Gogel v. KIA Motors Mfg. of Ga., Inc.

• Decision Date: 24 September 2018
• Docket Number: No. 16-16850,16-16850
• Citation: 904 F.3d 1226
• Parties: Andrea GOGEL, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. KIA MOTORS MANUFACTURING OF GEORGIA, INC., Defendant - Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

904 F.3d 1226

Andrea GOGEL, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.KIA MOTORS MANUFACTURING OF GEORGIA, INC., Defendant - Appellee.

No. 16-16850

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

September 24, 2018

Meredith J. Carter, M. Carter Law LLC, Smyrna, GA, Lisa Catherine Lambert, Law Office of Lisa C. Lambert, Atlanta, GA, John Lawrence Mays, Mays & Kerr, LLC, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiff - Appellant.

W. Jonathan Martin, II, William Milton Clifton, III, Constangy Brooks Smith & Prophete, LLP, Macon, GA, Joseph M. Murray, Jr., Constangy Brooks Smith & Prophete, LLP, Atlanta, GA, Richard J. Valladares, Greenberg Traurig, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Defendant - Appellee.

Christine Back, Anne Warren King, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Office of General Counsel-Appellate Services, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION.

Carson Hobbs Sullivan, Paul Hastings LLP, WASHINGTON, DC, for Amicus Curiae CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Robert Lawrence Ashe, Jr., Justin P. Gunter, Parker Hudson Rainer & Dobbs, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Amicus Curiae THE ASSOCIATION OF GLOBAL AUTOMAKERS, INC.

Before MARTIN, JULIE CARNES and O’SCANNLAIN,^* Circuit Judges.

MARTIN, Circuit Judge:

Before she was fired in 2011, Andrea Gogel was the manager of the Team Relations Department of Kia Motors Manufacturing of Georgia, Inc., a subsidiary of the Korean Kia Motors Corporation. During her time at Kia, Ms. Gogel heard many complaints about how women and Americans were treated at the Korean-owned company. She experienced similar treatment herself and, in her view, had been denied a promotion because she is a woman and an American. Eventually, Ms. Gogel decided to file an EEOC charge about the discrimination she had suffered.

Soon, another Kia employee, an American woman named Diana Ledbetter, filed her own EEOC charge. After learning of Ms. Ledbetter’s charge, Kia came to believe that Ms. Gogel had "encouraged or even solicited" Ms. Ledbetter to file her charge. Kia says it fired Ms. Gogel for that reason.

Ms. Gogel sued Kia for gender and national origin discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a) & § 2000e-3(a), as well as race and alienage discrimination and retaliation under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of Kia, and Ms. Gogel appealed. After careful review, and with the benefit of oral argument, we reverse the District Court as to Ms. Gogel’s retaliation claims under Title VII and § 1981 and otherwise affirm its ruling.

I. Background

In 2008, Kia hired Ms. Gogel as Team Relations Manager for its new plant in West Point, Georgia.¹ At that time, she reported to Randy Jackson, who was the Director of Human Resources and Administration. Like Ms. Gogel, the head of Kia’s department of Human Resources, Robert Tyler, also reported to Mr. Jackson. There were Korean counterparts, called "coordinators," for each management level position. For most of Ms. Gogel’s time at Kia, Justin Yoo and Kevin Kim were the Korean coordinators for Team Relations and Human Resources.

The "overall purpose" of the Team Relations department was to "support an environment of positive team relations." To that end, Ms. Gogel’s department was charged with developing policies and standards concerning employee behavior. These policies included harassment policies and an EEOC policy. Team Relations also helped employees understand "the rules and guidelines of the workplace" by offering training and development to new employees as well as to Kia’s suppliers. When Ms. Gogel started with Kia, one of the training programs she taught was about compliance with American employment law, particularly Title VII, for Korean expatriates employed at Kia.

Ms. Gogel’s department also conducted investigations into policy violations, including attendance issues and allegations of harassment or discrimination. The exact process for these investigations depended on the seniority of the employees involved as well as the severity of the allegations. At the conclusion of an investigation, Ms. Gogel would provide Mr. Jackson with the relevant facts and sometimes a recommendation. The results of an investigation were reviewed by Kia’s legal department and Mr. Jackson.

