason for her
termination,” id. at 27 n.14.
Evidence of pretext, however, does not always suffice to preclude summary
judgment. We have held that if a plaintiff concedes that the real–even though
concealed–reason that an employer acted is one that is not prohibited under the relevant
civil-rights law, then the plaintiff cannot survive summary judgment. See Marx v.
Schnuck Mkts., Inc., 76 F.3d 324, 328 (10th Cir. 1996); Randle v. City of Aurora, 69 F.3d
441, 451 n.14 (10th Cir. 1995). As we explained in Randle, “the plaintiff’s concession of
a lawful motive would take the issue of motive from the jury and preclude inference of a
discriminatory motive that the jury could otherwise draw from the fact of pretext.”
69 F.3d at 451 n.14.
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The desire to save money is not a motive prohibited by the ADEA. Accordingly,
absent a link between WCSD’s alleged desire to save money and her age, Mrs. Reeder’s
concession of this hidden reason is fatal to her case. The evidence presented to the
district court did not establish such a link.
Mr. Shoemaker testified that the BYU interns were paid half the salary of a regular
teacher, so presumably WCSD would save salary money if it replaced a teacher with an
intern. But nothing in the evidence suggested that this savings would differ in any respect
depending on the age of either the intern or the teacher being replaced. Any salary
savings, therefore, would be age neutral.
Mrs. Reeder also contended that WCSD terminated her (and the other provisional
teachers) to avoid having to pay her retirement and unspecified related benefits.
Although terminating an employee to interfere with pension rights may be a violation of
ERISA, it is not, without more, a violation of the ADEA. See Hazen Paper Co. v.
Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 612-13 (1993). When, for instance, an employee’s right to vest in
retirement benefits is based on years of service, an employer’s termination of an
employee to prevent vesting is not age discrimination even if an older employee is more
likely than a younger employee to have the necessary years of service. See id. at 611-12.
“Because age and years of service are analytically distinct, an employer can take account
of one while ignoring the other, and thus it is incorrect to say that a decision based on
years of service is necessarily ‘age based.’” Id. at 611.
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The record does not contain any evidence from which one could infer a link
between Mrs. Reeder’s age and her eligibility for retirement benefits or the cost of those
benefits. In fact, the record contains no evidence about Mrs. Reeder’s eligibility for
retirement benefits or WCSD’s obligation to pay them. There was no evidence in district
court about when (or if) Mrs. Reeder would be eligible for benefits; what factors would
affect her eligibility for, or the amount of, benefits; or when WCSD would have to pay
benefits and in what amount. The evidence did not permit any comparison between
Mrs. Reeder’s benefits and those of a younger teacher. And to the extent that
Mrs. Reeder intended to argue that by replacing a teacher with an intern, WCSD could
avoid paying retirement benefits altogether, the record does not contain any evidence
suggesting that this purported savings would be affected by the age of either the intern or
the teacher. In sum, even if Mrs. Reeder were correct that WCSD terminated her to avoid
paying her retirement and related benefits, there is nothing in the record from which a
factfinder could infer a correlation between this motive and Mrs. Reeder’s age.
IV.
Because Mrs. Reeder attributed to WCSD a motive for her termination that is not
prohibited by the ADEA, the district court properly granted summary judgment to
WCSD, regardless of whether WCSD ever acknowledged that it was actually motivated
by the desire to save money. Mrs. Reeder’s concession of a motive not related to her age
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negated any inference of age discrimination that a jury might otherwise draw from her
evidence of pretext. See Randle, 69 F.3d at 451 n.14.
The district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED. We GRANT appellee’s motion to
strike those portions of appellant’s appendix that contain evidence that was not submitted
to the district court.
Entered for the Court
Harris L Hartz
Circuit Judge
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