Davis v. Cintas Corp.

• Decision Date: 07 August 2013
• Docket Number: No. 10–1662.,10–1662.
• Citation: 717 F.3d 476
• Parties: Tanesha DAVIS, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. CINTAS CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

717 F.3d 476

Tanesha DAVIS, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.CINTAS CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee.

No. 10–1662.

United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit.

Argued: Jan. 27, 2012.

Decided and Filed: May 30, 2013.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Aug. 7, 2013.

ARGUED:Judson H. Miner, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C., Chicago, Illinois, for Appellant. Nancy L. Abell, Paul Hastings LLP, Los Angeles, California, for Appellee. P. David Lopez, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae. ON BRIEF:Judson H. Miner, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C., Chicago, Illinois, for Appellant. Nancy L. Abell, Heather A. Morgan, Paul Hastings LLP, Los Angeles, California, for Appellee. P. David Lopez, Jennifer S. Goldstein, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Washington, D.C., Jocelyn Larkin, Impact Fund, Berkeley, California, Lenora M. Lapidus, Dennis D. Parker, Ariela Migdal, Yelena Konanova, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, New York, New York, Kary L. Moss, Michael J. Steinberg, Jessie J. Rossman, American Civil Liberties Union Fund of Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, for Amici Curiae.

Before: BOGGS, ROGERS, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

BOGGS, Circuit Judge.

Tanesha Davis sued Cintas Corporation, individually and on behalf of a class of female job applicants denied employment as entry-level sales representatives. She alleged that Cintas's hiring practices led to gender discrimination, in violation of Title VII, and caused Cintas to reject her application for employment twice. The district court denied Davis's motion for class certification,and ultimately granted summary judgment for Cintas on her individual claims. Davis appeals. We affirm the district court's denial of class certification. We also affirm its grant of summary judgment on her individual disparate-treatment claim arising in 2004 and her disparate-impact claim. However, we reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment for Cintas on Davis's disparate-treatment claim arising in 2003, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I

According to Cintas's promotional materials, service sales representatives are “[t]he # 1 link between our customers and our company operations. The Service Sales Representative is Cintas.” More specifically, the position involves delivering and selling Cintas's wares—“corporate identity uniforms and value-added products”—and providing direct customer service.

Although Cintas is a large corporation with many locations nationwide, its corporate policy is “to run one business in many different cities instead of running many different businesses in different cities.” “[A]ll Cintas operations use the same terminology, use the same forms and paperwork, and ‘run their stores' the same way.” Hiring for the service-sales-representative position is no exception. All Cintas locations use—and used at all times relevant to this claim—the “Meticulous Hiring System.” This policy provides: “No person will be hired in the company until [Cintas has] identified the traits and competencies needed to be successful in the position. The traits and competencies must be documented in a list of ‘must have’ and ‘preferred’ hiring standards for each position.”

For the service-sales-representative position, “Must Haves” include both objective and subjective elements. Objectively, applicants must achieve a minimum score on a standardized test given to all service-sales-representative applicants, have a driver's license and a GED or high-school diploma, and be able to lift forty pounds. Subjectively, applicants must demonstrate customer orientation, sales orientation, integrity, dependability, achievement orientation, flexibility, stress tolerance, openness to differences, tenacity, initiative, persuasiveness, professionalism, compensation compatibility, and a stable employment history. There are also both objective and subjective “Preferreds.” Objectively, Cintas would like candidates to achieve a score between twenty-one and twenty-seven on the Wonderlic–WPT test (a type of intelligence test); subjectively, it seeks candidates who have successful sales experience, successful customer-service experience, and the ability to work without supervision.

