E.E.O.C. v. Southwestern Bell Telephone, L.P.

• Decision Date: 19 December 2008
• Docket Number: No. 08-1096.,08-1096.
• Citation: 550 F.3d 704
• Parties: EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Appellee, v. SOUTHWESTERN BELL TELEPHONE, L.P., doing business as AT & T Southwest and SBC Communications, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

550 F.3d 704

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Appellee, v. SOUTHWESTERN BELL TELEPHONE, L.P., doing business as AT & T Southwest and SBC Communications, Appellant.

No. 08-1096.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: October 16, 2008.

Filed: December 19, 2008.

William A. Cash, Jr., Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Little Rock, AR, Anne Noel Occhialino, Susan Ruth Oxford, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Washington, DC, Darin B. Tuggle, Faye A. Williams, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Memphis, TN, for Appellee.

Byron Freeland, Mitchell & Williams, Jeffrey L. Spillyards, Mitchell & Williams, Little Rock, AR, for Appellant.

Before GRUENDER, BEAM and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.

GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") filed suit against Southwestern Bell Telephone, L.P., doing business as AT & T Southwest and SBC Communications ("AT & T"), for terminating the employment of Jose Gonzalez and Glenn Owen in violation of Title VII. AT & T filed a motion for summary judgment, which the district court¹ denied. After the EEOC presented its evidence at trial, AT & T filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a), which the district court also denied. AT & T renewed the Rule 50(a) motion at the end of its presentation of evidence. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the EEOC. AT & T failed to renew its motion for judgment as a matter of law after the entry of judgment pursuant to Rule 50(b). AT & T appeals the denial of its motion for summary judgment and its Rule 50(a) motion for judgment as a matter of law. We conclude that we cannot consider the merits of AT & T's appeal.

I. BACKGROUND

Gonzalez and Owen are Jehovah's Witnesses who were employed by AT & T as customer service technicians ("CSTs"). CSTs install new telephone and high-speed internet lines and respond to customer complaints about telephone outages. Under the collective bargaining agreement, AT & T assigns vacation time by seniority and allows it only if the workload permits. While Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate holidays, every year they hold three-day conventions throughout the country. Jehovah's Witnesses are encouraged to attend the convention with their congregations, but no one takes attendance and no doctrine requires attendance.

After the CSTs signed up for vacation time for the 2005 calendar year, Gonzalez and Owen learned that their convention would be held Friday, July 15, through Sunday, July 17. Their supervisor allowed them to switch workdays with other CSTs so that they could both attend the convention on Saturday, July 16, but both were still scheduled to work on Friday, July 15. After many discussions, their supervisor continued to refuse to allow Gonzalez and Owen to take a vacation day on July 15 and ultimately issued a "work directive" ordering them to report to work on July 15. Gonzalez and Owen failed to report to work on July 15 because they were attending the conference, and AT & T ultimately fired them for "misconduct; job abandonment; insubordination; and failure to follow a work directive."

Gonzalez and Owen filed charges of discrimination with the EEOC alleging that AT & T terminated their employment in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a), which prohibits an employer from "discharg[ing] any individual ... because of such individual's ... religion." The EEOC investigated the charges and found probable cause that AT & T failed to reasonably accommodate Gonzalez and Owen's religious beliefs. The EEOC then filed this suit on behalf of Gonzalez and Owen, claiming that AT & T engaged in unlawful employment practices by denying them a reasonable accommodation of their sincerely held religious beliefs and terminating their employment because of their religious beliefs. The EEOC sought a permanent injunction enjoining AT & T from violating Title VII as well as reinstatement, back pay, front pay and compensatory damages for Gonzalez and Owen.

AT & T moved for summary judgment, arguing that, as a matter of law, Gonzalez and Owen's absence from work on July 15 caused AT & T an undue hardship, and, therefore, allowing them to take a vacation day was not a reasonable accommodation. Because Gonzalez and Owen were not at work, AT & T had to "close the clock," or stop scheduling maintenance and repairs for the same day, at 10:00 a.m., long before the preferred 2:00 p.m. closing time, and it also had to pay extra overtime to the employees working that day. The district court denied AT & T's motion for summary judgment, declaring that AT & T "failed to show that there is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether accommodating Owen's and Gonzalez's religious beliefs would have caused it to suffer more than a de minimis hardship." The case proceeded to trial.

