Thompson v. Normandy Sch. Collaborative

DIEDREA THOMPSON, Plaintiff, v. NORMANDY SCHOOLS COLLABORATIVE, Defendant.

No. 4:19-cv-03220-MTS

United States District Court, E.D. Missouri, Eastern Division

August 2, 2021

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

MATTHEW T. SCHELP, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

Plaintiff Diedrea Thompson alleges that Defendant Normandy Schools Collaborative violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it fired her in 2018 after she made complaints regarding Defendant's pay and hiring practices. Defendant has now moved for summary judgment, arguing that the undisputed facts demonstrate there was no causal relationship between Plaintiff's complaints and firing and that Plaintiff was not subject to disparate treatment. Doc. [33]. For the reasons that follow, the Court agrees with Defendant so the Court will grant Defendant's Motion.

I. Background

The Court must first address what facts are before it for purposes of summary judgment. In compliance with Local Rule 4.01(E), Defendant filed with its Motion for Summary Judgment a Statement of Uncontroverted Material Facts (“SOF”). Doc. [35]. Defendant properly supported the facts provided in its SOF with citations to the record. See L.R. 4.01(E) (“The Statement of Uncontroverted Material Facts must set forth each relevant fact in a separately numbered paragraph stating how each fact is established by the record, with appropriate supporting citation(s).”). Along with her Opposition to the Motion, Plaintiff filed her response to those facts. Doc. [37]. That response is replete with issues. To begin with, Plaintiff failed to respond in any fashion to several of the sixty-seven facts asserted in Defendant's SOF. See Doc. [37] ¶¶ 3-18, 26-30, 35-37, 40, 44-49, 54-55, 57, 67. Where she did provide responses beyond admitting various facts as true, Plaintiff did not properly controvert Defendant's SOF, instead making improper legal arguments and generally failing to address the specific facts put forth by Defendant. See, e.g., id. ¶¶ 19-20, 31-34, 41, 43, 51, 56, 58-66. As a result, consistent with this Court's Local Rules, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and relevant precedent, the Court will deem Plaintiff to have admitted the facts in Defendant's SOF for purposes of summary judgment. See L.R. 4.01(E); Freeman v. Adams, No. 1:12-cv-86-SNLJ, 2014 WL 1056760, at *5 n.4 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 19, 2014) (“The movant's statement of facts are deemed admitted if not specifically controverted by the party opposing the motion with specific references to portions of the record as required by Local Rule 4.01(E) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c)(1).”); State Farm Fire and Cas. Co. v. Dado S Cafe, Inc., 421 F.Supp.3d 720, 724-25 (E.D. Mo. 2019) (deeming SOF admitted where nonmoving party made legal arguments in response to SOF); Keen v. Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., 819 Fed.Appx. 423, 424 (7th Cir. 2020) (noting, based on similar local rule, that legal objections are insufficient to oppose facts).

Furthermore, Plaintiff submitted not only a response to Defendant's SOF, but also an SOF of her own. Doc. [35] at 19-42. But the Local Rules do not contemplate that a party opposing summary judgment may file its own SOF; rather, the Rules provide that the nonmovant must file a response to the moving party's SOF for the purpose of making clear which facts the nonmovant contends are in dispute. See L.R. 4.01(E) (“The opposing party also shall note for all disputed facts the paragraph number from the moving party's [SOF].”). To the extent that Plaintiff's SOF could be considered a further response to Defendant's SOF within the meaning of L.R. 4.01(E), Plaintiff's SOF is deficient in numerous respects: Plaintiff makes multiple factual assertions without the required “specific citation” to the record, does not note the paragraph number of Defendant's SOF to which she purports to respond, provides myriad immaterial or irrelevant alleged facts, and makes assertions that are misrepresentations of or are unsupported by the evidence she cites.^[1] For all those reasons, Plaintiff's SOF is improper and does not comply with L.R. 4.01(E), so the Court will not consider it in its summary judgment analysis. Cf. Jones v. United Parcel Serv., 461 F.3d 982, 990 (8th Cir. 2006) (affirming decision to deem facts admitted where response “suffer[ed] from misleading and inaccurate statements, and often omit[ted] the citations to the record required by the local rule”); Garrett v. Embrey, 2018 WL 5298468, at *2 (E.D. Mo. Oct. 25, 2018); Cigainero v. Carnival Corp., 426 F.Supp.3d 1299, 1301 (S.D. Fla. 2019) (“The Court notes that several of Plaintiff's facts in her responsive statement of facts are unsupported by record citations. The Court has no obligation to go digging through the record to find the support that Plaintiff has omitted and therefore ignores those factual assertions.” (citation omitted) (citing Johnson v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 126 F.3d 1372, 1373 (11th Cir. 1997))). With that clarified, the Court now turns to the relevant factual background here.

