Coleman v. Houston Independent School Dist.
| Decision Date | 19 May 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 96-20326,96-20326 |
| Citation | 113 F.3d 528 |
| Parties | 74 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 697, 70 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 44,762, 118 Ed. Law Rep. 54 Barbara COLEMAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants, Anita Ellis, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Stuart M. Nelkin, Carol L. Nelkin, Nelkin & Nelkin, Houston, TX, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
John David Thompson, III, Christopher Blewer Gilbert, Bracewell & Patterson, Houston, TX, for Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Before REYNALDO G. GARZA, SMITH and EMILIO M. GARZA, Circuit Judges.
Defendant Anita Ellis takes this interlocutory appeal from the denial of her partial motion for summary judgment, contending that she is entitled to qualified immunity from suit in her personal capacity. Concluding that plaintiff Barbara Coleman has failed to demonstrate that Ellis violated a clearly established constitutional right, as required by Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991), we reverse.
In 1994, Ellis was the principal at Ryan Middle School ("Ryan"), an institution within the defendant Houston Independent School District ("HISD"). When the position of assistant principal became available, Ellis informed Coleman, with whom she was previously acquainted, of the opening. Coleman, who is white, interviewed for the position and assured the committee that she could write and speak Spanish, which Ellis considered a prerequisite for the assistant principal in the bilingual environment at the school. Thereafter, Ellis recommended that Coleman be appointed assistant principal.
Ellis sent her recommendation to Andre Hornsby, district superintendent of HISD with supervisory authority over Ryan. By affidavit, Hornsby testified that soon after receiving the recommendation, he obtained information from another school district administrator discrediting Coleman's qualifications. Because this communication allegedly raised concerns that Coleman was not actually bilingual, as she had promised, Hornsby was reluctant to place Coleman permanently in the position of assistant principal. Therefore, at Hornsby's request, Ellis and Hornsby agreed to appoint Coleman to the position of "acting" assistant principal, thereby affording them an opportunity to evaluate her performance during the remainder of the 1994-95 academic year.
Coleman served as "acting" assistant principal at Ryan during the spring semester of that year. The parties hotly dispute whether her performance was satisfactory. By affidavit, Ellis testified that Coleman failed to demonstrate a functional fluency in Spanish during the course of the semester, with adverse consequences for relations between the administration and the student body. Coleman emphatically denied these charges, insisting that she had adequately demonstrated fluency in Spanish; allegations to the contrary, she claims, are merely a pretext for impermissible racial discrimination.
Regardless of her performance as "acting" assistant principal, Coleman admits that Ellis notified her in early June 1995 that she intended to recommend Coleman for the assistant principal position, and Ellis simultaneously requested that Coleman begin drafting the papers necessary for the permanent appointment. On June 14, 1995, however, Hornsby advised Coleman that she would not receive a permanent appointment as assistant principal at Ryan. Coleman alleges that Hornsby explained it was necessary for him to hire an Hispanic as the assistant principal; Hornsby vehemently denies the allegation, claiming that he merely advised Coleman that the new assistant principal must be bilingual, a qualification Coleman had not adequately demonstrated during her tenure as "acting" assistant principal.
Believing herself to be the victim of unlawful racial discrimination, Coleman filed suit against HISD, Ellis, Hornsby, and Parlee Crawford, naming the individual defendants in their official and individual capacities. 1 Coleman alleged that defendants' actions constituted unlawful racial and national origin discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and 42 U.S.C §§ 1981 and 1983 and conspiracy to discriminate against her in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1985.
The individual defendants pleaded the affirmative defense of qualified immunity and, after limited discovery, filed a partial motion for summary judgment on that basis. The district court granted summary judgment to Crawford and Hornsby concerning the allegations of discrimination at Jones High School but denied qualified immunity to Ellis and Hornsby concerning the allegations of discrimination at Ryan. Ellis alone appeals the denial of qualified immunity.
Before reaching the merits, we must determine whether we have appellate jurisdiction in this interlocutory appeal. Coleman claims that the order denying qualified immunity to Ellis was an interlocutory order, based on the sufficiency of the evidence, which is not appealable. We disagree.
District court orders denying summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity are immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine, notwithstanding their interlocutory character, when based on a conclusion of law. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817-18, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). In contrast, such orders are not immediately appealable if they are based on sufficiency of the evidence. See Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, ----, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 2156, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). Therefore, orders denying qualified immunity are immediately appealable only if they are predicated on pure conclusions of law, and not if a "genuine issue of material fact" precludes summary judgment on the question of qualified immunity. We reject Coleman's assertion that the instant case falls in the latter category.
