Sandoval v. Boulder Regional Communications, No. 02-1226.
| Decision Date | 02 November 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-1226. |
| Citation | 388 F.3d 1312 |
| Parties | Willie E. SANDOVAL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOULDER REGIONAL COMMUNICATIONS CENTER, (BRCC); George Epp, in his personal and official capacities as Sheriff for the County of Boulder and Member of the BRCC Executive Board and as an agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Bruce Goodman, in his personal and official capacities as Chief of Police for the City of Louisville, Colorado and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Lawrence Donner, in his personal and official capacities as Chief of the City of Boulder Fire Department and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Leo Carillo, in his personal and official capacities as Chief of Police for the City of Lafayette, Colorado and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Michael Osmun, in his personal and official capacities as Chief of the Allens Park, Colorado Fire Department and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Mark Beckner, in his personal and official capacities as Chief of Police for the City of Boulder, Colorado, and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Thomas Koby, in his official capacity as Chief of Police for the City of Boulder and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; Bruce Mygatt, in his official capacity as Chief of the Boulder County Rural Fire Department and Member of the BRCC Executive Committee and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants; William McCaa, in his official capacity for the Boulder County Sheriff's Department and as agent and principal for all other named Defendants, Defendants, The City of Boulder, Colorado, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, Richard P. Matsch, J.
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John W. McKendree (Elizabeth Kelly with him on the briefs), Law Offices of John W. McKendree, Denver, CO, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Jonathan W. Rauchway (Andrew M. Low and Janet A. Savage with him on the brief), Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP, Denver, CO, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before EBEL, Circuit Judge, BRORBY, Senior Circuit Judge, and MURPHY, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff-Appellant Willie E. Sandoval, a Hispanic woman of Mexican descent, brought this current action alleging workplace discrimination on the basis of sex, race, and national origin against the City of Boulder, Colorado, Boulder County, the Boulder Regional Communications Center, and various top officials of the law enforcement and fire safety agencies in the Boulder region. Sandoval was a long-time employee of the Boulder Police Department, where she worked in the Boulder Regional Communications Center ("BRCC") run jointly by the City and County of Boulder, which handled 9-1-1 emergency calls. She was eventually appointed to lead the BRCC, but after the BRCC was reorganized as a joint operation that included several additional regional law enforcement and fire departments, her expectation that she would be appointed by the new Executive Committee overseeing the BRCC to the position of Executive Director was not fulfilled. Sandoval's working relationships with the members of the BRCC Executive Committee and other BRCC staff worsened over time, and she ultimately filed suit in the District of Colorado, seeking relief under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, 1985(3), 1986, and 2000e, et seq. (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), 29 U.S.C. § 206(d) (the Equal Pay Act), and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, as well as raising a variety of state claims.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of all defendants on all of Sandoval's claims, after which Sandoval settled her claims with all defendants save the City of Boulder. She now appeals the district court's entry of summary judgment as to the City. Because Sandoval has not pointed to any genuine issues of material fact that might show she suffered unlawful discrimination attributable to the City of Boulder, we AFFIRM.
The City of Boulder ("City") first hired Willie Sandoval as a police department dispatcher in 1981 and assigned her to the BRCC, which handled 9-1-1 and dispatch services for the City, the Boulder County Sheriff, and other public safety agencies in Boulder County. At that time, the BRCC was operated jointly by the City's Police Department and the County Sheriff's Office, but Sandoval remained a City employee throughout her tenure at the BRCC. In 1991, Sandoval was promoted to the position of supervisor at the BRCC.
In early 1995, the City and the County agreed with several of the smaller municipalities in Boulder County to use an Intergovernmental Agreement ("IGA") pursuant to Section 29-1-203 of the Colorado Revised Statutes in order to create a new entity to run the BRCC. In July of that same year, before the new IGA went into effect, the incumbent Director of the BRCC resigned. Boulder City Police Chief Tom Koby and Boulder County Sheriff George Epp, who still had control over BRCC personnel issues pending the conclusion of the new IGA, decided to appoint Sandoval as the Director of the BRCC. Koby and Epp's decision to appoint Sandoval met resistance, however, from the police chiefs for the cities of Louisville and Lafayette, who were concerned that Sandoval lacked the technical skills and knowledge of the budget process necessary to be successful in the position of Director. While the Louisville and Lafayette police chiefs did not at that point have any official veto power over Koby's and Epp's decisions, the dissenters were slated to be on the newly-established Executive Committee (EC) that would govern the BRCC and have the power to appoint the BRCC's Executive Director once the IGA went into effect. Koby and Epp agreed with the future EC members that they would appoint a former BRCC director, Bill McCaa, as "Acting Director" of the BRCC. McCaa's task was to mentor Sandoval in the administrative and technical matters with which she was less familiar. There was a dispute below about what Sandoval's position was at this time, with some evidence indicating she was titled as the "Assistant Director," while Sandoval insisted she retained the position of "Director." On appeal, the City assumes for the sake of argument that Sandoval's title from July 1995 was "Director."
In March of 1996, the new IGA went into effect, and the BRCC came under the control of the seven-member Executive Committee which was staffed by the heads of the various public safety agencies that were the signatories to the IGA. The arrangement placing McCaa as Sandoval's mentor continued for another 14 months after the IGA entered into force.
The IGA specified that the Executive Committee would hire and supervise the Executive Director of the BRCC.1 All other staff working at the BRCC remained employees of their respective municipal agencies but were effectively "seconded" or assigned to the BRCC through those agencies' contract with the BRCC. Although the BRCC technically only ever had one employee—the Executive Director, hired on an "at will" basis by the EC and paid a salary drawn from BRCC funds—the EC was also given the authority to terminate lower-ranking BRCC staff members' assignments to the Center and to send such assigned staff members back to their home agencies. Since all such staff members were officially employed and paid by their respective home agencies, however, the EC's control over the staff members' tenure with the BRCC did not translate into the power to actually hire or fire anyone other than the BRCC Executive Director.
In the year following the IGA's entry into force, Sandoval claims that she was assured multiple times by Boulder City Police Chief Koby and by McCaa that she would assume the position of BRCC Executive Director once McCaa's mentoring assignment was completed. However, when faced with McCaa's impending retirement, the BRCC Executive Committee decided in May of 1997, over Chief Koby's objections, to conduct a nation-wide search for a new Director.
The search for the new BRCC Executive Director proceeded in four stages. Of the 176 applications received, 68 met the minimum qualifications. Those applications were then reviewed by four of the EC members and scored according to nine experience-related criteria, resulting in a surviving applicant pool of 21 people. After a round of phone interviews, the field was narrowed yet again to eight candidates, one of whom was Sandoval. After two applicants withdrew, the remaining six candidates were then interviewed in person both by the EC members and by a second ad hoc panel of the "users" of the BRCC's services who possessed special technical and operational expertise. Sandoval alleges that she likely did not get a fair appraisal from one of the EC members because he had previously expressed reluctance to hire a woman to serve as BRCC Director. She also alleges that two members of the EC made insensitive and apparently sexist remarks during her interview. At the same time, Sandoval concedes that she performed poorly in both interviews, and the interviewers' score sheets comparing the candidates indicate that Sandoval was consistently ranked fourth or fifth by the EC members and third or fourth by the members of the "users" panel.
In spite of Koby's advocacy on her behalf, Sandoval was not among the three finalists considered by the Executive Committee, and she was not selected to be the new Executive Director of the BRCC. The position was instead given to Mike Brown, a white male, who began his tenure in March of 1998. Sandoval was...
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