Sams v. The Anthem Companies, Inc.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

CLARIA HORN BOOM, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE

This matter is before the Court on Defendant The Anthem Companies, Inc.'s (“Anthem's”) Motion for Summary Judgment [R. 20]. Plaintiffs Ivy Sams and Ruth Snow responded in opposition [R. 22]. Defendant replied to Plaintiffs' Response [R. 28]. The matter is now ripe for review. For the following reasons, the Court will grant Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment.

I. Background

This dispute stems from Anthem's decision to lay off Plaintiffs, as well as 6 other employees, on January 31, 2019, as part of a reduction in force (“RIF”) in its Health Care Management Services Department in Louisville. At the time of their termination, Sams was 66 and Snow was 65, and they claim they were terminated because of their age and other unlawful reasons. Defendant Anthem is a national health insurance company. [R. 20-3, p. 97 (Collins Aff.)] As part of its operations, Anthem employs a team of nurse case managers, who are designated into three different classifications: Nurse Case Manager I (“NCM I”), Nurse Case Manager II (“NCM II”), and Nurse Case Manager Lead (“NCML”) that functioned as the “team lead.” [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), pp. 49-50; R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), pp. 12-13; R. 28-1, p. 32 (salary chart)] Of the three positions, NCM I had the lowest experience, responsibilities, and salary; NCM II was in the middle; and NCML had the highest. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), pp. 49-50; R. 281, p. 32 (salary chart)]

The case management teams are split up by geographic area and type of insurance. Kentucky Medicaid had a team of 8 case managers in 2015, which grew to 11 by the end of 2018. [R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), p. 12; R. 22, p. 9] ¶ 2018, there were two NCM I positions, eight NCM II positions, and one NCML. [R. 22, p. 9] Sams began as NCML on February 3, 2015. [R. 23-3] She is a Registered Nurse and had worked for over two decades in a variety of federal, state, and private nursing and case management-related jobs before coming to Anthem. [R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), pp. 11-12] Snow began as an NCM II on August 22, 2016. [R. 23-4] She was also a Registered Nurse and a board-certified case manager, and she worked in state-run and private insurance case management before starting at Anthem. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), pp. 4-5, 35, 50] A Case Management Manager managed that team. [R. 22, p. 2; see also R. 23-3; R. 23-4] The Case Management Manager reported to the Director of Healthcare Management Services, who at all relevant times was Victoria Meska. [R. 31-2 (Thompson Dep.), pp. 20-21; R. 31-1 (Meska Dep.), pp. 17-18]

A. Events Prior to the Reduction in Force

In mid-2017, the previous Case Management Manager, Nancy Redmon, resigned after having issues with Meska. [R. 31-1 (Meska Dep.), pp. 42-44] She was replaced in September 2017 by Eugenia Thompson, whom Meska had worked with in a previous job. Id. at 44-46. Thompson, unlike Redmon and Meska, is not a board-certified case manager. [R. 31-2 (Thompson Dep.), p. 20; R. 31-1 (Meska Dep.), pp. 24, 31] After Redmon left, Sams and Snow had a number of issues with Thompson and Meska, which are detailed below.

First, Snow, who has a hearing impairment, had difficulty obtaining a headset to use with her hearing aid. Snow first tried to obtain a headset in June or July 2017-sometime before July 7, 2017-and filed a complaint to obtain the headset. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), pp. 14, 22-24] On August 7, 2017, she resolved to buy the headset herself and get reimbursed. Id. at 25. She was approved for reimbursement on August 23, 2017, but she asserts that it took her “months” to get reimbursed. Id. at 25-28.

Second, starting sometime in early 2018, Anthem directed all case managers to work remotely. [See R. 31-2 (Thompson Dep.), pp. 120-21; R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), pp. 20-22 (“[S]omewhere in 2018 they sent all the case managers home.”)] Initially, Sams and Snow were the only case managers still working from the office, but eventually they were sent home as well. [R. 31-2 (Thompson Dep.), pp. 120-21; R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), pp. 20-21] Snow was assigned to work from home on April 16, 2018. [R. 20-3, p. 106 (Thompson Aff.)] Snow had been on Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) leave for much of the early part of 2018 and came back into the office in May with an oxygen concentrator. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), p. 13-14; R. 22, p. 6] Thompson asked her to work from home, which she objected to. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), pp. 13-14] Once she started working from home, she requested another hearing aid-compatible headset, which Anthem provided after several emails. Id. at 14-15. Snow notes that this process for the second headset was much smoother and asserts that there is “no relationship of the 2018 hearing device to the decision to terminate [her] employment.” Id. at 57.

