Plaintiff Loretta Mauldin sued defendant Daniel Driscoll, Secretary of the Department of the Army, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, raising claims of retaliation and discrimination on the basis of age under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and discrimination on the basis of sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The district court granted summary judgment to the Army, and Mauldin appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Factual Overview
Mauldin, a female born in 1958, began working at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant (MCAAP) in 1991. In 2003, she became a Grade 6 Explosives Operator Supervisor. Tommy Buckner, a male born in 1971, became Mauldin’s second-level supervisor when he became Chief of Ammunitions Operations at MCAAP in April 2014.
In early 2015, two employees under Mauldin’s supervision were accused of sexual harassment, and one was fired. Mauldin filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) grievance regarding these accusations. In March 2016, Mauldin received a “poor” performance rating, which she successfully challenged. Later that year, Mauldin submitted a statement supporting her co-worker Billy Cloud’s EEO complaint alleging age discrimination. In her statement, Mauldin claimed Buckner made age-discriminatory comments such as telling employees not to “look at the older hands” for promotions and referring to older workers as “not spring chickens.” Mauldin also claimed Buckner made sex-discriminatory comments, including that women don’t “make good supervisors” because they are “emotional.”
In April 2018, Mauldin applied for a promotion to a Grade 9 EO Supervisor position. Buckner, as the selecting official, convened a three-person interview panel consisting of William Tollett (male, born 1976), Jackie Paden (female, born 1972), and Holly Price (female, born 1982). Buckner drafted the interview questions and scoring criteria. After the interviews, each panelist independently scored Mauldin the lowest and Scott Harkey (male, born 1981) the highest. Buckner selected Harkey for the position based on the panel’s recommendation.
After her non-selection, Mauldin filed an EEO complaint alleging age and sex discrimination, as well as retaliation. Before a decision was issued on her EEO complaint, Mauldin filed suit in district court. The district court granted summary judgment to the Army on all claims, and Mauldin appealed.
Legal Analysis
The Army’s Evidence
Mauldin argued that the district court erred in considering “interested witness” evidence from Buckner and the interview panelists under Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc. The Tenth Circuit rejected this argument, holding that a district court may consider interested witness evidence from the movant at the summary judgment stage, so long as a jury would be required to believe such evidence because it is uncontradicted and unimpeached. The court noted that Mauldin’s narrow reading of Reeves would make the second McDonnell Douglas step largely impossible for an employer to satisfy and, in turn, render the third step meaningless. This holding aligns with the overwhelming weight of authority from other circuit courts.
ADEA Retaliation Claim
Applying the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework, the court assumed without deciding that Mauldin had established a prima facie case of retaliation. Moving to the second step, the Army offered evidence of a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for not selecting Mauldin: the three-person interview panel recommended Harkey based on his superior interview performance.
On the issue of pretext, the court found that the evidence in its totality did not raise a genuine issue of material fact regarding Buckner’s motive. The record showed a neutral selection process, and the court noted it is not the role of courts to “second guess employers’ business judgments.” Thus, the Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment on Mauldin’s retaliation claim.
ADEA and Title VII Discrimination Claims
For Mauldin’s age and sex discrimination claims, the court again applied the McDonnell Douglas framework. It found that Mauldin had made a prima facie showing of discrimination and that the Army had proffered a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for not selecting her.
On the question of pretext, the court rejected Mauldin’s arguments. It found that Buckner’s alleged discriminatory comments were “isolated” and not directed at Mauldin or the open position. While Mauldin argued that some interview questions were subjective, the court noted that “some subjectivity is to be expected in every hiring decision” and that pretext is typically inferred only when criteria are “entirely subjective.” The panel asked each applicant the same questions using predetermined criteria, and two of the three panelists were women and over forty years old.
The court also rejected Mauldin’s claim that her superior qualifications should have resulted in her selection, finding her assertions “conclusory” and not “overwhelming” as required to show pretext. Instead, uncontroverted evidence showed that Buckner chose Harkey for nondiscriminatory reasons based on the unanimous recommendation of the interview panel. The Tenth Circuit therefore affirmed summary judgment on Mauldin’s discrimination claims.
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Army on all of Mauldin’s claims.
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