Randlett v. Shalala
| Decision Date | 05 March 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 96-1950,96-1950 |
| Citation | 118 F.3d 857 |
| Parties | 79 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 803, 73 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,353 Jean M. RANDLETT, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Donna E. SHALALA, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, Defendant, Appellee. . Heard |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Robert Le Roux Hernandez, Malden, MA, for appellant.
Lori J. Holik, Assistant United States Attorney, Boston, MA, with whom Donald K. Stern, United States Attorney, was on brief, for United States.
Before BOUDIN, Circuit Judge, ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge, and LYNCH, Circuit Judge.
This appeal brings to the court the most recent chapter in a 20-year quarrel between a federal department and its former employee, Jean Randlett. It presents an important legal issue concerning the reach of the protection afforded by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. We hold that Title VII can offer protection against a retaliatory refusal to transfer an employee, but that no evidence existed here to show retaliation.
Because Randlett's claims were resolved against her on summary judgment, we state the facts in the light most favorable to her. Sargent v. Tenaska, Inc., 108 F.3d 5, 6 (1st Cir.1997). In 1975, Randlett worked in Denver in the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as an equal opportunity specialist with a civil service grade of GS-12. She applied for a promotion to a GS-13 position in Denver but was denied promotion in favor of another candidate. A few months later, in August 1975, she was terminated.
Randlett filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging discrimination based on gender and national origin (she is white and of European descent). Six years later, the EEOC ruled in her favor, finding that the record showed "[n]o other credible reason for [her] nonselection ... other than the fact that the selecting official wanted to insure that the Hispanic male was awarded the GS-13 position." It found that Randlett's discharge was similarly motivated by discriminatory animus. In particular, the EEOC found that the official who considered Randlett's promotion had applied pressure on the selecting panel to alter its rankings, which favored Randlett, so that the job could go instead to a friend of the selecting official.
The EEOC's 1981 order directed the Department, now metamorphosed into Health and Human Services ("HHS"), to cancel Randlett's 1975 discharge and to "immediately reinstate" Randlett in the Denver office as an equal opportunity specialist, grade GS-13. The order also awarded Randlett back pay and other entitlements for the period since her termination, and it required HHS to report within 30 days as to the steps it planned to take to implement the required action.
In late June 1981, Randlett began what would be an extensive exchange of telephone calls and correspondence, primarily with Thomas Jefferson, an HHS official based in Washington, D.C., who was apparently charged with coordinating Randlett's reinstatement. She also talked with Patricia Taphorn, a personnel official in the Denver office. The upshot, according to Randlett, was an agreement that she would return to the payroll of the HHS Denver office as of August 9, 1981, but by using four weeks of accumulated leave, would not actually report for work until early September 1981.
According to both Randlett and Taphorn, Jefferson was very difficult to reach over the course of the summer and did not act quickly enough to confirm this understanding, nor would anyone else in the Washington office take responsibility for doing so. We pass over the details, but there is no indication that anything other than bureaucratic sloth was the cause. In any event, in August 1981, Randlett signed a contract with her then-current employer, the Barnstable, Massachusetts, school system, extending her employment there for an additional year.
Not long afterwards, Randlett received a letter from Jefferson, confirming that she was reinstated in the Denver office as of September 1981; he also referred to the possibility of a transfer to another regional office, but said that this was not certain. Further telephone calls were exchanged, and the matter was still unresolved in October 1981, when Randlett's father became seriously ill. Randlett then told Jefferson that she would need to stay in Massachusetts to care for her father.
After further confusion, Randlett in February 1982 secured from another HHS official in Washington a temporary "detail" to a Boston HHS office, effective March 1, 1982, for a period of not more than 120 days. The official--Betty Lou Dotson, director of the Office for Civil Rights--wrote Randlett that the detail was "granted to accommodate your personal situation" and concluded by saying that "I trust this detail will give you the opportunity to attend to your personal responsibilities."
