DEBRA COLLEY, Plaintiff,
v.
DICKENSON COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, ET AL., Defendants.
Case No. 2:17CV00003
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA BIG STONE GAP DIVISION
September 6, 2018
OPINION AND ORDER
By: James P. Jones United States District Judge
John P. Fishwick, Jr., and Monica L. Mroz, Fishwick & Associates PLC, Roanoke, Virginia, for Plaintiff; Jim H. Guynn, Jr., Guynn & Waddell, P.C., Salem, Virginia, for Defendants Dickenson County School Board, Haydee Robinson, John Skeen, Don Raines, and R.E. Nickles; Johneal M. White, Glenn Robinson Cathey Memmer & Skaff, PLC, Roanoke, Virginia, for Defendants Susan Mullins and Rocky Barton.
In this employment discrimination case by a former Virginia public school employee, the plaintiff asserts claims against the local school board, the school division superintendant, and the individual members of the board, based upon the federal Equal Pay Act, Title IX, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, as well as breach of contract under state law. The defendants have filed motions for summary judgment, which have been fully briefed and argued. For the reasons that follow, I will deny the motions in part and grant them in part and allow the remainder of the case to proceed to jury trial.
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The plaintiff, Debra Colley, was employed by the defendant Dickenson County School Board (the "School Board" or "Board") from 2007 to her retirement in 2015, as one of the small group of supervisors in the school division's Central Office, all reporting to the division's superintendent of schools. In April of 2015 Colley announced her intention to retire. Until that time, she believed that all Central Office supervisors received "around the same rate of pay." Pl.'s Mem. Opp'n Mots. Summ. J. Ex. K 4, ECF No. 96-11. Shortly thereafter, after learning to the contrary, she complained to the School Board that her salary was "far less than other central office peers despite comparable supervisory duties, expectations, and experience in current roles," and requested "redress of [her] financial suffering" through "correction of such an error or oversight." Id. at Ex. FF, ECF No. 96-32. According to Colley, the Board members appeared unaware of the disparity, and "clearly surprised." Id. at Ex. B, Colley Dep. 85, ECF No. 96-2. Certain members of the Board expressed interest in correcting any disparity, and the Board's staff developed options for a financial settlement with Colley, which were discussed with her. Eventually, however, the Board took no action on Colley's request and she voluntarily retired as scheduled on July 31, 2015. This lawsuit was thereafter filed on March 7, 2017.
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In her Amended Complaint, Colley sues the Board and all of its five members — Susan Mullins, Rocky Barton, John Skeen, Don Raines, and R.E. Nickles — as well as the division superintendent, Haydee Robinson, in their individual capacities. She asserts four separate causes of action, all related to a disparity in her salary and the failure of the School Board to correct that disparity. Her law suit charges that the pay disparity resulted from the gender-motivated salaries of three male Central Office supervisors, Burl Mooney, Mark Mullins, and Mike Setser, as well as those of her male predecessor, Jimmy Smith, and her male replacement, Tony Robinson.1
The court denied partial motions to dismiss filed by the defendants, Colley v. Dickenson Cty. Sch. Bd., No. 2:17CV00003, 2017 WL 4445985 (W.D. Va. Oct. 5, 2017), and thereafter the parties engaged in extensive discovery. The defendants have now filed motions for summary judgment, which have been briefed and argued and are ripe for decision.2
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Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine issue of material fact, given the parties' burdens of proof at trial. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-48 (1986). In determining whether the moving party has shown that there is no genuine issue of material fact, the court must assess the factual evidence and all inferences from such facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Ross v. Commc'ns Satellite Corp., 759 F.2d 355, 364 (4th Cir. 1985), overruled on other grounds, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989).
