[00:00:01] Speaker 00: Case number 14-7055, Lori A. Jellis, Appellant vs. Trenton Employees Federal Credit Union. [00:00:08] Speaker 00: Mr. Goldberg for the Appellant, Mr. Hyman for the Appellate. [00:01:03] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:01:03] Speaker 04: May it please the court. [00:01:05] Speaker 04: In the adversary proceeding before the EEOC, the defendant said the following. [00:01:09] Speaker 04: As part of a general organizational review, the decision was reached to lay off Ms. [00:01:13] Speaker 04: Giles. [00:01:15] Speaker 04: It was reached by outgoing President Presidius Felder and incoming President Rita Smith. [00:01:20] Speaker 04: This decision was made, I'm quoting, for business reasons only, as the duties for which Ms. [00:01:26] Speaker 04: Giles was primarily responsible no longer require a TEFCU employee. [00:01:31] Speaker 04: But more than three years later, in that position, [00:01:34] Speaker 04: Ms. [00:01:35] Speaker 04: Smith said the following. [00:01:37] Speaker 04: Question, so you fired her for performance reasons? [00:01:39] Speaker 04: Answer, yes. [00:01:41] Speaker 04: Question, not because there was a reorganization? [00:01:43] Speaker 04: Answer, uh-huh, no. [00:01:45] Speaker 04: For me, it was performance, JA 269. [00:01:50] Speaker 04: These two irreconcilable positions showed the defendant's reasons were pretextual and quoted, unworthy of credence. [00:01:57] Speaker 04: And because, as this court and the Supreme Court have held, untruthfulness is consciousness of guilt. [00:02:03] Speaker 04: This alone is enough to survive summer judgment. [00:02:07] Speaker 01: Is that, I don't believe that we have gone so far as to say that if you find pretext you automatically [00:02:19] Speaker 01: It still can be, overall the evidence can still be so weak that discriminatory intent was the motivating factor for [00:02:37] Speaker 01: determination or the employment action that even if a reasonable jury could find that the stated reason was a pretext, the employer could still win on summary judgment. [00:02:51] Speaker 01: Didn't we say that in ACCA and haven't we said that in other cases? [00:02:54] Speaker 04: Yes, Your Honor. [00:02:56] Speaker 04: ACCA, which is endorsed by the Supreme Court, provided two possible examples. [00:03:02] Speaker 04: But here, there was also additional evidence. [00:03:07] Speaker 04: Accus says that it can be enough, but may not be enough. [00:03:13] Speaker 04: But here, there is more. [00:03:15] Speaker 04: For instance, the defendant admitted that it received the advice of its human resources consultant, Shirley Broder, that the defendant should not hire Ms. [00:03:27] Speaker 04: Jalos because of her MS. [00:03:32] Speaker 04: What this court has repeatedly said is that the evidence of pretext taken together with other evidence, circumstantial evidence, can also show that summary judgment should be defeated. [00:03:45] Speaker 04: And here, there are multiple genuine issues of material fact. [00:03:49] Speaker 04: For instance, the parties disagree on whether Ms. [00:03:52] Speaker 04: Giles was actually fired for performance reasons. [00:03:55] Speaker 04: The former and current CEOs said yes, but Ms. [00:03:59] Speaker 04: Giles and her former supervisor said no. [00:04:01] Speaker 04: In fact, her former supervisor said she could not have been fired for performance reasons. [00:04:05] Speaker 01: He wasn't even her supervisor. [00:04:09] Speaker 04: He wasn't her direct manager, but he was her supervisor, a fact he swore to in his declaration. [00:04:15] Speaker 04: And there was no evidence, either to this report or here, that he was not her supervisor. [00:04:20] Speaker 04: During discovery, your request was made for an organizational chart. [00:04:23] Speaker 04: There was none. [00:04:24] Speaker 04: There's just no record evidence that he was not her supervisor. [00:04:27] Speaker 04: She says he was, and he says he was. [00:04:29] Speaker 04: They both swear to him. [00:04:30] Speaker 04: And he says that nearly one year before she was fired, she was a good performer. [00:04:36] Speaker 04: She made no major mistakes. [00:04:38] Speaker 04: This major scanning mistake that the CEOs claim that she made, there's no record evidence of it. [00:04:44] Speaker 04: They were asked to produce it. [00:04:44] Speaker 04: They couldn't. [00:04:45] Speaker 02: When you say she says he was the supervisor, when she was asked about who her supervisors were, she didn't [00:04:51] Speaker 02: She didn't name him unless she took off some other names. [00:04:56] Speaker 04: She had many jobs at the credit union. [00:04:58] Speaker 04: And what she did was she took off her direct managers. [00:05:04] Speaker 04: But that does not mean it was a conclusive list. [00:05:05] Speaker 04: In