Randlett resigned from her schoolteaching position and began working in the Boston HHS office in March 1982. By then, her father had died, but her aging mother's health was failing. Randlett also claims that, almost immediately, she began to experience problems in the Boston HHS office because of inadequate training on work assignments, that she received a "low satisfactory" ranking in an evaluation, and that she was listed at a GS-12 level in Boston (even though she continued to receive a GS-13 salary).
According to Randlett, Jefferson called her in May 1982 and asked her when she planned to return to Denver. Randlett replied that she thought her position in Boston was permanent, but in June 1982, she sent a letter to HHS in Washington, requesting a permanent assignment to the Boston office, saying "this is an unusual request, but probably no more unusual than the six and a half years of injustices" that she had endured. It appears that Randlett also had a telephone conversation on the subject with Bart Crivella, Jefferson's supervisor.
In early July 1982, the request was answered in writing by Nathan Dick, the deputy director of the Office for Civil Rights. Dick's letter denied the transfer request but said that HHS was willing to extend the temporary detail in Boston until September 30, 1982, with Randlett returning on October 1, 1982, to her "permanent duty station in Denver." The letter explained:
[I]t is not possible for the Office for Civil Rights to offer you a permanent assignment in Boston. Your requested assignment and subsequent detail to Boston was a temporary action taken only to accommodate you during the adjustment period after the death of your father.... However, the recent RIF actions in the regions and the continuing ceiling and budgetary constraints have eliminated practically any potential options for this office [in Washington] to assign you to the Boston office on a permanent basis.
In September, Randlett received another letter from Dick requesting her to report for work in Denver on October 1, 1982. Randlett then filed a complaint with the EEO officer in Boston, alleging that Washington officials were retaliating against her "for having filed a previous complaint in Denver ... which was resolved in my favor." Randlett's new complaint named as the persons who had retaliated against her Jefferson, Dick and Crivella.
Instead of reporting to work in Denver on October 1, 1982, Randlett arranged to use accrued leave credits to stay in Boston for the remainder of the year. In November 1982, Randlett's prospective supervisor in Denver, Alex Aguilar, confirmed the request for leave from October 1 to December 31, 1982; but the letter also said that Aguilar expected Randlett to report for work on January 3, 1983, and that he would consider any request for further leave to be "unreasonable and not in the best interests of our organization."
Randlett then asked Aguilar for leave-without-pay status after December 1982. Aguilar refused, saying that Randlett's "prolonged" absence was detrimental to his office. Randlett then asked for sick leave. Aguilar wrote that the agency might be able to make health-related accommodations for her in Denver so long as she documented her ailments; but some two weeks later Aguilar told Randlett that the documents she submitted were not adequate. In March 1983, Randlett resigned, saying that it was done involuntarily to prevent any "additional harassment" from Aguilar or "any other further retaliatory acts."
Randlett's September 1982 complaint--directed against the three named Washington officials--was originally rejected by HHS on the ground that it was untimely, but this ruling was reversed by the EEOC in 1985. Incredibly, the ensuing HHS internal investigation lasted over seven years. In August 1992, an HHS administrative law judge denied Randlett's claim of retaliation. His denial was sustained by the EEOC in November 1993.
In December 1993, Randlett filed her present complaint in the federal district court under Title VII. The core of the complaint was that "[a]lthough HHS had full power and authority to assign plaintiff a permanent position in the Boston office, it unreasonably refused to do so in order ultimately to force plaintiff to resign." The complaint attributed this refusal to retaliation for Randlett's successful 1975 complaint against the department, saying that hardship transfers were routinely granted to individuals with hardship requests similar to or less serious than Randlett's.
Randlett also charged that she had been given an improper "low satisfactory" performance rating and inadequate training in Boston. She asked for "[r]einstatement to her position in Boston" with back pay and benefits and reimbursement for some health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses. She also sought compensatory and punitive damages of $1 million each.
After a period of discovery, HHS moved for summary judgment. It argued that the...
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