In the fall of 2008, Ms. Gogel received a complaint from Diana Ledbetter, a General Affairs Specialist, about an inappropriate relationship between Ledbetter’s supervisor, Ms. Kisha Morris Tarver, and Kia’s president, Byung Mo Ahn. Ms. Ledbetter asked to transfer to the Team Relations department because Ledbetter perceived that Ms. Morris was abusing her position without fear of reprisal in light of her relationship with President Ahn. When Ms. Gogel received Ms. Ledbetter’s complaint, she approached Mr. Jackson for advice on how to appropriately handle the matter, given President Ahn’s senior position and the potential risk the relationship posed to the company. Mr. Jackson told Ms. Gogel she could not investigate Ms. Ledbetter’s complaint. Separately, Mr. Kim, one of the Korean coordinators for Ms. Gogel, asked her to investigate how Ms. Morris was treating other people and whether she falsified her time, but asked her to do so without investigating President Ahn. Mr. Kim indicated Ms. Gogel should keep her investigation "very secret" and not tell Mr. Jackson about it. Ms. Gogel started gathering the information he requested. But a few weeks later, Mr. Kim told her "to stop the investigation, [ ] not gather any more information, and destroy all information" she had collected thus far.

Ms. Ledbetter made other complaints about workplace conduct as well. For example, unlike her male colleagues, she was made to practice saying, "welcome Chairman," while holding flowers to practice greeting visiting male Korean executives. She was ordered to serve these executives wine and she was called a geisha. When higher level executives visited from Korea, Ms. Ledbetter was forced to fill in for the normal receptionist because that receptionist was not perceived to be pretty while Ms. Ledbetter was. From 2008 through 2010, Ms. Gogel and Ms. Ledbetter met several times to discuss these types of complaints.

In early 2009, Kia reorganized its departments to include "Head of Department" ("HOD") designations. Mr. Tyler was made HOD for his own department (Human Resources) as well as Ms. Gogel’s department (Team Relations). Ms. Gogel was the only woman in a similar management role, and she was the only one of these managers not designated an HOD. Ms. Gogel complained to Mr. Jackson about not receiving the designation, particularly because all other department heads got it. Mr. Jackson offered varying explanations for not designating Ms. Gogel HOD. Sometimes he said the nondesignation was related to the "timing" of Team Relations being made its own department. But other times he claimed the designation of Mr. Tyler was "automatic."

At first, Ms. Gogel believed Mr. Jackson’s explanation that "timing" was the reason she was not promoted. But Ms. Gogel later concluded she was not promoted because of gender discrimination and her investigation of Ms. Morris’s relationship with President Ahn. As a result of various investigations, including the investigation into Ms. Ledbetter’s complaint, Ms. Gogel had observed "some extreme cultural differences between the Korean culture and American culture" including with regard to "standard employment laws." Ms. Gogel also noticed Mr. Kim’s attitude toward her negatively changed following her discontinued investigation into Ms. Morris. In October 2009, Ms. Gogel met with Mr. Jackson and Mr. Tyler and told them she felt she was treated differently about the award of an HOD designation because of her gender. She also expressed her view that there was "a gender issue within the company that impacts multiple people within the organization." In April 2010, Mr. Tyler was promoted to Senior Manager of Human Resources and Team Relations.

Throughout 2010, many American managers expressed concerns about treatment by Korean management. These concerns included Americans not being given appropriate decision-making authority; not being consulted on issues in their purview; and not having a voice in the company. Mr. Tyler raised these concerns with Mr. Jackson, who asked him to gather specific information and examples. With input from American managers including Ms. Gogel, Mr. Tyler drafted what became known as the "Report of Concerns." The Report of Concerns was given by Mr. Tyler to others at Kia around the end of September 2010. An early version of the report referenced the purported relationship between Ms. Morris and President Ahn. That portion of the report was removed from a second version in October 2010. Ms. Gogel met with Mr. Jackson, Charlie Webb (Kia’s legal counsel), and Mr. Tyler in October to reiterate the concerns she had expressed since 2009, including President Ahn’s relationship with Ms. Morris and the treatment of women and Americans at Kia. Within weeks of that meeting, Ms. Gogel emailed Mr. Jackson, Mr. Webb, and Mr. Tyler expressing her concerns about how the investigation into the Report of Concerns was conducted and her disappointment that it had already closed.

On November 10, 2010, Ms. Gogel, without counsel, filed her first charge against Kia with the EEOC. Her charge alleged she was not designated HOD due to discrimination on the basis of gender and national origin. Ms. Gogel did not tell Ms. Ledbetter that she had filed this EEOC charge. Yet Ms. Ledbetter learned of Ms. Gogel’s EEOC charge from other employees. Around this time, Ms. Gogel met with Ms. Ledbetter, and they discussed Kia’s ability to address employee concerns about discrimination. Ms. Ledbetter asked whether Ms. Gogel had retained an attorney to represent her. Ms. Gogel replied that she hadn’t, but that she had chosen one to meet with, and she passed along that attorney’s name.

On Friday, December...