fact, in her declaration, she says, he was, in fact, my supervisor. [00:05:11] Speaker 04: He wasn't her immediate manager, but he was her supervisor. [00:05:13] Speaker 04: And he was responsible for reviewing, although not signed, her performance review. [00:05:19] Speaker 04: And he said she was a good employee. [00:05:20] Speaker 04: He says there was no major mistake the entire year, that for the more than 11 months before she was fired, she made no major mistakes at all. [00:05:29] Speaker 01: What is the evidence that at the time of the termination, they considered her multiple sclerosis? [00:05:37] Speaker 04: Well, as we know in the briefs, there was an increasing upward pressure on the insurance premiums. [00:05:46] Speaker 04: They went up by large double digit factors every year. [00:05:49] Speaker 01: The pages that you cite in your brief to the appendix don't show that. [00:05:55] Speaker 01: I read your brief, I tried to cross-reference it to the appendix, and I just don't see it. [00:06:02] Speaker 04: I don't have it in front of me, but there are a series, it's more than a dozen pages, I think, of lists of how much each employee's [00:06:16] Speaker 04: premium cost. [00:06:19] Speaker 04: And they're broken down to people who have dental and individual coverage. [00:06:25] Speaker 04: And if you look at the individual coverages for each year, they're in the right column. [00:06:31] Speaker 04: Those numbers that are in the table match to the individual lists each year. [00:06:41] Speaker 01: All right, well, I guess I'll take your word for it, but I can't, when I'm reading a brief, I can't, and I don't think it's my job to try to sort through the evidence and figure out whether it supports the point that you're making when, like, you cite one page, but now you're saying that there's a range of pages that prove that point. [00:07:06] Speaker 04: I apologize, Joe. [00:07:07] Speaker 04: When I come back up on rebuttal, I can point them out. [00:07:10] Speaker 04: In addition to the issue of pretext, there were multiple issues, genuine issues of material fact. [00:07:20] Speaker 04: As I mentioned, this issue of performance. [00:07:26] Speaker 04: The next question is, did the defendant believe that Ms. [00:07:28] Speaker 04: Giles was driving up insurance rates? [00:07:32] Speaker 04: And indeed, a reasonable jury could infer that it did believe that. [00:07:36] Speaker 04: The company knew that Ms. [00:07:37] Speaker 04: Giles had MS. [00:07:38] Speaker 04: It was not a secret. [00:07:41] Speaker 04: It knew, as Ms. [00:07:43] Speaker 04: Felder admitted, she believed Ms. [00:07:45] Speaker 04: Giles that her medical costs were expensive. [00:07:50] Speaker 04: It knew that she was limping. [00:07:52] Speaker 04: Ms. [00:07:52] Speaker 04: Felder noted that she limped more and she stumbled more, and she got worse. [00:07:58] Speaker 00: But they knew that she had MS before they hired her. [00:08:03] Speaker 00: In fact, they were advised not to do so, and they hired her anyway, which [00:08:09] Speaker 00: I would think weighs against your argument. [00:08:12] Speaker 04: I think normally that would be true. [00:08:13] Speaker 04: There are many cases in which, for instance, a company, an individual who hires a woman is alleged to have fired her because she's a woman, and it doesn't make sense because she was a woman when they hired her. [00:08:23] Speaker 04: Ms. [00:08:23] Speaker 04: Charles did have that mess when they hired her, but she was essentially asymptomatic. [00:08:28] Speaker 04: And her MS did not get worse until she was already working there. [00:08:34] Speaker 04: She was basically fine when they hired her. [00:08:36] Speaker 04: But she started to stumble and use a cane and had these expensive infusions only after she had been working at the EFCU for a while. [00:08:45] Speaker 04: And so she wasn't really the same MS patient she was when she was hired. [00:08:50] Speaker 04: When she was fired, she was very expensive. [00:08:56] Speaker 00: I think the insurer here says that they rely on community rating. [00:09:03] Speaker 00: So no individual's cost would be significant unless they were so significant. [00:09:13] Speaker 04: Well, the insurer says that it relies on community rating. [00:09:18] Speaker 04: But it adds to that. [00:09:20] Speaker 04: And in fact, it says [00:09:24] Speaker 04: This is JA344. [00:09:28] Speaker 04: Renewal rates are calculated using the community claims experience, but it adds, in addition, factors such as prescription drug utilization, legislative mandates, and provider utilization play key roles in determining health care costs. [00:09:40] Speaker 04: That is to say that in addition to the community claims experience, [00:09:45] Speaker 04: Prescription drugs, which is a factor here, and doctor