[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________ FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
No. 09-15262 ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
MAY 6, 2010
Non-Argument Calendar
JOHN LEY
________________________
CLERK
D. C. Docket No. 04-00115-CV-WLS-1
CHARLOTTE R.L. ROBERTS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
JOHN E. POTTER,
Defendant-Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Georgia
_________________________
(May 6, 2010)
Before TJOFLAT, PRYOR and FAY, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Charlotte Roberts appeals pro se the summary judgment in favor of her
employer, John E. Potter, the Postmaster General of the United States Postal
Service, and against Roberts’s complaints of retaliation and harassment under Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-3(a), -16. Liberally
construed, Roberts’s brief presents three arguments, and each fails. We affirm.
Roberts argues that the district court failed to address the emergency
suspension she received in June 2004, but Roberts failed to mention the emergency
suspension in her original complaint filed in July 2004 and failed to amend her
complaint to include a claim about the suspension, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1), (2).
In May 2008, Roberts filed a proposed discovery order in which she mentioned the
suspension under a section titled “Other Amended Complainants,” but Roberts did
not sign the order, which might have alerted the district court that she desired to
amend her complaint, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(a). Roberts also failed to mention the
suspension in her response to the motion for summary judgment filed by the
Postmaster. The district court did not err by failing to address Roberts’s
suspension.
Roberts also argues that she presented evidence of a hostile work
environment, but we disagree. Roberts failed to prove that she was subject to a
“‘discriminatorily hostile or abusive environment.’” Reeves v. C.H. Robinson
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Worldwide, Inc., 594 F.3d 798, 808 (11th Cir. 2010) (quoting Mendoza v. Borden,
Inc., 195 F.3d 1238, 1245 (11th Cir. 1999) (en banc)). Roberts alleged that her
supervisor, Charnae Mitchell, reprimanded Roberts and required Roberts to
perform tasks not required of other employees, but Roberts’s own accounts
establish that Mitchell’s actions were intended to curb Roberts’s allegedly
excessive talking in the workplace. Furthermore, Roberts offered no evidence of
discriminatory animus and conceded in her opposition to summary judgment that
Mitchell “had a personal problem” with Roberts. “Title VII prohibits
discrimination” based on race and sex, but does not serve as a “shield against harsh
treatment” that is based on “[p]ersonal animosity.” McCollum v. Bolger, 794 F.2d
602, 610 (11th Cir. 1986). The district court did not err when it entered summary
judgment against Roberts’s complaint of a hostile work environment.
Roberts also argues that she presented evidence of retaliation, but again we
disagree. Although Roberts submitted evidence that she had previously filed
complaints about harassment and discrimination by her supervisors, Roberts failed
to prove that she “suffered a materially adverse action” in response to her protected
activity. Pennington v. City of Huntsville, 261 F.3d 1262, 1266 (11th Cir. 2001).
Roberts argued that a supervisor delayed processing her request to return to work
for four days, but Roberts attributed the delay to the negligence of a secretary. In
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the absence of any evidence that the brief delay was retaliatory, the district court
did not err when it granted summary judgment in favor of the Postmaster.
The summary judgment in favor of the Postmaster is AFFIRMED.
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