Gupta v. Florida Board of Regents, No. 98-5392

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit
• Writing for the Court: Before ANDERSON, Chief Judge, CARNES, Circuit Judge, and RONEY; CARNES; RONEY
• Citation: Gupta v. Florida Board of Regents, 212 F.3d 571, 2000 WL 633024 (11th Cir. 2000)
• Decision Date: 17 May 2000
• Docket Number: No. 98-5392
• Parties: (11th Cir. 2000) Srabana GUPTA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FLORIDA BOARD OF REGENTS, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

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212 F.3d 571 (11th Cir. 2000)

Srabana GUPTA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FLORIDA BOARD OF REGENTS, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 98-5392.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

May 17, 2000.

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[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.(No. 96-06690-CV-KMM), K. Michael Moore, Judge.

Before ANDERSON, Chief Judge, CARNES, Circuit Judge, and RONEY, Senior Circuit Judge.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

The Florida Board of Regents ("Board") appeals from a judgment entered against it pursuant to a jury verdict in this sexual harassment and retaliation case. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, Dr. Srabana Gupta, finding that the Board was liable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., to Gupta for sexual harassment she suffered while employed as a professor at Florida Atlantic University ("University"). The jury also found that the Board had violated Title VII by retaliating against Gupta because she complained about the alleged sexual harassment to the University, and because she filed a sexual harassment charge with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC").

The district court denied the Board's post-verdict motion for judgment as a matter of law on both claims. We conclude that there was insufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict on either the sex discrimination or the retaliation claim, and the district court should have granted the Board judgment as a matter of law on both claims. Consequently, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the case for entry of judgment in favor of the Board.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The General Facts

Plaintiff Dr. Srabana Gupta¹ is a citizen of India. In 1988 wishing to further her education, she came to the United States on a student visa and studied at the University of Florida, where she earned a Ph.D. in economics in August of 1994. She remains in the United States on a work visa.

Gupta applied in the spring of 1994 for a position as a tenure track assistant professor of economics at Florida Atlantic University. Following the University's procedure, she sent her application directly to Dr. Rupert Rhodd, a native of Jamaica, who was at the time an associate professor of economics and chairman of the search committee for the position she sought. Rhodd met Gupta at the Fort Lauderdale airport in late April or early May of 1994 when she arrived for her interview with the University's search committee. During Gupta's interview weekend, Rhodd was responsible for accompanying her to meetings, including lunch and dinner with other faculty members.

A few weeks after the interview Gupta called Dr. Neela Manage, a member of the search committee, to ask whether the University had decided whom they were going to hire for the position. Manage responded that the committee had not yet decided. A few days later, Rhodd called Gupta and said that the search committee was going to meet later that day and that he thought they were going to choose her for the position. Rhodd called her back in a couple of hours and informed her that the search committee had decided to hire her for the position. Prior to Gupta's acceptance of the assistant professor position, Rhodd, at Gupta's request, negotiated a salary increase for her from $35,000 to $40,000.

Soon thereafter, Gupta planned another trip to Fort Lauderdale to locate an apartment. Rhodd arranged Gupta's hotel reservations, drove her around the city because she did not know her way, and helped her find an apartment and inexpensive furniture. During this trip, Gupta also met with Dr. Sarah Ransdell, a member of the search committee who, along with Rhodd, showed Gupta around the Fort Lauderdale area.

Gupta joined the University's faculty as an assistant professor of economics in August of 1994 on the Davie campus. Her position was within the Social Sciences Division of the College of Liberal Arts. During the 1994-95 school year, Rhodd was the coordinator of the Social Sciences Division for the Davie campus. One of his responsibilities was coordinating the schedules of courses taught by each of the professors in the Social Sciences Division.

B. Facts Relating to the Sexual Harassment Claim²

When Rhodd first met Gupta at the airport when she arrived for her initial interview, Gupta perceived that he "looked [ ] me up and down." Later that afternoon, Rhodd suggested that he, Gupta, and Neela Manage, co-chairman of the economics department and Associate Dean of the College of Social Sciences, have lunch at a Hooters restaurant, but they did not actually go there. Instead, at the suggestion of Manage, they had lunch at Houston's Restaurant. After a tour of the University's Boca Raton campus and interviews with several professors, Rhodd and Sarah Ransdell took Gupta to dinner at Mango's, which Gupta described as "a bar." Rhodd suggested that Gupta change into casual attire before dinner.