utilization, which is a factor here, changed the cost. [00:09:52] Speaker 04: And these letters came every year, and the CEO had to sign them every year. [00:09:56] Speaker 04: Presumably she had read them. [00:09:58] Speaker 04: She had seen them before. [00:10:00] Speaker 04: And so the company knew that it was more than just commuter rating, that it was additionally these other factors. [00:10:06] Speaker 04: And those are in fact the factors that caused Ms. [00:10:09] Speaker 04: Giles. [00:10:09] Speaker 01: Can you just tell me, give me a number of how much her [00:10:19] Speaker 01: medical bills were costing the employer and how much it increased from the time, you know, over the past three or four years before she terminated. [00:10:29] Speaker 01: Can you just give me a number now? [00:10:31] Speaker 04: The only number I can give you is that her infusions were $4,000 a pop. [00:10:35] Speaker 04: They happened about monthly. [00:10:37] Speaker 04: I don't know what her doctor's cost was, but the key is that the company knew that they were expensive. [00:10:41] Speaker 04: Ms. [00:10:41] Speaker 04: Felder admitted that she knew they were expensive. [00:10:43] Speaker 04: And although we don't know the exact number, that's true. [00:10:46] Speaker 01: Do we know how much the employer had to pay for it? [00:10:52] Speaker 04: The employer only paid the premiums, Your Honor. [00:10:54] Speaker 04: But the premiums were being increased by Ms. [00:10:57] Speaker 04: Joll's use. [00:10:57] Speaker 04: So the insurance company pays the medical bills. [00:11:00] Speaker 01: OK, so how much did the premiums increase? [00:11:03] Speaker 01: Give me a dollar. [00:11:04] Speaker 04: I don't have a way to know how much exactly they increased. [00:11:07] Speaker 04: But they increased a lot during only that time. [00:11:12] Speaker 04: And this is the time that she was getting so much work. [00:11:15] Speaker 01: Okay, you said that they increased a lot over that time. [00:11:18] Speaker 01: What is a lot? [00:11:19] Speaker 01: What increased? [00:11:21] Speaker 04: The premiums for individual insurance increased over 50% each year. [00:11:28] Speaker 04: There was a, in 2008, 2009, it was a 21% increase. [00:11:32] Speaker 04: from 2009 and after it was a 19% increase. [00:11:38] Speaker 04: These were major increases that were much larger than, say, the 2007-2008 increase of only 7% and much larger than the decrease. [00:11:46] Speaker 04: It seems to have flattened out after she was fired. [00:11:52] Speaker 04: Does that answer your question? [00:11:54] Speaker 01: And when you say it flattened out, you're saying as to all [00:11:59] Speaker 01: the total amount that it was paying as for all of its employees or the average for individuals? [00:12:08] Speaker 04: Your Honor, just for individual coverage, all individuals were paying essentially the same amount. [00:12:13] Speaker 04: And not for family, but for individual coverage, the increase stopped and flattened out. [00:12:19] Speaker 04: It dropped a little bit. [00:12:21] Speaker 04: For the first time, [00:12:23] Speaker 00: Are you arguing that if this termination was based on the cost of her insurance, that this is disability discrimination under the ADA? [00:12:36] Speaker 04: Yes, Your Honor. [00:12:38] Speaker 04: There are not many courts that have struggled with this particular issue. [00:12:47] Speaker 04: But they have struggled with another similar issue, and it's also been addressed by the EEOC. [00:12:53] Speaker 04: First, there's an associational claim. [00:12:56] Speaker 04: If somebody is associated with a personalized disability and costs have increased, courts have quite often found that that is a discrimination on the ADA. [00:13:06] Speaker 04: In addition, the EEOC has since 1990... Wait, I don't understand that. [00:13:12] Speaker 04: Can you repeat that? [00:13:13] Speaker 04: The ADA has multiple provisions, and one of them is that you cannot discriminate against a person if she is associated with someone who has a disability. [00:13:22] Speaker 04: For instance, maybe her husband has cancer. [00:13:25] Speaker 04: And if her husband's cancer is increasing the insurance rates, [00:13:29] Speaker 04: courts have found that that is enough to satisfy an associational disability claim. [00:13:35] Speaker 04: So to find that there is no claim here in the ADA, it would mean that being associated with someone with a disability who is increasing insurance rates would satisfy the ADA. [00:13:46] Speaker 04: But just the person who's disabled increases would not. [00:13:50] Speaker 04: In addition, the EOC in its technical assistance manual has, since 1992, held [00:13:58] Speaker 04: believed that this is enough. [00:14:02] Speaker 04: As the Supreme Court held in FedEx, the Holowiski, the EOC's pronouncements