Burns v. Gadsden State Community College
| Decision Date | 15 August 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. 89-7426,89-7426 |
| Citation | 908 F.2d 1512 |
| Parties | 53 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1165, 54 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 40,158, 17 Fed.R.Serv.3d 774, 62 Ed. Law Rep. 41 Gladys King BURNS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GADSDEN STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, and Robert W. Howard, individually and in his capacity as President of Gadsden State Community College, Defendants-Appellees. Gladys King BURNS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GADSDEN STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Joe R. Whatley, Jr., Patricia Fraley, Cooper, Mitch, Crawford, Kuykendall & Whatley, Birmingham, Ala., for plaintiff-appellant.
R. Kent Henslee, John T. Robertson, IV, Henslee, Bradley & Robertson, Gadsden, Ala., for defendants-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, JOHNSON and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants-appellees, Gadsden State Community College and its former President, Dr. Robert Howard, in an age and sex discrimination action brought by Gladys King Burns, plaintiff-appellant. Plaintiff alleged that the defendants discriminated against her on the basis of her age and sex in their refusal to hire her. The court below granted summary judgment, concluding that the plaintiff had failed to establish a prima facie case of either sex or age discrimination. We reverse and remand.
The plaintiff-appellant in this case, Gladys King Burns, applied for the position of Director of Economic Development at Gadsden State Community College in Gadsden, Alabama, in May 1986. A publicly posted announcement of the opening declared that the Director would assume the following responsibilities: developing, directing, and coordinating business and industrial training programs at the College and in the community; establishing credibility between the community and training programs offered by businesses, industries, and governmental and other training agencies; and assisting local and state economic development agencies in the establishment and expansion of business and industry. The position did not involve any classroom teaching responsibilities. The minimum qualifications for the position were listed as (1) a Master's degree in Administration or a related area, advanced degree preferred; (2) five years administrative experience; (3) five years industrial work experience; and (4) three years teaching experience. The Position Announcement stated that those applicants already employed at the College would be given preference.
Burns' resume and job application indicated that she was a fifty-nine year old woman who held a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Planning from the University of Alabama. She had eighteen years of teaching experience, four years of college administrative experience, and six years of experience in business administration. She had worked as owner/manager of a retail store in Gadsden and as director of staff at a real estate business. Burns' resume also indicated that she was born and reared in Gadsden and that she maintained close ties to the community.
The defendant Robert Howard was president of Gadsden State Community College at the time the Director position came open and was responsible for hiring someone to fill the position. (Howard deposition). After receiving a number of applications for the position, and after interviewing some of the applicants, Howard hired Bryan Stone. (Howard deposition). Stone was a male applicant who was younger than Burns. He had held a similar position at Alabama Technical College (of which Howard had been President, and which in 1985 became part of Gadsden State Community College) and was a "known quality" [sic] to Howard. (Howard affidavit; Stone affidavit).
Burns subsequently filed a complaint against the College and Dr. Howard, alleging age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 621, et seq., and sex discrimination in violation of 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. She later brought a second complaint against both defendants, alleging sex discrimination in violation of Title VII. The Title VII complaint arose from the same facts as were involved in the first complaint, and the district court subsequently consolidated the two cases.
Defendants filed a motion seeking summary judgment on all of the plaintiff's claims. The motion itself asserted only that the plaintiff's evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to make out a cause of action on any of her claims. 1 Later materials submitted by the defendants clarified their position. Dr. Howard asserted that he did not hire the plaintiff for the Director position because she did not meet the minimum qualifications, i.e. she did not have five years industrial work experience. (Howard affidavit). The district court found that the defendants' assertion that Burns did not meet the minimum requirements for the position was uncontroverted in the record. The court therefore granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment.
On appeal, the plaintiff argues that she submitted sufficient evidence to withstand the defendants' motion for summary judgment. She contends that she submitted evidence to show that she was minimally qualified for the position and that the defendants' stated reason for not hiring her was pretextual. In particular, Burns argues that the district court erred in failing to consider two key affidavits (the "May 1 affidavits"), which were submitted the day after the court's filing deadline. Those two affidavits, she argues, constitute direct evidence of sex discrimination and create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the defendants' asserted reasons for refusing to hire her were pretextual. We agree that the district court erred in refusing to consider the May 1 affidavits. Taking those two affidavits into consideration, we find that the plaintiff has presented sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the defendants discriminated against her on the basis of her gender. We therefore reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment on plaintiff's Title VII and section 1983 claims. We remand for the district court to reconsider, in light of the May 1 affidavits, the defendants' motion for summary judgment on the ADEA claim.
To place our discussion of the May 1 affidavits in context, it is necessary to review briefly the events that transpired in the court below. The defendants filed a "bare-bones" motion for summary judgment on March 30, 1989. This motion, filed without any accompanying documentary evidence or legal argument, asserted that there were no disputes of material fact and that the defendants were entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law. The district court framed a simultaneous submission schedule that gave both parties twenty days, until April 20, to submit briefs and materials in support of or in opposition to the motion for summary judgment. The defendants did not file any support for their motion until the last possible day, April 20.
Plaintiff filed a response to the motion for summary judgment on April 14, in which she complained that she was having difficulty in responding to the defendants' motion since she did not know the facts and legal theories upon which the motion was based. On April 20, the plaintiff sought a revision of the submission schedule, advising the court that she had had no opportunity to respond to the materials submitted by the defendants. The district court, apparently recognizing the plaintiff's difficulty, allowed her five extra days, until April 28, to respond to the defendants' brief and evidence. On April 27, the plaintiff informed the district court by letter that the defendants had not yet responded to plaintiff's second and third interrogatories, served on January 6, 1989, and March 2, 1989. The court had previously issued an order to compel the answers to the second interrogatories. The plaintiff asked the court to delay hearing the defendants' motion for summary judgment until the defendants answered the interrogatories and the plaintiff was afforded an opportunity to respond adequately.
On April 28, the last day plaintiff had to respond, she submitted a brief in opposition to the motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff presented her legal arguments opposing summary judgment on the merits and again argued that summary judgment was premature. On May 1, the plaintiff filed the affidavits of Gerald and Callie Waldrop, two employees of Gadsden State Community College. Gerald Waldrop asserted that Dr. Howard had declared, in the context of a discussion regarding filling more Dean's positions with women and blacks, that "no woman would be named to a B scheduled job." The position for which the plaintiff applied was a B schedule job. Callie Waldrop asserted in her affidavit that there had been a series of instances at the College in which older and more experienced female employees of the College had been denied administrative positions in favor of younger males.
The district court subsequently entered summary judgment in favor of the defendants, finding that the plaintiff had failed to sufficiently controvert the defendants' assertion that plaintiff was unqualified for the Director position. The court expressly declined to consider the Waldrop affidavits. 2 Plaintiff filed a motion for reconsideration of the judgment, requesting again that the court consider the Waldrop affidavits. Plaintiff pointed out to the district court that Rule 56(c) allows a nonmovant at least 10 days to respond to a motion for summary judgment and that she did not receive 10 days to respond to the supporting materials submitted by the defendant. The district court refused to reconsider its judgment. 3
Rule 56(c) provides in relevant part: ...
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