Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 23 August 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-15264.,03-15264.
• Citation: 421 F.3d 1169
• Parties: Lilly M. LEDBETTER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. GOODYEAR TIRE AND RUBBER COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

421 F.3d 1169

Lilly M. LEDBETTER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. GOODYEAR TIRE AND RUBBER COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 03-15264.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

August 23, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Jay Daniel St. Clair, Kelly H. Estes, Bradley Arant Rose & White, LLP, Birmingham, AL, for Defendant-Appellant.

C. Michael Quinn, Jon Craig Goldfarb, Maury Steven Weiner, Robert L. Wiggins, Jr., Wiggins, Childs, Quinn & Pantazis, P.C., Barry V. Frederick, Lehr, Middlebrooks, Price & Vreeland, Birmingham, AL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court Northern District of Alabama.

Before TJOFLAT, DUBINA and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves a claim brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964¹ by a former salaried employee of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. ("Goodyear"). The employee, Lilly Ledbetter, claims that Goodyear paid her a smaller salary than it paid her male co-workers at Goodyear's Gadsden, Alabama, tire plant because of her sex. Goodyear's position, in addition to denying that sex played any role in the setting of her salary, is that Ledbetter may prevail only if she can prove that unlawful discrimination tainted an annual review of her salary made within 180 days of her filling a charge of discrimination with the EEOC. The question we must decide, therefore, is how Title VII's timely-filing requirement applies in this specie of disparate pay cases — that is, cases involving an employer that annually reviews and re-establishes employee salary levels.

We decline to adopt Goodyear's position definitively, because we need not do so to determine whether Goodyear is entitled to the judgment as a matter of law. All we need to do is examine the last salary decision Goodyear made that affected Ledbetter's pay during the limitations period. We have done that and conclude that no reasonable jury could find that the decision was discriminatorily motivated. We therefore reverse the judgment of the district court denying Goodyear's motion for judgment as a matter of law.

I. Background and the Proceedings in the District Court

A. Background

1. The Gadsden Plant

During the relevant time period, Goodyear's Gadsden plant was divided into several discrete units, called "business centers," each of which was responsible for one of the several stages of the tire production process. The plant included at least four business centers, each managed by a "Business Center Manager" ("BCM"): (1) Rubber Mixing (a.k.a. "Banbury" or the "Mixing Area"), where the rubber was prepared; (2) Component Preparation (a.k.a. "Stock Prep"), where the components for the tires were made; (3) Tire Assembly (a.k.a. the "Tire Room"), where machines were used to press the components into "green," or unfinished, tires; and (4) Curing/Final Finish, where the green tires were cured, painted, trimmed, and inspected before shipment.

These business centers were in some cases further divided into discrete "sections" or "rooms." Tire Assembly, for example, at one point included at least four sections, including the Radial Light Truck section ("RLT"), which assembled larger tires for sport-utility vehicles and light trucks, and the "ARF Room," which assembled smaller radial tires for passenger cars. Within any one section or room, there were normally three or four rotating shifts of floor-level workers and their supervisors.

The machines used in the tire-production process were operated directly by "tire builders" — unionized, hourly workers. The tire builders were then supervised by salaried, nonunion, floor-level managers called "Area Managers." Each Area Manager supervised one shift of tire builders, such that if a section were running four shifts, it would have four Area Managers, one for each shift. These "production teams" — the tire builders and their Area Managers — were supported by unionized maintenance and electrical workers, as well as by various salaried managerial officers and specialists, including "Production Specialists" and "Production Auditors." Directly above the Area Managers in the corporate hierarchy were the BCMs, who were responsible for everyone in their business center, including the tire builders, the maintenance and electrical workers, the Area Managers, and the salaried managerial support staff. Supervision of the entire plant, including at least the four production-oriented business centers described above and a Human Resources Department, fell to a single Plant Manager.

