Labor & Employment – Racial Discrimination – Retaliation

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Even assuming Plaintiff established prima facie cases of discrimination and retaliation, she failed to show that a reasonable trier of fact could find that her employer’s legitimate reasons for terminating her employment were pretextual or otherwise discriminatory.

We affirmed the district court’s judgment in favor of the South Carolina State Election Commission.

Plaintiff LaShaun Curry, a Black woman, filed a civil action against her former employer, the South Carolina State Election Commission, alleging racial discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended (Title VII), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e through 2000e-17. Curry asserted she was terminated from her employment based on disparate treatment and retaliation for participating in protected activities, including reporting instances of alleged racial animus by her supervisors. The district court granted the Commission’s motion for summary judgment. Curry also alleged claims of disparate pay and defamation under South Carolina state law. The district court awarded summary judgment in favor of the Commission on those claims, and Curry did not challenge those rulings on appeal.

Even assuming Curry established prima facie cases of discrimination and retaliation, she failed to show that a reasonable trier of fact could find that her employer’s legitimate reasons for terminating her employment were pretextual or otherwise discriminatory. We reached this conclusion after considering the three arguments presented by Curry on appeal.

Curry first argued that the district court applied an incorrect standard to her retaliation claim. The court stated Curry failed to show that retaliation for her protected activity, “and nothing else, was the reason for her termination.” Instead, the causation standard requires that the employee show “that retaliation was a but-for cause” of the termination and does not require that retaliation was the singular “but-for” cause. Nevertheless, the record demonstrates that, despite the court’s misstatement of the evidentiary standard in one sentence of its decision, the court did not improperly hold Curry to a stricter standard than is required. The Commission set forth numerous non-retaliatory reasons for Curry’s termination, including that she made a false statement to her supervisor, engaged in improper conduct, failed to maintain harmonious work relationships, and engaged in insubordination. Additionally, after receiving previous written reprimands, Curry did not improve in the identified areas. Curry contended in the trial court, and reasserted on appeal, that her employer’s stated reasons for her termination were not legitimate and, so, necessarily those reasons were pretextual. But Curry failed to produce any evidence from which a jury could conclude that the Commission’s stated reasons were pretextual. We therefore concluded that the district court correctly held that Curry failed to satisfy her burden to show that she was terminated based on retaliation.

Curry next argued that the district court engaged in improper credibility determinations, weighing the Commission’s version of events more favorably than Curry’s view. Her argument fails. To the extent that the district court disregarded minor factual discrepancies, we held that none of those discrepancies created a genuine issue of material fact regarding the reason the Commission terminated Curry’s employment.

In Curry’s third argument, she contended the district court erred in refusing to consider written notes by a state employee who had investigated Curry’s charges of discrimination and retaliation. In those notes, the investigator recorded two statements by Commission employees who stated in part that Curry’s supervisor “treated [B]lack employees differently than other employees,” and that Curry’s supervisor treated Curry poorly because “she was [B]lack.” We concluded that the district court properly refused to consider the investigator’s notes because they contained hearsay statements by individuals whom Curry had failed to identify during the discovery process as potential witnesses.

Affirmed.

Curry v. South Carolina State Election Commission (Lawyers’ Weekly No. 003-024-25, 6 pp.) (Per Curiam) Appealed from the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Columbia (Joseph F. Anderson, Jr., J.) ON BRIEF: James Paul Porter, Elizabeth Millender, CROMER, BABB & PORTER, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. Derwood L. Aydlette III, Fred A. Williams, BETTIS LAW GROUP, L.L.P., Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Unpublished