Summary judgment is not a "disfavored procedural shortcut," but an important mechanism for disposing of "claims and defenses [that] have no factual basis." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 327 (1986). It is the "affirmative obligation of the trial judge to prevent factually unsupported claims and defenses from proceeding to trial." Drewitt v. Pratt, 999 F.2d 774, 778-79 (4th Cir. 1993) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
In Count One of her Amended Complaint, Colley alleges a violation of the Equal Pay Act ("EPA"), 29 U.S.C. § 206(d), against the School Board. The EPA provides that
No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than
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the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions, except where such payment is made pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex[.]
A plaintiff bringing a claim under the EPA is not required to present evidence of sex discrimination above and beyond a prima facie case. Proof of discriminatory intent is not part of the plaintiff's burden. See Fowler v. Land Mgmt. Groupe, Inc., 978 F.2d 158, 161-62 (4th Cir. 1992); Brewster v. Barnes, 788 F.2d 985, 991 (4th Cir. 1986). In order to establish a prima facie case, Colley must demonstrate that the School Board paid a higher wage to a male "for equal work on jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, which jobs . . . all are performed under similar working conditions." EEOC v. Md. Ins. Admin., 879 F.3d 114, 120 (4th Cir. 2018). Although Colley seeks to compare herself to several men, "an EPA plaintiff is not required to demonstrate that males, as a class, are paid higher wages than females, as a class, but only that there is a discrimination in pay against an employee with respect to one employee of the opposite sex." Id. at 122.
"The crucial finding on the equal work issue is whether the jobs to be compared have a 'common core' of tasks, i.e., whether a significant portion of the
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two jobs is identical. The inquiry then turns to whether the differing or additional tasks make the work substantially different." Brewster, 788 F.2d at 991 (citation omitted). "Congress chose the word 'equal' over the word 'comparable' in order to show that the jobs involved should be virtually identical, that is . . . very much alike or closely related to each other." Wheatley v. Wicomico Cty., 390 F.3d 328, 333 (4th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
On the other hand, it is said that "[i]n interpreting the EPA, [e]qual means substantially equal." Id. at 332 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The standard does not depend on job classifications or titles, but on actual job requirements and performance. See id. at 332-33. "Granted, at a high level of abstraction these positions all require [the employees] to do the same thing — supervise, coordinate, and organize. But the EPA demands more than a comparison of job functions from a bird's eye view." Id.
Assuming that the evidence does establish a prima facie violation of the EPA, the burden of proof shifts to the employer to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the pay disparity was due to (1) a seniority system, (2) a merit system, (3) a system pegging earnings to a quality or quantity of production, or (4) any factor other than sex. Brewster, 788 F.2d at 991-92. If the employer does not meet its burden of proof as to one or more these defenses, the jury must return a
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verdict in favor of the plaintiff. Brinkley-Obu v. Hughes Training, Inc., 36 F.3d 336, 344 (4th Cir. 1994).
The School Board contends that it is entitled to summary judgment because Colley and male Central Office supervisors Mooney, Setser, and Mullins did not perform equal work. The School Board contends that Colley's specific job functions were not substantially equal to the other Central Office supervisors. Colley was the Supervisor of Instruction. Her essential job duties revolved around the school system's instructional programs, including curriculum planning and development, teacher evaluations, and textbook selection. Mooney was the Supervisor for Transportation and Maintenance. His responsibilities included supervision of maintenance employees and school bus drivers, planning bus routes, establishing custodial and security requirements for each school building, and overseeing all major repairs and construction projects. Setser was Supervisor of Compliance, Attendance and Alternative Education. He tracked attendance, handled discrimination and harassment complaints, alternative education programs, and appeared in court in truant and misbehaving student cases. Mullins was the Supervisor of Special Programs, such as testing, licensure, and overseeing federal and state programs. He was also the superintendent designee, standing in for the superintendent in her absence. While Setser's and Mullins' duties may have had
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more relation to Colley's than Mooney's, the defendants contend that their central responsibilities in the school system substantially differed from those of Colley.
In response, Colley claims that all of the Central Office...