At the close of the EEOC's evidence, AT & T moved for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(a), claiming that it was entitled to judgment in its favor on the issue of undue hardship and relying on the same argument that it made in its motion for summary judgment. The district court rejected AT & T's argument, concluding that it had "already ruled on that on summary judgment, and [it was] going to stick with the ruling [it] made on the summary judgment." In the alternative, AT & T argued that no reasonable jury could conclude that Gonzalez and Owen mitigated their damages. The district court also rejected this argument. Finally, AT & T argued that Gonzalez and Owen did not have a sincerely held religious belief that required attendance at the conference on July 15. The district court rejected that argument as well and denied AT & T's Rule 50(a) motion. At the end of AT & T's presentation of evidence, before the case went to the jury, AT & T renewed its motion for judgment as a matter of law, saying "I would assume since we recently discussed those, the Court doesn't want to hear me reiterate those [arguments]." The district court denied AT & T's motion saying:

I don't want to hear any more argument on it. We did discuss it recently and I remember very vividly all of your arguments, and, for the most part, they're things that we studied fairly recently in the motion for summary judgment. So for my purposes, I don't need them, and I don't think you need to do that to preserve your record. I think it's as well preserved as it can be. And I'm denying your motion again.

The jury found in favor of the EEOC, awarding Gonzalez $396,000 and Owen $390,000 in damages based on their lost wages, benefits and compensatory damages. The district court then ordered AT & T to reinstate Gonzalez and Owen and awarded them front pay until the date of reinstatement. AT & T failed to renew its motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b) within ten days of the entry of judgment.

AT & T now appeals the denials of its motion for summary judgment and its Rule 50(a) motion for judgment as a matter of law. AT & T argues that, as a matter of law, Gonzalez and Owen did not hold a sincere religious belief requiring attendance at the conference on July 15-17, that the award of back pay and front pay should be reversed based on Gonzalez and Owen's failure to mitigate their damages, and that the accommodation of allowing Gonzalez and Owen to take a vacation day constituted an undue burden. The EEOC, however, argues that we cannot consider AT & T's arguments on appeal because AT & T failed to renew its motion for judgment as a matter of law after the entry of judgment pursuant to Rule 50(b).

II. DISCUSSION

AT & T first appeals the district court's denial of its motion for summary judgment. We will not review a district court's denial of a motion for summary judgment after a trial on the merits. See Eaddy v. Yancey, 317 F.3d 914, 916 (8th Cir.2003) ("Even a cursory review of precedent in this Circuit reveals that we do not review a denial of a summary judgment motion after a full trial on the merits."); see also Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Golden Triangle, 121 F.3d 351, 354 (8th Cir.1997) ("[W]e are unable to review the denied summary judgment motion because Met Life had a full and fair opportunity to litigate its position before a jury."). Therefore, because the parties had a full trial on the merits, we will not review the district court's decision to deny AT & T's motion for summary judgment.

AT & T next appeals the denials of its motion for judgment as a matter or law made at the close of the EEOC's case-in-chief and renewed prior to submitting the case to the jury. Rule 50(a)(1) states:

[i]f a party has been fully heard on an issue during a jury trial and the court finds that a reasonable jury would not have a legally sufficient evidentiary basis to find for the party on that issue, the court may: (A) resolve the issue against the party; and (B) grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law against the party on a claim or defense that, under the controlling law, can be maintained or defeated only with a favorable finding on that issue.

According to Rule 50(b), if the district court does not grant the motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(a):

the court is considered to have submitted the action to the jury subject to the court's later deciding the legal questions raised by the motion. No later than 10 days after the entry of judgment ... the movant may file a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law....

It is undisputed that AT & T never filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law after the entry of judgment pursuant to Rule 50(b). The Supreme Court has held that when a party fails to file a motion under Rule 50(b), "there [is] no basis for review of [the party's] sufficiency of the evidence challenge in the Court of Appeals." Unitherm Food Sys., Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 U.S. 394, 407, 126 S.Ct. 980, 163 L.Ed.2d 974 (2006).

In Unitherm, Unitherm filed suit against Swift-Eckrich, doing business as...