[NOT FOR PUBLICATION — NOT TO BE CITED AS PRECEDENT]
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 01-1423
GEORGEANNA HAWKINS,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
MARY HITCHCOCK MEMORIAL HOSPITAL,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
[Hon. Steven J. McAuliffe, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Selya and Lipez, Circuit Judges,
and Singal,* District Judge.
Nancy S. Tierney for appellant.
Andrew C. Pickett, with whom Jeffrey S. Brody and Jackson
Lewis Schnitzler & Krupman were on brief, for appellee.
November 15, 2001
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*Of the District of Maine, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. In this case, the plaintiff, a
disappointed job-seeker, charges a failure to hire based on her
race (the plaintiff is an African-American woman). Finding
insufficient evidence of discrimination, the district court
granted summary judgment in favor of the prospective employer.
See Hawkins v. Mary Hitchcock Mem. Hosp., Civ. No. 93-113, slip
op. at 17 (D.N.H. Jan 30, 2001) (unpublished). The plaintiff
appeals.
We often have commented that when a lower court
accurately takes the measure of a case, faultlessly applies the
appropriate legal standards, and propounds a convincing
rationale, "an appellate court should refrain from writing at
length to no other end than to hear its own words resonate."
Lawton v. State Mut. Life Assur. Co., 101 F.3d 218, 220 (1st
Cir. 1996); accord Cruz-Ramos v. P.R. Sun Oil Co., 202 F.3d 381,
383 (1st Cir. 2000); Ayala v. Union de Tronquistas, Local 901,
74 F.3d 344, 345 (1st Cir. 1996); Holders Capital Corp. v. Cal.
Union Ins. Co. (In re San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel Fire Litig.),
989 F.2d 36, 38 (1st Cir. 1993). This is a paradigmatic example
of such an instance. Accordingly, we uphold the judgment below
for substantially the same reasons elucidated in the district
court's thoughtful rescript. We add only a few comments.
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First: The question here is not, as the plaintiff
assumes, whether she might in fact have been a good prospect for
employment. Rather, the question is whether the employer's
reasons for rejecting her three successive applications for a
housekeeping position — legitimate on their face — were
pretextual (and, thus, capable of supporting an inference of
discriminatory animus). See Feliciano de la Cruz v. El
Conquistador Resort & Country Club, 218 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.
2000); Smith v. F. W. Morse & Co., 76 F.3d 413, 421 (1st Cir.
1996). We have carefully canvassed the record and have found a
dearth of evidence sufficient to create a genuine dispute as to
duplicity on the employer's part. A plaintiff cannot carry her
burden of showing pretext merely by questioning the defendant's
stated reasons for acting in a particular way. Hoeppner v.
Crotched Mt. Rehab. Ctr., 31 F.3d 9, 17 (1st Cir. 1994); Gadson
v. Concord Hosp., 966 F.2d 32, 34 (1st Cir. 1992) (per curiam);
see also Griggs-Ryan v. Smith, 904 F.2d 112, 115 (1st Cir. 1990)
(explaining that "a genuine issue of material fact does not
spring into being simply because a litigant claims that one
exists").
Second: In disparate treatment "failure to hire"
cases, plaintiffs typically complain of being treated unfairly.
This case is no exception. But an employer can hire one
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employee instead of another for any reason, fair or unfair,
without running afoul of the anti-discrimination laws so long as
the employer's stated reason is not pretextual and its choice is
not driven by race or some other protected characteristic.
Smith, 76 F.3d at 422. Here, the employer's stated reasons —
poor references, an erratic work history, and the like — are
legitimate on their face, and the plaintiff's attempt to explain
away those data, whether or not persuasive, does not vitiate the
employer's right to rely on them. See Gadson, 966 F.2d at 35.
Third: The plaintiff claims that the trial court
should have inferred racial discrimination from the fact that
the hospital had very few African-American employees (none in
the housekeeping department at the crucial time). We disagree.
Without a statistical analysis indicating, inter alia, the
racial composition of the applicant pool, the mere fact that a
particular minority is not much in evidence in a given work
force proves nothing. LeBlanc v. Great Am. Ins. Co., 6 F.3d
836, 848 (1st Cir. 1993). This is especially so where, as here,
the plaintiff makes no meaningful connection between the
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statistics, the hospital's hiring practices, and her situation.1
See LeBlanc, 6 F.3d at 848; Gadson, 966 F.2d at 35.
Fourth: Although the plaintiff has identified a number
of factual disputes (e.g., whether or not the unflattering
references that the employer received were accurate), none of
those disputes were material to the dispositive issues in the
case. See United States v. One Parcel of Real Prop. (Great
Harbor Neck, New-Shoreham, R.I.), 960 F.2d 200, 204 (1st Cir.
1992) (explaining that a factual dispute, to be material, must
concern a fact that carries with it the potential to affect the
outcome of the suit under applicable law). Since the only facts
that genuinely have been placed in dispute lack the capacity to
affect or alter the outcome of the suit, those disputed facts
cannot derail the summary judgment engine. See Woods-Leber v.
Hyatt Hotels of P.R., Inc., 124 F.3d 47, 49 (1st Cir. 1997);
Morris v. Gov't Dev. Bank, 27 F.3d 746, 748 (1st Cir. 1994).
We need go no further. We understand the plaintiff's
frustration at being denied an opportunity to prove herself in
the workplace — but the body of federal law that protects a job
applicant against racial discrimination in employment does not
1Indeed, the record reveals that the plaintiff thrice
completed the hospital's standard application (which was color-
blind). On the first two occasions, the hospital rejected her
application without an interview and, for aught that appears,
without any knowledge of her race or color.
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inoculate her against an employer's honest exercise of its
business judgment — whether or not that judgment is mistaken.
See Gadson, 966 F.2d at 34; see also Morgan v. Mass. Gen. Hosp.,
901 F.2d 186, 191 (1st Cir. 1990) (explicating same principle in
a termination of employment case). Because the district court
recognized that this record lacked significantly probative
evidence from which an inference of pretext (and, thus, an
inference of discrimination) plausibly could be drawn, Hawkins,
slip op. at 17, the court did not err in granting the
defendant's motion for brevis disposition.
Affirmed. See 1st Cir. R. 27(c).
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