Lucero v. Sandia Corp., 11-2028
| Decision Date | 28 August 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 11-2028,11-2028 |
| Parties | MAGDELENE LUCERO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SANDIA CORPORATION, doing business as Sandia National Laboratories, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Before HOLMES, EBEL, and MATHESON, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff-Appellant Magdelene Lucero appeals from the district court's order granting summary judgment to Defendant-Appellee Sandia Corporation, d/b/a Sandia National Laboratories ("Sandia"), on Ms. Lucero's age discrimination and national-origin discrimination claims. For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
Ms. Lucero was born in 1950 and her national origin is Hispanic. After graduating from highschool, Ms. Lucero began work at Sandia as a secretarial trainee in 1968. She rose through the ranks and, in April 2000, she became a member of the technical staff in Sandia's Safeguards and Security center. Ms. Lucero is now retired from Sandia.
Ms. Lucero sued Sandia, alleging, inter alia, that, during certain years between September 2003 and June 2008, her performance ratings (which were one factor affecting her annual raises) were lower than the performance ratings of other similarly situated employees. She alleges that this was the result of discrimination based on her age and national origin by her immediate manager at the time, Joe Sandoval. Mr. Sandoval is half Hispanic and half German.
To determine individual raises, Sandia uses a computer program that takes into account many factors, including each employee's performance rating, each employee's pre-raise salary compared to the salaries of her peers, and the total pool of money that Sandia will allot to employee raises for a particular year. At Sandia, the performance rating is called the Value of Contribution ("VOC") rating. There are only five possible VOC ratings. The current ratings are "Outstanding Contributor," "Full Contributor-High," "Full Contributor-Meets Expectations," "Full Contributor-Low," and "Not Fully Contributing." J.A., Vol.I, at 273 (Dist. Ct. Mem. Op. & Order, filed Jan. 3, 2011) (capitalization altered). Before 2006, the categories were "Outstanding Contribution," "Full Contribution," and "Not Fully Contributing." Id. at 273 n.1 (capitalization altered).
Managers determine employee VOC ratings. In doing so, they are constrained by the need to adhere to a curve. For each rating, a manager must follow certain guidelines that define the acceptable percentage of his or her employees that may receive that rating. For example, a manager may award no more than twenty-five percent of her employees a rating of "Outstanding Contributor," and that ratio must be rounded down (in other words, "whether a manager oversees four or seven employees, he may award only one 'outstanding contributor' rating in a given year"). Id. at 273.
The VOC is the only input into the computer program that an employee's direct supervisor controls, and it is the only input that Ms. Lucero claims is the product of discrimination, i.e., Ms. Lucero does not allege that any other factor influencing her raise was the product of discrimination, or that Sandia's computer program, used to convert all of the inputs into a raise amount, is itself discriminatory. "At no point did [Mr.] Sandoval or any other individual manager decide the amount of [Ms.] Lucero's raise." Id. at 274.
As Ms. Lucero's immediate manager from September 2003 through June 2008; however, Mr. Sandoval assigned Ms. Lucero VOC ratings for 2004, 2005,2006 and 2007. In 2004, he gave her an "Outstanding Contributor" rating and for the remaining three years gave her some form of "Full Contributor" rating. Nonetheless, Ms. Lucero alleges that Mr. Sandoval discriminated against her in making these VOC assignments and that it had an adverse effect on her employment. Because of the allegedly discriminatory assignments, Ms. Lucero contends that she received smaller raises. And because she received smaller raises, according to Ms. Lucero, she was barred from being promoted for three years, from 2006 through 2008, due to Sandia's polices, which tied promotion eligibility to a comparative wage assessment—that is, to a determination of how an employee's salary measured up (by certain percentages) to the average wage of other Sandia employees in her peer group.
On October 9, 2008, Ms. Lucero filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), alleging discrimination on the basis of her age and national origin.1 The EEOC mailed a Notice of Right to Sue to Ms.Lucero on June 23, 2009. On September 18, 2009, Ms. Lucero filed her original complaint in the district court asserting those same discrimination claims, plus several others. After the district court granted in part Sandia's motion to dismiss and after Ms. Lucero declined to pursue some of her claims, all that remained on summary judgment were Ms. Lucero's claims that the size of her raises andcertain changes in her job responsibilities were the product of discrimination based on age and on national origin.2
Recognizing that Ms. Lucero's case rested on circumstantial evidence, the district court evaluated her claims under McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). The disputed issues were whether Ms. Lucero had suffered an adverse employment action and whether she was treated less favorably than similarly situated employees who were not in her protected classes.
J.A., Vol. I, at 278 (citation omitted) (quoting Amro v. Boeing Co., 232 F.3d 790 (10th Cir. 2000)). The district court determined that because Ms. Lucero had provided no evidence "comparing [Ms.] Lucero's performance, education, skills, and accomplishments . . . to those of other [members of the technical staff] outside the protected class who received higher ratings and higher raises than she received," Ms. Lucero "[could not] demonstrate that she was indeed 'similarly situated' to the other employees." Id. at 279.
The court also held that Ms. Lucero "failed to meet her prima facie burden to show that her raises amounted to an adverse employment action," because, according to the court, "the evidence shows that in each year from 2003 to 2008, she received a raise that was within the range of raises given to her peers." Id. The court reasoned, "This hardly supports an inference that any of [Ms.] Lucero's raises constituted an adverse employment action, especially absent any evidence comparing her performance, education, and skills to those outside the protected class who received higher raises." Id. at 280.
Having determined that Ms. Lucero had not met her burden on the "similarly situated" and "adverse employment action" elements of her prima facie case, the court nevertheless proceeded to address the two remaining steps of the McDonnell Douglas analysis. It found that Sandia had articulated a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for Ms. Lucero's lesser raises, and that the "evidenceof a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason is undisputed." Id. at 284. Finally, the court determined that Ms. Lucero "failed to come forward with evidence that Sandia's explanation of her raises was mere pretext" for unlawful discrimination. Id. at 285. The district court granted Sandia's summary-judgment motion in its entirety.
Ms. Lucero timely filed this appeal, and the only issue before us is whether the district court properly entered summary judgment against Ms. Lucero on her age and national-origin claims related to her allegedly discriminatory raises.
We review the district court's order granting summary judgment de novo, and we draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party—in this case, Ms. Lucero. See Trentadue v. Integrity Comm., 501 F.3d 1215, 1226 (10th Cir. 2007). "[S]ummary judgment is appropriate 'if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.'" Morris v. City of Colo. Springs, 666 F.3d 654, 660 (10th Cir. 2012) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)).
Ms. Lucero's only remaining claims of discrimination are that she received lower raises than the younger, non-Hispanic coworkers, because of her age and national origin. Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), it is unlawful for an employer to "discriminate against any individual with respectto [her] compensation . . . because of such individual's age," 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1), if that individual is forty or older, id. § 631(a) (); see 8 Lex K. Larson, Employment Discrimination § 120.01, at 120-2 (2d ed. 2011) (). Likewise, under Title VII, it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer "to discriminate against any individual with respect to [her] compensation . . . because of such individual's . . . national origin." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1); see, e.g., Khalik v. United Air Lines, 671 F.3d 1188, 1192 (10th Cir. 2012); Zamora v. Elite Logistics, Inc., 478 F.3d 1160, 1164 (10th Cir. 2007) (en banc).
Here, there is an absence of direct evidence of discrimination. Rather, Ms. Lucero has attempted to prove discrimination through circumstantial evidence under the McDonnell...
To continue reading
Request your trial