11-4971-cv
Bringley v. Donahoe
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A
SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY
FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN
CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE
EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION
“SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY
PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.
At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at
the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street, in the City of New
York, on the 10th day of October, two thousand twelve.
PRESENT: REENA RAGGI,
PETER W. HALL,
DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON,
Circuit Judges.
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DEBORAH A. BRINGLEY,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 11-4971-cv
PATRICK R. DONAHOE, POSTMASTER GENERAL,
Defendant-Appellee.*
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APPEARING FOR APPELLANT: STEPHEN E. LAPRADE (Christina A. Agola, on
the brief), Law Firm of Christina A. Agola,
PLLC, Rochester, New York.
*
The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the official caption as shown above.
APPEARING FOR APPELLEE: KATHRYN L. SMITH, Assistant United States
Attorney, for William J. Hochul, Jr., United States
Attorney for the Western District of New York,
Rochester, New York.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Western District
of New York (Charles J. Siragusa, Judge).
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND
DECREED that the judgment entered on November 21, 2011, is AFFIRMED.
Deborah Bringley, a 30-year employee of the United States Postal Service in
Rochester, New York, appeals from an award of summary judgment in favor of defendant
on her claims of gender-based discrimination and retaliation by supervisor Vincent Catapano
in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), as amended, see 42
U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. We review an award of summary judgment de novo, construing the
record evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See El Sayed v. Hilton
Hotels Corp., 627 F.3d 931, 933 (2d Cir. 2010). We will uphold the award only if the record
reveals “no genuine dispute as to any material fact” and the movant’s entitlement to judgment
as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). In analyzing employment discrimination claims
brought under Title VII, we employ the familiar burden-shifting framework set forth in
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). We assume the parties’
familiarity with the facts and record of prior proceedings, which we reference only as
necessary to explain our decision to affirm, a conclusion we reach for substantially the same
reasons stated in the district court’s thorough and well-reasoned Decision and Order.
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1. January 2007 Detail Offers
Bringley asserts that, in response to her request for a successive Tour 3 detail to the
Mail Processing Unit in January 2007, her supervisors discriminatorily forced her to choose
between accepting that detail on condition that her craft position be posted for bidding by
other union members, as mandated by the operative collective bargaining agreement, or
alternatively accepting a less desirable overnight Tour 1 detail to Maintenance. Bringley
argues that the district court erroneously analyzed this claim as a discriminatory discharge,
rather than a denial-of-promotion, claim. The distinction Bringley draws is of no import,
because, in fact, the district court held that she had failed to raise a triable issue of fact that
her supervisors’ proffered justifications for their responses to her January 2007 requests for
detail assignments were a pretext for discrimination. We agree.
To support an inference of discrimination with respect to her January 2007 detail
offers, Bringley primarily asserts that, in 2006, Catapano awarded Bringley’s fellow
employee Kevin Dyson a permanent Tour 3 Maintenance Supervisor position for which
Bringley had also applied. However, Bringley’s conclusory contentions that Dyson was “less
senior” and “less qualified” than she was at the time of that decision, Bringley Aff. ¶ 22, J.A.
330, do not raise a triable issue that the justifications for the later January 2007 detail
offers—one of which Catapano had nothing to do with—were a pretext for impermissible
gender-based decisionmaking. See Byrnie v. Town of Cromwell, Bd. of Educ., 243 F.3d 93,
103 (2d Cir. 2001) (“When a plaintiff seeks to prevent summary judgment on the strength
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of a discrepancy in qualifications ignored by an employer, that discrepancy must bear the
entire burden of allowing a reasonable trier of fact to not only conclude the employer’s
explanation was pretextual, but that the pretext served to mask unlawful discrimination.”).
We agree with the district court that those proffered justifications—i.e., that the
collective bargaining agreement required that Bringley’s position be opened to others if she
performed successive, identical Tour 3 details, and that, otherwise, Bringley should be made
to rotate through a Tour 1 detail per unofficial policy—are legitimate on their face and find
support in the record. To the extent Bringley argues that a Tour 1 “graveyard” detail was
viewed as a form of punishment, the record shows that both fellow employees who were later
granted the promotions she now challenges as discriminatory had previously completed Tour
1 assignments. The record further shows that Catapano had granted Bringley four
consecutive non-Tour-1 supervisory details spanning August 2005 to January 2007.