In August of 1994, after accepting the associate professor position, Gupta returned to Fort Lauderdale to look for an apartment. During this trip, Rhodd looked at her when she took off her jacket, which made her very uncomfortable. He also accompanied Gupta, Sarah Ransdell, and Ransdell's boyfriend to dinner at Shooters, which Gupta describes as "a bar" and "a place where single people meet."

After Gupta was hired, Rhodd was very supportive of Gupta and often went "out of his way" to help her. He told her, "If you need anything, just come and talk to me. If you have any problem, come and talk to me." After Gupta complained about the size of her office, Rhodd moved her from a smaller office directly across from his office to a larger office. He also volunteered to drop Jamaican food off by her house when she asked where she could find spicy food, but she declined his offer. Rhodd and Gupta did pick up Jamaican food one day and bring it back to the campus to eat for lunch.

Soon after Gupta arrived in August, Rhodd began calling her at her home at night. As Gupta described it in her testimony:

[H]e used to call me at home.... Quite frequently-two times, three times, you know, a week on an average.... He would call me either late at night, because often 9:30, 10:00 o'clock at night, or over the weekends.... He said, "Are you talking to your boyfriend? Where is your boyfriend?"

His phone calls continued until January of 1995. In one of the calls, Rhodd asked Gupta, "I was wondering how you were doing?" During some of these evening phone calls, Rhodd asked if she was in bed. He also called her one Sunday morning and informed her that he was going to be the new Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He told her that "as an economist now, [she had] to take up more responsibilities."

Rhodd also frequently asked Gupta to have lunch with him. At first, Gupta had lunch with Rhodd almost every day, but later she began having lunch with other colleagues. Gupta thought that Rhodd was upset when she went to lunch with other people. Rhodd started telling Gupta, "Well, you know, I know with whom you went to lunch, with," and "You don't go to lunch with me any more." He commented that some of the faculty members that Gupta had lunch with were "racist" and "evil." Once when she was wearing a skirt that was above her knee, she perceived that Rhodd "was staring at [her] legs." It made her "uncomfortable" and since that time she has "never worn a short skirt."

Once when Gupta was in Rhodd's office discussing her teaching schedule, as she described it, he "just rolled his chair and came close to me and he put his hand on my right thigh." His hand was partly on the inside of her thigh. It happened very quickly, and Gupta moved away very quickly. On another occasion, Rhodd touched her bracelet and said, "Oh, it is a very nice bracelet." Another time, he touched a ring Gupta was wearing.

On another occasion when Gupta went into Rhodd's office, "he suddenly rolled his chair towards [her] and he said, 'What kind of material is that?' and he lifted the hem of [her] dress" about four inches with his hand. She instinctively stepped back. Another day, when the air conditioning was broken and it was very hot, Rhodd was expecting Gupta to come pick up a book from his office. Gupta entered Rhodd's office and discovered that he had on his undershirt, but had taken his dress shirt off. She offered to come back to see him later, but he said to wait and at the same time "he unbuckled his belt and pulled down his zipper and start[ed] tucking his [dress] shirt in." She thanked him for the book and left.

Rhodd also made some comments to Gupta that she characterized as harassment. He told her that the reason she was assigned to teach more hours than other teachers and the reason she had not received her new computer was that "people here are racist."³ Once Dr. Rhodd commented, "You are looking very beautiful." Twice he told her, "Indian people are really decent, and the Caribbean and Western people are really promiscuous. I can look at you and I can tell you are innocent and you don't have much experience." One morning after a bad thunderstorm the night before, Rhodd called Gupta and asked if she needed a ride to a University seminar. During that conversation, he said, "Oh, you were all by yourself on a dark and stormy night? Why didn't you call me? I would have come and spend [sic] the night with you." Gupta understood Dr. Rhodd's suggestion to mean "that he wanted to [have a] sexual relationship with me." She told him, "Don't talk to me that way. You are talking nonsense."

On one occasion, Rhodd stated that he considered men superior to women, that women are like meat, and that "men need variety in women." Once, Rhodd came into Gupta's office and asked her "Why do you look so unhappy? Have you fallen for a man...