Stephanie Lewis sued Dennis R. McDonough, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, alleging color discrimination for not being selected for a promotion in 2021 while working at the Veteran’s Administration in Kansas City, Missouri. Defendant moved for summary judgment.
Statement of Uncontroverted Facts
Stephanie Lewis, an African American female with dark brown skin, began her tenure at the Kansas City VA Medical Center as an Advanced Medical Support Assistant on December 10, 2017. The promotion in question was for a Lead Medical Support Assistant, a position for which Lewis and twenty-seven other candidates applied, including Victoria Malicoat, a Caucasian female. The resumes were initially scored by Lori Groom, ranking Malicoat highest and Lewis tied for sixth. An interview panel, including Sharone Ince (Lewis’ supervisor), assessed the candidates further through interviews. Malicoat was ultimately selected for the promotion based on her resume and interview scores, which were higher than those of Lewis.
Legal Analysis
Abandonment of Color Discrimination Claim: The court determined that even though Lewis had raised a color discrimination claim in her administrative complaint, she effectively abandoned this claim by failing to explicitly plead such a claim in her lawsuit. The distinction between race and color discrimination is significant under Title VII, and the court noted that allegations in the lawsuit could not constitute a claim for color discrimination.
Race Discrimination Analysis: The court analyzed Lewis’s race discrimination claim under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework, which requires the plaintiff to establish a prima facie case of discrimination. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was then required to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its hiring decision, which it did by stating that Malicoat was viewed as more qualified based on the evaluation of resumes and interviews. The burden then shifted back to Lewis to show that the VA’s reason was a pretext for discrimination. The court concluded that Lewis failed to present sufficient evidence that the VA’s stated reasons were pretextual and indicative of racial discrimination. Key to the court’s conclusion was that the primary decision-maker in the hiring process, Ince, is herself African American, which the court found made Lewis’s allegation of racial discrimination less plausible.
The court granted the VA’s motion for summary judgment, indicating that Lewis did not meet the burden of proving that the VA’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for not selecting her for the promotion were a pretext for racial discrimination.
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