Third, in November 2017, Thompson required Sams to start “conduct[ing] formal audits of case managers. [R. 22, p. 4; R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), p. 15] Sams viewed these audits as unnecessary and struggled to complete them. [R. 22, pp. 4-5] As a result, she was put on a 30-day Performance Improvement Plan on February 16, 2018, which escalated to a 60-day Corrective Action on April 11, 2018. [R. 22, pp. 5-6; R. 23-10; R. 20-3, p. 106-07 (Thompson Aff.)] That Corrective Action plan (“CAP”) expired in June and was not followed by any further improvement process. [R. 22, p. 6; R. 23-15] During this time frame, Sams was also taking FMLA leave. Her first period of leave occurred in October 2017, to care for her mother, which was approved. [R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), pp. 86-88] She then took intermittent leave on March 27, 2018, for six months, to address her own health issues. [R. 23-12 (FMLA leave summary)]

Finally, Sams and Snow feuded with management over professional practices that Thompson and Meska implemented. Around September 2018, Anthem began directing case managers not to identify their names in patient records. [R. 23-18; R. 22, p. 7] Sams and Snow disagreed with this practice, and Snow raised the issue with the Kentucky Board of Nursing and notified Thompson of her communication. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), p. 41] Meska, however, was not aware of this dispute until this litigation started. [R. 31-1 (Meska Dep.), pp. 210-11] They also had issues in approving treatment. In October 2018, Snow attempted unsuccessfully to get Anthem to provide a cancer treatment for a client who later died, sending 93 emails on the subject. [R. 31-5 (Snow Dep.), pp. 43-47] Meska and Snow had a phone conversation about the treatment on November 5, 2018. [R. 31-1 (Meska Dep.), pp. 169-71] And in December 2018 or January 2019, Sams feuded with Meska over Anthem's refusal to provide out-of-network baby formula to a client. [R. 31-6 (Sams Dep.), pp. 40-44]

B. The Reduction in Force

In October 2018, Anthem performed a “Work Evaluation” that assessed its operations in each state. [R. 20-3, p. 97 (Collins Aff.)] It also started to restructure and centralize some of its business, prompting some of its regional divisions to try to cut costs by laying off employees. Id. Kentucky was directed to cut $500, 000 in costs. Id. Shaun Collins, the Human Resources Business Partner, Sr., for the Kentucky and West Virginia Medicaid Business Units, worked with the regional vice president, Urmesh Shah, and the Louisville market president, Leon Lamoreaux, to identify positions that could be eliminated. Id.

On November 28, 2018, Collins emailed Thompson, whom he knew kept a quarterly assessment form for the case managers, to send him those assessment forms, which she did.^[1] [R. 23-21 (Email from Thompson to Collins); R. 23-23 (Email from Thompson to Collins)] Collins did not mention the potential restructuring and layoffs. [R. 31-2 (Thompson Dep.), pp. 111-13] That email included the following ratings for all categories of case managers:

Last Name	First Name	Job Title	Score[2]	Age at RIF
Exceeds Expectations	Ulliman	Nora	Nurse Case Mgr II	32	61
Davis	Diane	Nurse Case Mgr II	33	55
Meets Expectations	Clements	Mary	Nurse Case Mgr II	37	65
Jones	Linda	Nurse Case Mgr II	38	66
Siler	Dawn	Nurse Case Mgr II	41	57
Waddle	Kimberly	Nurse Case Mgr I	43	50
Sams	Ivy	Nurse Case Mgr Lead	45	66
Mefford	April	Nurse Case Mgr II	45	45
Snow	Ruth	Nurse Case Mgr II	29/FMLAQ1	65
Does Not Meet Expectations	Meador	Deborah	Nurse Case Mgr I	46	60
Caldwell	Christina	Nurse Case Mgr II	52	46

[R. 23-23 (Email from Thompson to Collins)]^[3] That same day, November 28, 2018, Collins suggested eliminating five positions in Kentucky, including the NCML and one NCM II. [R. 23 22] On November 29, 2018, Shah suggested eliminating 5-6 NCMs from Louisville in a “first pass effort.” [R. 20-3, pp. 97-98 (Collins Aff.)] That same day, Collins countered with eliminating the NCML and two NCM IIs as “appropriate for the workload and cost-cutting goal, ” with an NCML being unnecessary if there were 2 fewer NCM IIs. Id. Ultimately, after discussions between them, Collins, Shah, and Lamoureaux forwarded a list of 10 full-time positions, without names, in the Louisville office “that could be eliminated if there were a staffing change in the future, ” including the NCML and now two NCM IIs, to Anthem's vice president of Medicaid clinical operations. [R. 20-3, p. 98...