Knapp v. Ruser
| Decision Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. S-16-785.,S-16-785. |
| Citation | 901 N.W.2d 31,297 Neb. 639 |
| Parties | Patricia A. KNAPP, appellant, v. Kevin RUSER, in his official capacity, and the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, appellees. |
| Court | Nebraska Supreme Court |
Brandon B. Hanson, of Hanson Law Offices, Ord, for appellant.
John C. Wiltse, of University of Nebraska, and David R. Buntain, of Cline, Williams, Wright, Johnson & Oldfather, L.L.P., Lincoln, for appellees.
Patricia A. Knapp filed an action against Kevin Ruser, in his official capacity, and the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska in which she asserted claims of discriminatory wage and employment practices based on her sex as well as claims of employment retaliation. Knapp's claims arose from alleged occurrences while she was a supervising attorney for the civil clinical law program at the University of Nebraska College of Law. Knapp appeals the orders of the district court for Lancaster County in which the court sustained the defendants' motion for summary judgment and overruled her motion to alter or amend the judgment. We affirm the district court's orders.
Knapp commenced this action with a complaint filed in the district court on July 11, 2014. In that complaint, Knapp set forth eight claims for relief, some based on state law and some based on federal law. In August, the defendants had the action removed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska. In November 2015, the federal court sustained the defendants' motion for summary judgment in part and dismissed certain of Knapp's claims, which were based on federal law, with prejudice. The federal court remanded the remaining claims, which were based on Nebraska state law, to the district court for Lancaster County for further proceedings. Knapp v. Ruser, 145 F.Supp.3d 846 (D. Neb. 2015). Upon remand to the state court, Knapp filed an amended complaint which mirrored the operative amended complaint she had filed in the federal court. In the amended complaint, she set forth 10 claims for relief. The federal court had dismissed the first through third, sixth, eighth, and tenth claims. Also, it remanded the fourth, fifth, seventh, and ninth claims for further proceedings in the state court. Accordingly, our consideration on appeal is limited to the state district court's disposition of four claims identified in the operative complaint as the fourth, fifth, seventh, and ninth claims.
Knapp, an attorney, began working in the civil clinic as a temporary half-time employee in the summer of 1999. At that time, the director of clinical programs was on a sabbatical, and Knapp was hired to cover the portion of his responsibilities that concerned the civil clinic. After the director returned from sabbatical and informed the college that he would be leaving at the end of the fall semester, Knapp was hired as a temporary half-time employee beginning in the spring 2000 semester. The understanding was that she would cover the former director's duties with respect to the civil clinic while the law school considered its long-term strategic plan for the clinical programs.
Knapp's half-time employment in the civil clinic ended in August 2004 after Ruser was named director of the clinical programs and the law school hired Richard Moberly to perform the duties Knapp had performed in the civil clinic. In 2006, the law school again hired Knapp as a half-time employee in the civil clinic after it determined that Moberly's half-time status was not sufficient to meet student needs. While Knapp and Moberly split duties in the civil clinic, Moberly held a full-time position which included additional responsibilities such as teaching doctrinal classes, research, and community service.
Knapp continued to work half-time in the civil clinic until August 2011, when Moberly became an associate dean of the law school and gave up his duties in the civil clinic. Knapp and Ruser agreed that Knapp's employment as supervising attorney in the civil clinic should go to full time. Knapp's position was classified as that of "Temporary Lecturer" and was designated as a " ‘Special Appointment.’ " Knapp met with the dean of the law school to discuss her full-time salary; the dean offered Knapp an annual salary of $80,000. After Knapp told the dean that the salary was low, the dean told Knapp that she would explore the possibility of increasing the salary by seeking a designation for the position as a " ‘professor of practice.’ " Knapp agreed to accept the salary for the upcoming academic year based on what she believed to be the dean's "good-faith commitment" to find a way to increase her salary. When Knapp told Ruser the salary she had been offered, Ruser told her that the dean had " ‘low-balled’ " her.
