Williams v. Raytheon Co.

• Decision Date: 08 June 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-2152,99-2152
• Citation: 220 F.3d 16
• Parties: (1st Cir. 2000) RALPH WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. RAYTHEON COMPANY, Defendant, Appellee. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 16

220 F.3d 16 (1st Cir. 2000)

RALPH WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. RAYTHEON COMPANY, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 99-2152.

United States Court of Appeals, For the First Circuit.

Heard June 8, 2000.

Decided July 21, 2000.

Ira H. Zaleznik, with whom Lawson & Weitzen, LLP was on brief, for appellant.

James F. Kavanaugh, Jr., with whom Stephen S. Churchill and Conn Kavanaugh Rosenthal Peisch & Ford, LLP were on brief, for appellee.

Before: Torruella, Chief Judge, Campbell, Senior Circuit Judge, and Schwarzer,^* Senior District Judge.

SCHWARZER, Senior District Judge.

Ralph Williams charged Raytheon Company with (1) gender discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000(e)-2, (2) age discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) 81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 621-634, (3) age and gender discrimination prohibited by Massachusetts G.L. c. 151B, and (4) violation of Massachusetts' public policy prohibiting retaliation for cooperating with a government investigation. Williams initially filed a charge of discrimination with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and then brought this action in district court. The district court granted summary judgment against Williams on all claims and this appeal followed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm, albeit for reasons different from the district court's.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Williams is a 51-year old white male who was employed by Raytheon as Director, Internal Communications. He had responsibility for writing, producing and editing Raytheon's corporate newspaper and other corporate publications. In 1993, Elizabeth Allen joined Raytheon as its Vice-President, Corporate Communications. In that position, Allen was Williams' direct supervisor and she continued in that position until Williams' termination in 1995. Allen was Raytheon's first female officer and set out to make her presence felt in the company. She told members of her department that she thought Raytheon was run by "old, white men," that she intended to change the corporate culture, and that she would favor the hiring of women and younger people.

From the outset, her style was assertive and abrasive. She forced a female employee out of the company by assigning her computer tasks she knew the employee could not perform. By mistake, she approved premature publication of a story about the award of a government contract to Raytheon which led to a government investigation. At the request of the legal department, Williams prepared an explanatory statement for the government investigator but Allen told him to write a new statement based on one she had written. In her statement, Allen blamed Williams' secretary for the erroneous release of the story. When Williams testified about this incident before an investigator, Allen, according to Williams, became furious and threatened him, implying that failure to follow her commands would cost him his job.

According to Williams, Allen conducted a campaign of harassment against him to prevent him from performing his job. The final episode began on June 8, 1995, when Allen asked him to do three things regarding the Raytheon newspaper: develop an alternative publication that cut production time in half, develop five or six backup stories, and provide a schedule for the next issue. On June 19, Williams responded with a four-page memorandum, the tone of which Allen considered hostile and sarcastic. About June 23, Williams met with Allen in her office. Allen claims Williams threatened her. According to Williams, she told him she wanted him to leave the company. Williams, who admits that he was upset, emotional, and may have raised his voice, said he would report her to the Raytheon Human Resources Department (HR). Williams then filed a complaint against Allen with HR.

On July 11, 1995, Williams was called into the Executive Offices and was met by Allen and two members of HR. Allen told him that she was permanently suspending him for insubordination. When Williams asked when he had been insubordinate, he was told he had been "insubordinate by memo." Williams never returned to Raytheon. He was eventually replaced by a forty-eight year old white man.

DISCUSSION

I. THE TITLE VII CLAIM

The question before us is whether this story of two years of discord, as related in Williams' brief in this court, translates into a viable claim of gender discrimination. We agree with the district court that Williams has sustained the "not onerous" burden of establishing a prima facie case. Texas Dep't Of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 253-54 (1981). A reasonable juror could find that he was within a protected class (in the sense that every person is in a class protected against gender discrimination), performed his job satisfactorily (which is not an issue), suffered adverse employment action, and was replaced by a person "with roughly equivalent qualifications" (also undisputed). See Smith v. Stratus Co., 40 F.3d 11, 15 (1st Cir. 1994).