are entitled to Chevron, excuse me, to, my mistake, Skidmore deference, assuming they even constantly apply. [00:14:15] Speaker 04: And since 1992, the EEOC has said in its technical assistance manual, the first one is section 7.8, an employer cannot fire or refuse to hire an individual with a disability because the employer's current health insurance plan does not cover the individual's disability or because the individual may increase the employer's future health care costs. [00:14:38] Speaker 04: And this comes up again and again in the technical assistance manual, section 6.4 about medical exams, section 9.10 about assessment of risk. [00:14:52] Speaker 04: And in fact, in its appendix to the regs, under qualified individual, it says that [00:14:59] Speaker 04: Termination about whether somebody is qualified should not be based on speculation that the employee may become unable in the future or may cause increased health insurance premiums. [00:15:10] Speaker 04: And as far as I understand, the EEOC has never waived it from this belief. [00:15:17] Speaker 04: I see that long overstayed my time. [00:15:21] Speaker 04: No further questions? [00:15:22] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:15:32] Speaker 03: May it please the court. [00:15:34] Speaker 03: The district court said, correctly, I believe, that at summary judgment, it's about evidence. [00:15:43] Speaker 03: What's the evidence? [00:15:44] Speaker 03: What does the evidence say? [00:15:46] Speaker 03: Are there substantial questions? [00:15:49] Speaker 03: The evidence, the actual evidence, was that in 2008, the plaintiff was such a poor employee [00:16:00] Speaker 03: As the receptionist, she was involved in altercations with members of the credit union. [00:16:07] Speaker 03: And rather than fire her, which the CEO at the time testified she was remiss to do, she said she didn't like to fire anybody, she liked to give people a chance, [00:16:18] Speaker 03: She said, you know what, we'll give you a different job where you don't interact with the public. [00:16:22] Speaker 02: So on the evidence of whether she was a poor employee, you have a declaration from a person who swears that he was her supervisor that says she wasn't a poor employee. [00:16:33] Speaker 02: And as far as I could tell from your brief, your answer to that is that he's lying. [00:16:39] Speaker 02: And I don't know that that is, it's hard to see how that's not an issue that should go to the jury. [00:16:45] Speaker 03: It's not even a question of he's lying. [00:16:48] Speaker 03: She testified... Or she's lying. [00:16:50] Speaker 02: Somebody's lying, in your view. [00:16:52] Speaker 02: It's not even a question of she's lying. [00:16:54] Speaker 02: I thought you said that in your brief. [00:16:55] Speaker 03: Well, the evidence is that this person who comes in at the eleventh hour and says, I'm her supervisor, and says all these things about her, the evidence is that he's not her supervisor. [00:17:07] Speaker 03: the court looked at the evidence, which is who signed the performance evaluations and who the plaintiff herself testified was her supervisor, and the court decided that that was the evidence. [00:17:26] Speaker 02: Did the court mention this definition? [00:17:30] Speaker 02: I don't believe that the court specifically mentioned it. [00:17:32] Speaker 02: I think what the court said is... And why wouldn't it be enough if you have a sworn declaration from somebody who swears that they're the person's supervisor? [00:17:38] Speaker 02: I'm just talking about the issue of pretext. [00:17:40] Speaker 02: I understand that there's a follow-on inquiry of whether pretext is enough. [00:17:46] Speaker 02: Sure. [00:17:46] Speaker 02: But on this question of whether there's a genuine issue of material fact, on whether the stated reason was pretextual, why isn't it enough to have somebody who swears that they're a supervisor say she was a good performer? [00:17:58] Speaker 03: Well, I think the evidence is clear that he, in fact, was not the supervisor. [00:18:01] Speaker 03: I think the court evaluated the evidence in front of them. [00:18:03] Speaker 03: Didn't make a credibility determination. [00:18:05] Speaker 02: Do you think there's no genuine issue of material fact, even though she says he was her supervisor, he says he was her supervisor, and nobody says he wasn't, as far as I can tell? [00:18:12] Speaker 02: Is there any evidence that says he wasn't the supervisor? [00:18:15] Speaker 03: Yeah, the plaintiff's own testimony in her deposition. [00:18:17] Speaker 02: But then she says that he was her supervisor. [00:18:20] Speaker 03: Well, then that's contradictory testimony. [00:18:22] Speaker 03: And the court, I think, if you look at, if you [00:18:28] Speaker 03: If you want to not believe anybody, if