Defendant hired Plaintiff in October 2012 as a human-resources (“HR”) generalist, a position that did not require any certification or license. Doc. [35] ¶¶ 36-39. Her beginning salary was $46, 593. Id. ¶ 40. On January 9, 2015, Plaintiff was given additional duties and the title of HR Generalist and Core Data Specialist. With those additional duties came a raise in annual salary, from the $46, 493 she made when Defendant first hired her to $58, 242. Id. 43-44. On July 1, 2016, Plaintiff was again promoted, this time to Coordinator of HR, and she received a corresponding increase in her annual salary to $70, 741. Id. ¶¶ 45-46. Her salary was adjusted to $75, 039 on February 13, 2017, and it was again increased to $77, 491 on July 1, 2017. Id. ¶¶ 4749. During the course of her employment with Defendant, Plaintiff performed one full-time equivalent (“FTE”), which appears to be a measure of how many distinct jobs an employee held with Defendant. Id. ¶ 50; Docs. [35-3] at (31:17-33:3); [34] at 14-15. She was an at-will employee during her employment with Defendant. Doc. [35] ¶ 67.

The events leading to Plaintiff's firing arose out of her application for tuition reimbursement from Defendant. Defendant offers its employees a tuition reimbursement program to reimburse the costs of preapproved coursework. Doc. [35-1] at 27-28. Reimbursement requires that (1) the course is approved before the employee takes it, (2) at the time she registers for the course, the employee obtains from the institution an official paid receipt showing the amount she paid, and (3) once the course is completed, the employee submits to the director of HR the course approval application, the official paid tuition receipt, and an official grade card or transcript. Id. at 28. On January 31, 2018, Plaintiff submitted to Gerald Fuller, the director of HR, an application for tuition reimbursement, along with applications on behalf of nine other employees. Doc. [35] ¶¶ 54-59. The other employees' applications were accompanied by the required supporting documentation, but Plaintiff's application did not include the required documents. Id. ¶¶ 58-59. The same day Plaintiff submitted the applications, Fuller requested that Plaintiff submit her supporting documentation. Doc. [37-1] at 4. Plaintiff indicated in a response the next day that she had the required “forms” and “data.” Id. After Plaintiff had failed to submit the required documents by February 13, 2018, Fuller informed Plaintiff that if she failed to provide any supporting documents for her application, Defendant would deem it a “willful intent to falsify records.” Doc. [35] ¶ 61. Plaintiff never submitted her documentation. Id. ¶ 64. On February 28, 2018, Defendant fired Plaintiff for willfully submitting her tuition reimbursement application without supporting documentation while knowing she did not have that documentation, which Defendant interpreted as an intent to falsify records in violation of its staff conduct policy. Id. ¶ 65; Doc. [37-1] at 11.

Of relevance here, in her deposition, Plaintiff testified that on January 24, 2015, she had a meeting with various members of Defendant's executive leadership team during which she complained that Defendant's hiring process was discriminatory based on age and race. See Doc. [37-5] at (18:2-20:25). In February 2015, Plaintiff made a complaint to the Missouri Department of Labor (“MDOL”) regarding alleged overtime pay disparities between Plaintiff and other employees. Id. ¶ 41; Doc. [35-3] at (25:10-26:9). She did not, in that complaint, raise issues regarding discriminatory practices, and the complaint was not about race. Docs. [35] ¶ 42; [35-3] at (29:5-12). Contending that she was fired because of those complaints and was paid less than similarly situated coworkers because of her race, Plaintiff filed this action against Defendant, alleging retaliation and disparate treatment in violation of Title VII. Doc. [1].

II. Legal Standard

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, a court must grant a motion for summary judgment if it finds “that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986). “A genuine issue of material fact exists if a reasonable jury could return a verdict for” the nonmovant. Cockram v. Genesco, Inc., 680 F.3d 1046, 1051 (8th Cir. 2012) (quoting Humphries v. Pulaski Cnty. Special Sch. Dist., 580 F.3d 688, 692 (8th Cir. 2009)).

The moving party bears the initial burden of “informing the district court of the basis for its motion, and identifying those portions of the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, which it...