A year later, in August 2012, Ruser left a letter for Knapp setting forth proposed terms and conditions for her employment in the upcoming academic year. The letter stated that her salary would again be $80,000. Prior to receiving the letter, Knapp had had no other communication with the law school's administration regarding her salary for the upcoming year. The letter prompted Knapp to check the salaries of others working in the clinical programs. She learned from the University of Nebraska's website that a male professor had been hired in March 2012 to teach a business transactions clinic at a salary of $106,000 per year. Knapp thereafter spoke with Ruser regarding her salary, and she told him that after seeing others' salaries, she thought that the salary structure in the clinical programs was "skewed" and that the clinics had a " ‘gender equity’ problem" that Ruser needed to address. Ruser responded that he was " ‘baffled’ " by Knapp's allegations of discrimination and that the new male professor's higher salary was justified by the fact that his position was a tenure track position.
Knapp alleged that the conversation became heated and that afterward, Ruser's behavior and demeanor toward her changed. Knapp alleged that Ruser acted more hostile and that he stopped adequately communicating with her. Knapp also observed that Ruser appeared to be neglecting his own duties in the clinic, including supervision of students and cases. After adopting a child in the spring semester, Ruser went to half time, and Knapp alleged that he "disengaged even further" from the clinic, with the result being that the clinic "was not fulfilling its ethical obligations to its clients or to its students."
In April 2013, Knapp learned that Ruser would be receiving a lifetime achievement award from the law school. Although other members of the clinic's staff had known of the award for several weeks and had been invited to sit at Ruser's table at the award ceremony, Ruser had not mentioned the award to Knapp. This incident prompted Knapp to conclude that her relationship with Ruser "was so badly damaged that it had become impossible for them to work together as law partners in a way that would meet their ethical obligations to their clients and to their students."
Knapp decided to leave her job at the clinic, but a coworker encouraged her to speak with the dean about what was happening in the clinic. Knapp met with the dean and informed her of several problems that she perceived in the clinic. Knapp told the dean that problems had existed for women in the clinical program since the early 1980's, when Knapp was a student at the college. Knapp informed the dean of various concerns she had regarding Ruser's management of the clinical programs, focusing on "the environment created for women in the clinical programs over the years" by Ruser and his male associates. Knapp alleged that after listening to Knapp's concerns, the dean "did not offer to help in any way but wished [Knapp] well." Knapp's employment in the clinic ended on May 31, 2013.
The federal district court concluded that because of sovereign immunity, it lacked jurisdiction to hear four of Knapp's claims: the fourth, fifth, seventh, and ninth. Those four claims were based on state law, and the federal court found that the state statutory schemes underlying the claims were not "sufficiently explicit to effect a waiver of sovereign immunity to suit in federal court." Knapp v. Ruser, 145 F.Supp.3d 846, 855 (D. Neb. 2015). The federal court therefore remanded the four claims for further proceedings in the state district court.
The federal court determined that the six remaining claims—the first through third, sixth, eighth, and tenth—were asserted under federal law and that Congress had abrogated states' sovereign immunity for those claims. The court stated that five of the claims arose under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e (2012) (Title VII), and that the remaining claim arose under the Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d) (2012) (EPA). The federal district court considered the six claims. It found merit to the defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the six claims.
The federal court stated that Knapp's first claim was fashioned as a claim of disparate impact under Title VII. The court determined that Knapp's disparate impact claim failed because she had not alleged any facially neutral employment policy that had a disparate impact on a protected class and instead had alleged a practice that was not facially neutral. The court characterized Knapp's allegations as an allegation of disparate treatment rather than disparate impact and concluded that Knapp had not pled a prima facie case for disparate impact. The court therefore dismissed Knapp's first claim.
The federal court next considered Knapp's second, sixth, and eighth claims, which were fashioned as claims of disparate treatment and discrimination (the second and eighth claims, respectively) under Title VII and a claim of wage discrimination under the EPA ...
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