Keyes v. Lenoir Rhyne College, 76-1134

• Decision Date: 31 March 1977
• Docket Number: No. 76-1134,76-1134
• Citation: 552 F.2d 579
• Parties: 15 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 925, 13 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,595 Annie Laurie KEYES, Appellant, v. LENOIR RHYNE COLLEGE, a non-profit corporation, et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 579

552 F.2d 579

15 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 925,

13 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,595

Annie Laurie KEYES, Appellant, v. LENOIR RHYNE COLLEGE, a non-profit corporation, et al., Appellees.

No. 76-1134.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 6, 1976.

Decided March 31, 1977.

J. Levonne Chambers, Charlotte, N. C. (Chambers, Stein, Ferguson & Becton, Charlotte, N. C., on brief), for appellant.

W. Gene Sigmon, Newton, N. C. (Jesse C. Sigmon, Jr., Sigmon & Sigmon, Newton, N. C., George M. Chapman, Charlotte, N. C., on brief), for appellees.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, CRAVEN, Circuit Judge, and FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge.

FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge:

The plaintiff, Dr. Annie Laurie Keyes, filed this action against Lenoir Rhyne College, its President and the Chairman of its Board of Trustees, seeking injunctive, declaratory and pecuniary relief for herself and female faculty members of the College for alleged discrimination in employment opportunities because of their sex and age. ¹ The action was based upon Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. ² Under the theory of pendent jurisdiction, Dr. Keyes also sought damages for breach of contract under the law of North Carolina. Following a lengthy trial the district judge filed a memorandum decision in which he made findings of fact based upon a detailed and thorough analysis of the evidence presented, and concluded that neither the plaintiff nor her class was entitled to relief. The plaintiff has appealed.

Dr. Keyes had previously been employed by the College from 1945 to 1949 as an associate professor, but had resigned to accept employment with the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She was reemployed by the College in 1968 at which time she was sixty years of age. In 1969 the Board of Trustees of the College reduced the retirement age of all personnel, including faculty members, from sixty-eight to sixty-five and gave written notice of such change to the faculty and other employees. The Board elected to continue its policy of authorizing extensions of service beyond the retirement age on an individual basis when approved by a special vote of the Board. Dr. Keyes reached the age of sixty-five during the 1972-73 school year and on March 31, 1972, was notified that her employment would be terminated at the conclusion of the 1972-73 academic year.

The plaintiff's request that she be permitted to teach beyond her retirement age was denied by the administration and she appealed that decision to the Board of Trustees. Following a full hearing the Board affirmed the decision of the administration and denied Dr. Keyes' request for an extension. After being notified of the Board's decision, the plaintiff filed charges with the Department of Labor as well as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. No action was taken by either of these agencies, and after receipt of her ninety day letter from the EEOC the plaintiff instituted this action.

Lenoir Rhyne College is a private institution with an average student enrollment of 1300 and a relatively small administrative staff and faculty, the total faculty numbering about ninety people. The evidence indicated that between the years 1966 and 1974 the percentage of women on the faculty at Lenoir Rhyne varied from twenty-eight percent to thirty-four percent. This was considerably higher than the national average for colleges and universities which during the 1972-73 academic year was some twenty percent. While the evidence revealed that the average male faculty salary was higher than that of females, there was no showing of any salary differential for teaching positions which were substantially equal, and in presenting her statistical evidence, the plaintiff made no comparison of salaries discipline by discipline or department by department. The district court found that the plaintiff had failed to establish a prima facia case by her statistical evidence and concluded that, in any event, the College had presented clear and convincing evidence to explain any disparity in salary between males and females, demonstrating that such differentials were based upon legitimate, reasonable and non-discriminatory factors. ³ Our review of the record persuades us that these findings of the district court were not clearly erroneous.

During the course of discovery, the plaintiff requested the production of certain records and documents, including copies of the plaintiff's personnel records, the personnel records of current faculty members, together with reports, records and correspondence dealing with the Government's investigation of sex discrimination by the College. The court ordered the disclosure of certain information with respect to all faculty members for the period from September 1, 1966, through the 1973-74 academic year. This information included the name or an identifying number of each faculty member during that period with pertinent data relative to sex, tenure, status, annual salary and department position. ⁴

Pursuant to the court's order the College also produced copies of all correspondence, memoranda and reports which had been forwarded to the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The court, however, declined to order the production of the confidential evaluations of each faculty member which had been made annually by the Division and Department Chairmen commencing with the 1970-71 school year. The plaintiff challenges this action of the court, contending that it precluded her from discovering evidence which would show that the defendants' explanations for certain male-female variances in salaries and promotions were pretextual.

Under Rule 26(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the court "may make any order which justice requires to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense * * * ," and the scope of such an order lies within the discretion of the trial judge and will be reversed only if there is an abuse of that discretion. Galella v. Onassis, 487 F.2d 986 (2 Cir. 1973); General Dynamics Corp. v. Selb Manufacturing Co., 481 F.2d 1204 (8 Cir. 1973); 8 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, § 2036 (1970). In the present case the College asked that the confidentiality of the faculty evaluation records be protected, urging that the assurance of confidentiality enabled the College to receive honest and candid appraisals of the abilities of the faculty members by their peers. It was, of course, necessary for the court to balance this interest of the College against the need of the plaintiff for such material, ⁵ and if the College had sought to justify any male-female disparity on the basis of these evaluations the plaintiff should have been granted the opportunity to use them to demonstrate that the explanation was pretextual. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 804, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). Here, however, the College did not resort to the evaluations for that purpose, ⁶ and in the absence of some further showing on the part of the plaintiff, the district court's decision to protect these records from disclosure was not an abuse of its discretion.

Discerning no error of fact or law, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

AFFIRMED.

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

I think the statistical evidence establishes a pattern, practice, or custom of discrimination based on sex against female faculty members...