Conward v. Cambridge School Committee

• Citation: 171 F.3d 12
• Decision Date: 02 February 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-1495,98-1495
• Parties: 80 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 261, 75 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,839, 133 Ed. Law Rep. 367 Thomas CONWARD, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. The CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, et al., Defendants, Appellees. . Heard
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

Page 12

171 F.3d 12

80 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 261,

75 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,839, 133 Ed. Law Rep. 367

Thomas CONWARD, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. The CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 98-1495.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Feb. 2, 1999.

Decided March 19, 1999.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied April

14, 1999.

Joel P. Suttenberg for appellant.

Joseph W. Ambash, with whom Gerald M. Slater and Day, Berry & Howard LLP were on brief, for appellees.

Before SELYA and STAHL, Circuit Judges, and SHADUR, ^* Senior District Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This case involves the discharge of a tenured public school teacher for unbecoming conduct (which the superintendent of schools reasonably classified as sexual harassment). The ousted docent, plaintiff-appellant Thomas Conward, sued the Cambridge School Committee and the superintendent, Mary Lou McGrath, asseverating, inter alia, that they had meted out discriminatorily harsh discipline because of his race (Conward is an African American), and had violated both the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause. The district court granted summary judgment in the defendants' favor. See Conward v. Cambridge Sch. Comm., No. 96-11087-GAO, 1998 WL 151248 (D.Mass. Mar.24, 1998). We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Applying conventional summary judgment jurisprudence, see, e.g., National Amusements, Inc. v. Town of Dedham, 43 F.3d 731, 735 (1st Cir.1995), we sketch the events surrounding Conward's ouster in the light most flattering to his cause, consistent with record support.

The School Committee employed the appellant as a high-school teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), Cambridge, Massachusetts, for twenty-two years. In that time, he achieved tenure as a "professional teacher." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 71, § 41. On September 22, 1994, while supervising a study hall, the appellant handed a female student a document entitled "Application for a Piece of Ass" (the Application). He says that, having read only the title, he tendered the paper as an example of improper language because, moments earlier, the student had spelled out an expletive. The appellant concedes that, had he perused the document fully, he would have found it indecent--the body of the Application comprised a series of lewd questions written in a style emulating a standard employment application--and would not have given it to a teenage girl.

Two days after this incident, the appellant received a letter from McGrath suspending him temporarily, albeit with pay. The letter did not describe the reason for his suspension. On September 28, McGrath wrote another letter requesting the appellant to meet with her on September 30 "for purposes of an investigation concerning your conduct as a teacher." She advised the appellant that he could invite a lawyer and/or a union representative to accompany him.

The appellant belonged to the Cambridge Teachers Association (CTA), the union that represented the relevant bargaining unit. He attended the September 30 session accompanied by Joseph Sullivan, an attorney who doubled in brass as president of the CTA. Immediately prior thereto, Sullivan learned from McGrath's secretary that both the meeting and the earlier suspension stemmed from the Application incident.

When the session began, McGrath informed the appellant that he would be charged with conduct unbecoming a teacher for having passed the Application to a female student. McGrath then showed the appellant statements made by several students describing the episode. Both McGrath and the School Committee's attorney interrogated the appellant about the incident. He readily admitted that he handed the Application to the pupil and explained that he had read no more than the title at that time. The audience ended on an ominous note: McGrath stated that she would suspend the appellant without pay and in all likelihood would discharge him.

True to her word, McGrath again wrote to the appellant on October 5, suspending him without pay for ten days and notifying him of her intent to terminate his employment due to the Application incident. This communique specifically referenced the appellant's admission of what he had done, and explained his entitlement to a hearing, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 71 §§ 42, 42D, accompanied by counsel if he so chose, "to provide information pertinent to the decision and to [his] status." On October 13, the appellant, through his attorney, waived his right to such a hearing. Seven days later, McGrath forwarded her final epistle, discharging the appellant.