Additionally, her contention that the union did not in fact pressure Catapano to open her craft
position to other members should she accept a successive Tour 3 Mail Processing detail is
unsupported by admissible evidence. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(2). Thus, the district court
correctly granted summary judgment for defendant on this claim.1
1
Because Bringley has adduced insufficient evidence to rebut defendant’s
justifications for the January 2007 detail assignments, we need not reach defendant’s
argument that Bringley, in being offered a choice between supervisory assignments at higher
pay than her permanent position, suffered no materially adverse employment action.
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2. Denial-of-Promotion Claims
Bringley asserts that the district court erroneously granted summary judgment on her
claims that, in 2008, she was twice denied promotions to the permanent position of
Supervisor of Maintenance Operations on Tour 3, claims that form the gravamen of her
complaint. Even assuming that the challenged promotion decisions were effectively made
by Catapano because the two female committee members deferred to his choices, summary
judgment was correctly awarded in favor of defendant.
As the district court recognized, contemporaneous interview summaries prepared by
Catapano stressed the technical qualifications and achievements of the selected males and
stated that Bringley, despite her technical knowledge, exhibited relatively poor interpersonal
skills on the job and became confrontational toward the end of one interview. While
Bringley disputes this account of her interview demeanor, she cannot dispute that, at the time
of her initial interview, she had a “live” Letter of Warning in her file for poor workplace
performance, discipline to which the selection committee referred in making its decision.
Bringley nowhere asserts that the letter’s author, her immediate supervisor, James Fink,
discriminated against her in any way. Further, by Bringley’s own admissions, Catapano had
previously become angry with her for reporting to an unassigned detail and had reason to
question her seriousness in applying for the promotions, as she had also recently applied for
a Postal Service job in Knoxville, Tennessee. Moreover, in denying Bringley’s second
promotion request, Catapano observed that she lacked familiarity with relevant procedures,
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having been away from the Maintenance Department for a year. While Bringley asserts that
Catapano had refused to allow her to return to Maintenance after she left for a better-paying
position in a different department, she admitted at her deposition that this alleged refusal
forms no part of her claim, and the record contains no competent evidence that such an
opening in Maintenance even existed.
In light of the evidence as a whole, Bringley’s contentions that she was more qualified
than either candidate are subjective conclusions without evidence that would “reasonably
support[] a finding of prohibited discrimination.” James v. N.Y. Racing Ass’n, 233 F.3d 149,
154 (2d Cir. 2000). Statements offered by Bringley that one of the candidates habitually
harassed female co-workers, or that Catapano was commonly known to engage younger
female employees in flirtation, even if admissible, are not probative of unlawful gender
discrimination in the challenged promotions. See Shumway v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 118
F.3d 60, 64–65 (2d Cir. 1997) (characterizing assertions of “common knowledge” about
fraternization between male supervisors and lower-ranking female employees to be “little
more than conclusory statements of no probative value”). In fact, Bringley concedes that
Catapano aided a younger female maintenance employee, Rebecca Nevins, in ascending to
the position of postmaster. During the same time period, the committee headed by Catapano
selected a woman, Molly Knights, for the position of Supervisor of Maintenance Operations
on Tour 1. Bringley refused to apply for this or any Tour 1 position.
Accordingly, summary judgment was proper on Bringley’s failure-to-promote claims.
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3. Retaliation Claims
Finally, Bringley asserts that the district court erred in granting summary judgment
on her claims of retaliation based on her filing of EEOC complaints and civil lawsuits
alleging discrimination by Catapano between April 2007 and February 2009. Claims of Title
VII retaliation “are also analyzed under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting test,”
Gorzynski v. JetBlue Airways Corp., 596 F.3d 93, 110 (2d Cir. 2010), with the standard for
retaliation “tied to the challenged retaliatory act, not the underlying conduct that forms the
basis of the Title VII complaint,” Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53,
69 (2006). Here, the district court properly concluded that Bringley had failed to raise a
triable issue of fact on her claims of unlawful retaliation by Catapano, because neither
Catapano’s temporary deactivation of Bringley’s security badge after she left the
Maintenance Department in 2007 nor the contested 2008 promotion decisions adequately
evince an unlawful retaliatory motive. Nothing in the record supports a contrary conclusion.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
FOR THE COURT:
CATHERINE O’HAGAN WOLFE, Clerk of Court
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