2. The Merit Compensation System

Beginning in the early 1980s, managerial employees' salaries at the Gadsden plant were determined primarily based on a system of annual merit-based raises. The exact details of the system do not warrant extended discussion. Suffice it to say that in the early months of each year, each BCM was charged with recommending² salary increases for the salaried employees under his or her supervision, including the Area Managers. These recommendations were based primarily on each employee's performance in relation to that of other salaried employees in the business center during the previous year (the "performance year"). Business-center-wide performance rankings were calculated based on individual "performance appraisals" that had been completed for, and reviewed with, each employee at the end of the performance year or early in the year following. Using the performance rankings and certain Goodyear guidelines on the size and frequency of merit-based raises, the BCM would complete a merit increase plan, a worksheet detailing the merit increases the BCM recommended for that year. These plans included, for each salaried employee, his or her performance ranking, present salary, and salary range; the date of his or her last increase; the recommended increase for the coming year (in dollars and as a percentage increase over present salary); and the date that the increase would become effective. These plans were then submitted to higher level management for approval. See supra note 1. Thus, each salaried employee at the Gadsden plant had his or her salary reviewed at least once annually by plant management, when the time came for the awarding of merit-based raises.

3. Lilly Ledbetter

Lilly Ledbetter hired in to the Gadsden plaint as a "Supervisor," the precursor to the Area Manager position, on February 5, 1979, at forty years of age. The record discloses very little about the first dozen years of Ledbetter's career. She worked as an Area Manager in several different business centers under several different BCMs. Twice, in 1986 and again in 1989, she was included in general layoffs, one lasting fifteen months. The record does not disclose who, prior to 1992, the other Area Managers in Ledbetter's immediate areas of the plant were, how Ledbetter fared against them in end-of-year performance rankings, or how her salary or the merit-based raises she received compared to theirs.

In early 1992, Ledbetter was selected to be part of the start-up team for the new RLT section of the Tire Assembly business center, which would produce large radial tires for sport utility vehicles and light trucks. From the summer of 1992 until the beginning of 1996, Ledbetter was supervised in RLT by Mike Tucker, who was at first "Team Leader" for the RLT section and, after 1995, BCM for the entire Tire Assembly area. Four Area Managers worked together under Tucker in RLT from 1992 until 1996: Ledbetter, Bill Miller, Jimmy Todd, and Jerry Thompson.

With the sole exception of performance year 1994, Tucker consistently ranked Ledbetter at or near the bottom of her co-workers in terms of performance. In 1993, he ranked her third out of the four Area Managers, and fifth out of six salaried employees, based on her 1992 performance. Tucker suggested, and she received, a 5.28% increase over her existing salary, the largest percentage increase given to any Area Manager, though the smallest in absolute dollars. Jimmy Todd, who was ranked last, received no merit increase.

In planning for the merit increases for 1994, Tucker ranked Ledbetter last among the four RLT Area Managers, and last among the six salaried employees. He proposed that she receive a 5% merit increase, the smallest he proposed.

In 1995, Tucker awarded Ledbetter a substantial increase of 7.85%, to become effective December 1, 1995, based on her performance in 1994. The record does not reflect her exact performance ranking, but the raise she received included a 4% increase styled as an "individual performance award" and a 3.85% increase styled as a "top performance award." According to the compensation guidelines in effect at the time, top performance awards were to be given "[f]or only the highest level of individual performance and contribution in an organization," and to "not more than 30% of the number of salaried associates in an organization." Dual individual performance/top performance awards of the type Ledbetter received were "intended to be used to reward and recognize the uppermost level of top performer."³

Ledbetter was ineligible for a merit increase in 1996 because her 1995 raise became effective December 1, 1995, and the minimum time interval between raises was then thirteen months, meaning that she would not be eligible for another merit increase until January 1, 1997. She was nevertheless ranked against the twenty-three other salaried employees in Tire Assembly, which had been unified under a single BCM, Tucker, in 1995. Tucker ranked Ledbetter twenty-third out of twenty-four salaried employees, and fifteenth out of sixteen Area Managers. Jimmy Todd was ranked twenty-fourth, and both he and the person ranked twenty-second were denied raises.

In March 1996, around the time that Tucker recommended raises for 1995's performance, Ledbetter was transferred to the "ARF room," a section of Tire Assembly that made smaller radial tires for passenger vehicles. Jerry Jones, who replaced...