The appellant invoked the collective bargaining agreement, lodged a grievance, and demanded arbitration. The arbitrator found that he had been cashiered for just cause and discerned no mitigating circumstances. The appellant retorted by filing a claim of race discrimination with the appropriate administrative agencies: the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and its state counterpart, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Following the dismissal of his administrative claim for lack of evidence and the issuance of a right-to-sue letter, he commenced a civil action in the federal district court.

The appellant's complaint contained a wide-ranging asseverational array, including claims that the defendants (McGrath and the School Committee) had discriminated against him on the basis of his race, abridged his right to freedom of expression, deprived him of procedural due process, and committed acts that gave rise to multiple state-law causes of action. In the early going, the district court dismissed the state-law counts, and the appellant does not question that ruling here. He concentrates his fire instead on the district court's later grant of summary judgment on the federal claims. It is to that ruling which we now turn.

II. THE SUMMARY JUDGMENT STANDARD

A district court may grant summary judgment only "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). In practice, this rule acts as a firewall to contain the blaze of cases that are so lacking in either factual foundation or legal merit that trial would be a useless exercise. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323-24, 327, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Mesnick v. General Elec. Co., 950 F.2d 816, 822 (1st Cir.1991).

To facilitate this process, we--like the trial court--accept the properly documented facts in the light most favorable to the nonmovant, resolving all genuine conflicts in his favor, while at the same time refusing to indulge rank speculation or unsupportable hyperbole. See Mesnick, 950 F.2d at 822; Medina-Munoz v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 896 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir.1990). Once we have culled the essentials of the tale from the record, we consider independently whether the movant has achieved the Rule 56 benchmark.

III. DISCUSSION

Generically, the appellant claims that the existence of genuine issues of material fact precluded the use of summary judgment in this case. It is against this backdrop that we mull his three remaining claims.

A. Race Discrimination.

The appellant's principal contention is that the lower court too hastily jettisoned his race discrimination claims. Although this contention flies the flags of both 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and Title VII (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.), the subsidiary claims hinge upon identical legal standards. See Ayala-Gerena v. Bristol Myers-Squibb Co., 95 F.3d 86, 95 (1st Cir.1996). Consequently, we discuss them together, without differentiating between the two statutes.

Under the familiar burden-shifting framework applicable to disparate treatment cases in which no direct evidence of discrimination exists, the first step for any plaintiff is to adduce a prima facie case. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973); Mesnick, 950 F.2d at 823. Doing so shifts to the defendant the burden of articulating a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse employment action. See McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802-03, 93 S.Ct. 1817; Mesnick, 950 F.2d at 823. If the defendant accomplishes this task, the plaintiff then reclaims the burden of production. In order to meet this burden, he must offer evidence showing that the defendant's proffered reason is a sham, and that discriminatory animus sparked the defendant's actions. See McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 804-05, 93 S.Ct. 1817; Medina-Munoz, 896 F.2d at 9. Despite these shifting burdens of production, the plaintiff throughout retains the burden of persuasion. See Mesnick, 950 F.2d at 823.

Under this formula, the appellant's prima facie case normally would include a showing that he was a member of a protected class and qualified for the employment he held, that his employer took an adverse employment action against him, and that his position remained open for (or was filled by) a person whose qualifications were similar to his. See St. Mary's Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 506, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993); Smith v. F.W. Morse & Co., 76 F.3d 413, 421 (1st Cir.1996). Here, the parties agree (for purposes of summary judgment) that the appellant satisfied these general requirements. But the district court took a different tack. Because the appellant had based his claim of disparate treatment on his assertion that the defendants treated his misconduct differently (i.e., more harshly) than comparable misconduct of other, similarly situated white teachers, the court followed the lead of the Eleventh Circuit and construed the prima facie case requirement to call for a "show[ing] that [the plaintiff] is a member of a protected class, that he was qualified for the job from which he was fired, and that the...