Brandt v. Fitzpatrick
| Decision Date | 22 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-1174,19-1174 |
| Citation | 957 F.3d 67 |
| Parties | Christopher O. BRANDT, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Joseph FITZPATRICK, in his official capacity as the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections; Scott Landry, Defendants, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Cynthia A. Dill for appellant.
Kelly L. Morrell, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Susan P. Herman, Deputy Attorney General, were on brief, for appellees.
Before Howard, Chief Judge, Torruella and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
Corrections Officer Christopher O. Brandt left his job at the Maine Department of Corrections ("MDOC") for a spot in the federal prison system. When the federal job didn't work out, Brandt reapplied for his old job, but MDOC wouldn't take him back. He sued MDOC for race discrimination and retaliation, but he lost. He now appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment against him. In a nutshell, since he lacked the proof needed to reach trial, we affirm.
Brandt is a navy veteran who's spent most of his career providing security for the federal government, including seven years as a corrections officer in New York and seven as a special agent at the Department of State. Then, he moved to Maine. From late 2012 through January 2014, he worked for the MDOC as a state corrections officer at the Maine Correctional Center ("MCC") in Windham. But Brandt's sights were trained elsewhere; throughout his two-year stint as a state prison guard, he applied every few months to positions on MDOC's "probation side" — to be a probation officer or probation officer assistant. If he'd gotten the job, Brandt would have been MDOC's only African American probation officer. But he had no such success. Brandt met the minimum qualifications and interviewed for each open spot,2 but the probation-side brass turned him down each time.
Defendant Scott Landry was among the deciders. At the time, he was the administrator in charge of MDOC region 2. Along with two other panelists, Landry interviewed Brandt for two probation officer slots in January 2013. But, concerned that Brandt described himself as a rigid "black and white" thinker (since probation officers often face complex human situations requiring creative thinking) and had no experience as a probation officer (meaning he'd need "close supervision and support" as he began the job), they picked two other (non-black) candidates, a former federal probation officer and an MDOC probation officer assistant, instead.
That spring (on April 12, 2013), Brandt wrote Joseph Ponte, then Commissioner of the MDOC (and not a party here), to express concerns about the MDOC hiring process. The letter began:
Then came the "but." Switching gears, Brandt went on: "In my opinion, the ‘good ole boy network’ that you have worked so hard to eliminate thrives in other divisions within the [MDOC]," meaning "the Division of Probation and Parole." According to Brandt, the hirers there had told him he "did not meet the criteria" for a probation spot, which Brandt found "odd" given his master's degree, experience in the federal system, and "vast knowledge, skills[,] and abilities." That brought him to his point:
Commissioner Ponte convened a conference call with the regional administrators to discuss Brandt's letter. Landry was on the call. Somehow — either from the call or through the grapevine — Landry learned around that time that Brandt had made the complaint. But as Landry told it in his deposition, no one on the call mentioned race or discrimination. And at the time, Landry hadn't seen the letter or heard that it raised concerns about diversity. Instead, says Landry, Ponte broached only whether "the probation side of the house was giving fair consideration" to applicants from the prison side. In any case, Landry doesn't recall if the talk prompted any changes to the hiring process.
Nothing changed for Brandt, anyway. After sending the letter, in August 2013, he applied for two more probation spots without success. By that time, Landry had moved to his current role as the Warden of MCC and no longer took part in probation officer hiring. But just as before, the interview panelists passed over Brandt to select a candidate who was already working as a probation officer assistant for MDOC and had past experience as a child protective caseworker. MDOC didn't fill the other position, which was "placed on hold" indefinitely.
On November 20, 2013, Brandt filed a formal complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission (the "MHRC") alleging that MDOC had discriminated against him based on his age and race.
A month later — after one more fruitless interview with MDOC probation — Brandt recognized that (in his words) he "was having no luck advancing" within MDOC, "felt discriminated against by the Probation Division," and thought he'd have better prospects for "advancement" if he went back to the feds. So he applied to work as a federal corrections officer at the Federal Correctional Institution in Berlin, New Hampshire. Given his tenure as a federal corrections officer in New York years before, he was confident he'd get the job; and sure enough, in mid-December, FCI Berlin called to offer him the slot. According to Brandt, he was slated to start there in early February 2014. So just before the new year, he resigned from the MCC, effective January 8.
But that's when things really went south. In mid-January, Berlin backtracked, telling Brandt that due to a budget sequestration, the prison couldn't hire any new employees until further notice. With his federal job up in the air, Brandt turned back to MDOC; over the next four months, he applied to four open positions with the department, including his old position at MCC. But MDOC wouldn't take him back. From the get-go, Landry (now Warden of MCC) and his deputy, Gary LaPlante, suspected that Brandt intended to use MCC as temporary safety net. When Brandt applied for rehire in late February, LaPlante emailed Landry that when he "recently spoke to [Brandt,] it sounded like he was going back to the [federal] Bureau of Prisons." (A few weeks prior, right after LaPlante interviewed Brandt for another MCC position, they discussed Brandt's application to FCI Berlin and Brandt told LaPlante there was a "hold up" due to a hiring freeze). Under the circumstances — Brandt had "just left," after all — Landry feared he "would [ ] come back, stay for a short time, and then leave again." Landry Dep. at 82.
So when LaPlante reported he caught Brandt in a lie, that was all it took.
Here's how it happened. Given his concerns about Brandt's commitment, Landry asked Brandt's old manager, Valerie Norman, to conduct an informal interview with him to ask about "his reason for his interest in coming back to work for the [MDOC]." During the interview, on March 11, Brandt told Norman that the job with FCI Berlin "fell through due to a hiring freeze" and that he wanted to return to MDOC and work toward a promotion, which she passed on to Landry and LaPlante the next day. LaPlante doubted Brandt's explanation because (as the parties agree) "based on his contacts in the correctional field," he was "under the impression that FCI Berlin was not under a hiring freeze."3 So he did some sleuthing. When he got Norman's email, LaPlante called an HR rep at Berlin, who told him that Berlin was not under a hiring freeze, and that even when the federal hiring freeze was in effect, Berlin had a waiver due to a staffing shortage at that facility. LaPlante also asked about Brandt's job application, but the staffer was "evasive" about that (saying that "she could not get into those matters, or something to that effect"). LaPlante Dep. at 37. Anyway, based on that phone call, LaPlante (as the parties also agree) "believed that Brandt had lied" about there being a Berlin hiring freeze, and sent an email to Landry reporting what he'd learned from Berlin HR and recommending that Brandt not be rehired.
Considering LaPlante's report, Landry concluded that Brandt had been "untruthful" about the Berlin situation and decided to reject his application for reinstatement. He doesn't recall whom he hired instead.
As it turns out, there was indeed a federal hiring freeze (and had been for three years) until February 10, 2014, when Attorney General Eric Holder lifted it. To be clear, the freeze was lifted after FCI Berlin notified Brandt he couldn't start work and before LaPlante called Berlin HR to fact-check Brandt's story. The record doesn't clear up whether Berlin ever did have a "waiver," as LaPlante's source reported. But since someone at Berlin told Brandt the hiring freeze prevented the prison from taking him on board, we'll assume (drawing all reasonable inferences in Brandt's favor as we must) that Berlin was indeed subject to the freeze. In other words, despite what the...
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