Raytheon has come forward with what it contends is a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for Williams' termination--insubordination. Williams contends that Raytheon's reason is a pretext for gender discrimination. In reviewing the summary judgment we must review all of the evidence in the record before us, drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. See Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., ___ U.S. ___, 120 S. Ct. 2097, 2110 (June 12, 2000).

"Proof that the defendant's explanation is unworthy of credence is . . . one form of circumstantial evidence that is probative of intentional discrimination." Id. at 2108. In Reeves, the employer contended that plaintiff had been fired for "shoddy record keeping." In response, plaintiff came forward with what the Court described as "a substantial showing that respondent's explanation was false." Id. at 2107. He offered specific evidence that he had properly maintained attendance records and that he was not responsible for failure to discipline late and absent employees. Id. at 2107. The Court held that the evidence sufficed to find that the employer's asserted justification was false, permitting the jury to conclude that the employer had unlawfully discriminated. Id. at 2109.

Williams' case is a far cry from Reeves'. Williams made no showing, much less a substantial showing, that the insubordination justification was false. It is not disputed that Williams and Allen had an acrimonious working relationship. The denouement came when she directed him to come up with a plan to conform the publication of the newspaper to her ideas and he responded in a lengthy memorandum, essentially parrying her directions and shifting responsibility for shortcomings to her. At a meeting that followed, the two had words. Williams was emotional and upset. Allen said she wanted him to leave the company and he said he would report her to HR, which he did by filing a complaint against her. Shortly thereafter, he was terminated for insubordination.

The issue is not whether reasonable jurors could find that Raytheon lacked good cause to terminate Williams--Williams was an at-will employee and Title VII, in any event, does not prohibit wrongful discharge--but, rather, whether Williams made a substantial showing that the reason given for the termination was false. It is undisputed that Williams was told he was fired for insubordination, a word whose meaning is not limited to disobedience of orders but includes also "a generally disaffected attitude toward authority." Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1971) 1172. There is no evidence contradicting Raytheon's stated reason of insubordination for Williams' discharge.

In the absence of evidence from which a reasonable juror could find Raytheon's explanation false, we must determine whether other evidence would permit a reasonable juror to find that Williams sustained his ultimate burden of proving Raytheon intentionally discriminated against him on account of his gender. See Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253. That Allen may have harbored hostility and treated him unfairly standing alone is not probative of gender based animus. What is the evidence on which Williams relies? Williams asserts that Allen said she needed to change Raytheon's "old, white men" culture so that women and younger people could assume a prominent position, that she said she would favor women and younger people in her hiring, that she ordered Williams to give credit for a brochure he created to a female assistant, and that when Williams accused her of wanting him out because he was an older man, she remained silent. Yet, the evidence also shows that Allen hired men, in one case hiring a younger man to replace an older woman. Given the probative value of Raytheon's stated reason for the discharge, these stray remarks (or non-remarks) do not support a reasonable inference that Raytheon acted out of a discriminatory purpose.

II. THE ADEA CLAIM

The district court rejected Williams' ADEA claim because his replacement (48 years old) was insignificantly younger than Williams (51 years old) and this age difference was insufficient to support a prima facie presumption of age discrimination. In O'Connor v. Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U.S. 308 (1996), the Supreme Court explained that a "prima facie case requires evidence adequate to create an inference that an employment decision was based on an illegal discriminatory criterion. In the age-discrimination context, such an inference cannot be drawn from the replacement of one worker with another worker insignificantly younger." Id. at 312-13 (internal quotations, alterations, and citation omitted).¹ The circuits that have interpreted O'Connor are in accord that an age difference of less than five years is insufficient to support a prima facie case of age discrimination. See, e.g., Hoffman v....