Cintas uses a sixteen-step process to determine whether candidates meet these criteria. After Cintas decides that a location needs a service sales representative and posts the job, managers screen applications and resumes. Next, managers conduct screening interviews, using a guide that contains pre-scripted questions, and invite qualified applicants to visit a Cintas location and take pre-employment tests. Managers then collect the applicant's application materials, and administer the Wonderlic–WPT test and the “ePredix SSR Test.” If an applicant scores well enough on these examinations, she receives a “1st In-depth Interview using [Cintas's service-sales-representative] 1st In-depth Interview Guide.” After this first interview, qualified applicants go on a “route ride,” and Cintas “[c]ollect[s] paperwork,” including tax forms and driving records. If the applicant completes her “route ride” successfully, she receives a “2nd In-depth Interview using [Cintas's service-sales-representative] 2nd In-depth Interview Guide.” The applicant's last step is a final interview, often with a Location's general manager. Management then confers with everyone involved in the interview process, performs a criminal background check, a drug screening, a driving-record and credit-record check, contacts the applicant's references, and finally determines whether to offer the candidate a job.

Although this process has well-defined steps, set as a matter of corporate policy, individual managers at different locations ultimately make the hiring decisions, based on local needs. Cintas's national hiring profile states that “[a]dditional Preferreds can be added to accommodate the needs of the Division, Group, or Location.” Some locations, for instance, emphasized sales experience over customer-service experience because of intense market competition, while others preferred the inverse because difficult economic conditions made keeping existing customers crucial.

Service sales representatives were historically male. From June 1999 to October 2006, more than ninety percent of the managers charged with hiring service sales representatives were male. This overwhelmingly male group overwhelmingly hired males. After Cintas implemented the Meticulous Hiring System in 2003, however, female hiring rose dramatically. Between 1999 and 2002, the percentage of women hired for the service-sales-representative position never rose above seven percent. In 2003, the year corporate-level management instructed other managers to “put the myth that females cannot be SSRs out of [their] mind and hire more women SSRs,” and implemented the Meticulous Hiring System, that number rose to 7.8 percent. In 2004, it rose to 10.9 percent, and in 2005 it rose to 20.8 percent.

Anecdotal accounts support the data suggesting that Cintas managers saw the service-sales-representative position as a man's position. According to a former manager, who was male, other managers at one Cintas location opined that women could not handle the responsibilities of a service sales representative. Sharon Punch–Johnson, a female applicant who was ultimately rejected, averred that a manager asked whether her husband would be comfortable with his wife working predominantly with males. In her deposition, Kristi Clement Williams, another female applicant, claimed that a Cintas manager suggested that females might not be comfortable in the service-sales-representative position because the job required going into men's locker rooms, and depended on interactions with customers in “a predominantly male environment.” Still another female applicant claimed in a declaration that a Cintas manager bluntly told her: “Cintas preferred to hire men in [the service-sales-representative] position[ ].”

Tanesha Davis, then a store manager for LensCrafters, first applied for a service-sales-representative position at Cintas's Franklin, Wisconsin location, Location 447, in 2003. Human–Resources Manager Christine Richards conducted a screening interview and took notes. Although she does not now recall the interview, Richards's contemporaneous notes suggest that she rejected Davis at the screening stage because Davis said that she disliked having to sell products that she considered overpriced, and that she wanted to continue working another job part-time. Richards, of course, is adamant that she did not reject Davis because of her race or gender. Rather, Richards claims, Davis was simply not the best-qualified applicant for Location 447's available service-sales-representative position. Approximately three months before Davis applied, Location 447 had hired another female service sales representative. It hired one male service sales representative just before Davis applied, and another two while her application was pending.

Davis applied again one year later. This time, she advanced further into the hiring process. She passed her initial screening interview, even though she expressed concerns about working in bad weather, and achieved the second highest score recorded during 2003 and 2004 on one of Cintas's standardized tests. Matt Presendofer, the manager who observed Davis's route ride, reported that “she did a lot of things well out on the route.” Presendofer even opined that, “from a customer standpoint ... and from a sales standpoint[ ] [s]he had all the ... attributes we wanted for a SSR candidate.” He expressed concerns, however, about her level of physical energy and her efficiency. As in 2003, Cintas ultimately chose not to hire Davis. Eight days after Davis's route ride in 2004, Location 447 hired another woman. While her 2004 application was pending Cintas hired three male service sales representatives, and hired a fourth...