The Supreme Court has recently clarified this distinction in Behrens v. Pelletier, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 834, 133 L.Ed.2d 773 (1996), explaining that the existence of a genuine issue of material fact does not necessarily preclude immediate appeal of an order denying qualified immunity. Insofar as the district court order determines a question of law, the Court held, the denial of qualified immunity is appealable, notwithstanding the existence of a genuine issue of material fact. "Johnson permits petitioner to claim on appeal that all of the conduct which the District Court deemed sufficiently supported for purposes of summary judgment met the Harlow standard of 'objective legal reasonableness.' " Id. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 842; see also Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) (); accord Hare v. City of Corinth, 74 F.3d 633, 638 (5th Cir.1996) (en banc).
Assumed facts are treated as undisputed facts in this analysis. In the aftermath of Jones and Behrens, we retain interlocutory jurisdiction to "take, as given, the facts that the district court assumed when it denied summary judgment," Jones, 515 U.S. at 319, 115 S.Ct. at 2159, and to determine whether those facts are sufficient to state a claim under clearly established law, Nerren v. Livingston Police Dep't, 86 F.3d 469, 472 (5th Cir.1996); Cantu v. Rocha, 77 F.3d 795, 802-03 (5th Cir.1996). "Denial of summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity is immediately appealable to the extent that the question on appeal is whether the undisputed facts amount to a violation of clearly established law." Kelly v. Foti, 77 F.3d 819, 821 (5th Cir.1996).
Ellis does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence underlying Coleman's allegations of discrimination. Instead, taking as given the facts assumed by the district court, Ellis claims that she is entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law, because those assumed facts do not constitute a violation of clearly established federal law. Therefore, under the rule of Jones and Behrens, we may exercise appellate jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal, for in doing so we do not decide the sufficiency of the evidence, nor do we decide disputed factual contentions.
We must next identify what facts the district court assumed when it denied summary judgment. This is no easy task in the instant case. Unfortunately, because the court neither entered a written order denying Ellis qualified immunity, nor specified its factual assumptions for the record, we must "undertake a cumbersome review of the record to determine what facts the district court, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, likely assumed." Jones, 515 U.S. at 319, 115 S.Ct. at 2159; accord Behrens, --- U.S. at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 842.
The grounds upon which the district court denied qualified immunity emerge from a close review of the record. Of paramount importance is the fact that the court did not deny summary judgment because a genuine issue of material fact existed concerning the allegations that Ellis intentionally discriminated against Coleman. To the contrary, the court assumed that Hornsby, "from all of the evidence, is the principal active administrator" in the contested employment decisions, whereas Ellis was merely the instrument of his will. As the district court explained:
The evidence suggests, that is before me now and it is clearly not fully developed, that under pressure from her superiors, Ellis bent to his purpose. Whether she bent far enough to be ultimately liable, I have no idea at this stage. It seems clear that under circumstances which are understandably difficult for her, she was caught between an assistant principal and a deputy district superintendent. I believe that the case must continue against those two individuals.
And Ms. Ellis, this just may be one more illustration that no good deed goes unpunished. If you hadn't recommended her in the first place, you wouldn't...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Berry v. Tex. Woman's Univ.
...concluded "individual liability under § 1983 may not be predicated on the vicarious liability doctrine of respondeat superior." 113 F.3d 528, 534 (5th Cir. 1997) (emphasis added). Next, in Doe v. Taylor Indep. Sch. Dist. , the Fifth Circuit stated, "supervisory officials may not be found vi......
-
Manley v. Tex. S. Univ.
...a plaintiff must allege facts showing that he or she was the subject of intentional discrimination. See Coleman v. Houston Independent School Dist., 113 F.3d 528, 533 (5th Cir.1997) ("[A] cause of action for racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts, under § 1981, req......
-
Nichols v. University of Southern Mississippi
...court decides whether the defendant's conduct was objectively reasonable." Sorenson, 134 F.3d at 327 (quoting Coleman v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 113 F.3d 528, 533 (5th Cir.1997) (applying the two-prong test of Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 231-32, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991......
-
Leo v. Trevino
...that was clearly established at the time of the actions complained of. Id.; see Beck, 204 F.3d at 638 (citing Coleman v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 113 F.3d 528, 533 (5th Cir.1997)). A preliminary consideration is whether or not the government official was acting within his discretionary as......