you just say, okay, the depositions say what they say, everybody says what they says, but I'm the court and I'm going to look at the evidence and I'm not going to make any credibility determinations, and there's, the plaintiff says one thing and then she says something else, but if I look at the performance evaluations, [00:18:49] Speaker 03: and I look at all of the documentary evidence, I look at all of the emails, there is no evidence that this Stephen Bradham is, in fact, her supervisor. [00:18:57] Speaker 01: In fact, it's clear that... So in summary judgment, you're allowed to look at the documentary evidence and ignore the testimony? [00:19:07] Speaker 03: I don't believe that that's what happened, and I don't believe that that's what the Court is saying, and I'm not really suggesting that. [00:19:13] Speaker 03: I'm saying to the extent that the Court has to decide what the evidence is. [00:19:17] Speaker 03: and weighing all of the factors in front of the court, the court chose the evidence that it thought was... The court considered the evidence that it felt stated what the facts were at the time. [00:19:36] Speaker 02: So the statements in the declaration, is that not evidence? [00:19:46] Speaker 03: I suppose that it could be. [00:19:49] Speaker 02: Could be. [00:19:49] Speaker 02: What is non-evidentiary about a sworn statement in a declaration? [00:19:53] Speaker 02: Why isn't that evidence? [00:19:55] Speaker 02: It seems to me your argument is that there's evidence that says this. [00:19:57] Speaker 02: There's other evidence that disproves it. [00:19:59] Speaker 01: well the declaration wasn't provided during discovery didn't come in until it was time to file briefs uh... the the first time we ever saw this suppose that there is a standard practice in some reject challenge strike and seek further discovery by way of a deposition proper but i i think that [00:20:29] Speaker 03: I think that even if, as you asked, even if that provides for pretext, I think the court considered it and decided in consideration of all the evidence that in fact that the termination was not made for discriminatory reason, there was no pretext. [00:20:51] Speaker 03: You know, the court really didn't say anything about Mr. Bradham's declaration, didn't really say anything about Mr. Bradham, period. [00:20:59] Speaker 03: I mean, I will agree with you that the court didn't really say anything, but I think the court weighed all of the evidence and said, you know, this is where I come down. [00:21:09] Speaker 02: On that issue, the court seemed to assume that, relevant to the question that Judge Brown was asking your friend on the other side, that making a decision based on costs of somebody who has a disability doesn't constitute discrimination on the basis of disability. [00:21:29] Speaker 02: As I read your brief, you don't endorse that rationale. [00:21:36] Speaker 03: I don't think that there's any evidence that the employer made a decision based on cost. [00:21:42] Speaker 03: I know that the plaintiff really wants that to be true, but there's simply no evidence because when asked about, you know, did you consider the cost of health insurance, both of the CEOs said, [00:21:57] Speaker 03: Yeah, when it came time for renewal, we looked at it, we evaluated the benefits to the employees, and we decided on what the best plan was. [00:22:08] Speaker 02: But I thought that the point was that the district court, I think, inferred the plaintiff's argument to be the defendant, the employer, your client, took into account cost of disability. [00:22:18] Speaker 02: But that wouldn't even matter, because that doesn't constitute, at least for the ADA claim, that wouldn't constitute discrimination on the basis of disability. [00:22:26] Speaker 02: And then in your brief, as I read your brief on appeal, you don't endorse that rationale. [00:22:31] Speaker 02: You seem to not dispute that. [00:22:34] Speaker 02: making a decision based on costs generated by disability would be discrimination based on disability. [00:22:40] Speaker 02: But you have other reasons that we should affirm. [00:22:42] Speaker 02: I get that. [00:22:44] Speaker 03: I would agree that if the employer made the decision to terminate based on cost, if there was evidence that that's what the court, that that's what my client did, that maybe we would get a different result. [00:22:58] Speaker 03: The issue is on summary judgment, there's simply no evidence. [00:23:01] Speaker 03: And I know I've said that about 100 times in my brief, but that's really what this comes down to is what is the evidence? [00:23:08] Speaker 03: What is the defendant able to prove? [00:23:11] Speaker 03: What is the plaintiff able to prove? [00:23:13] Speaker 03: And in terms of getting into this issue of how much did it cost to insure Ms. [00:23:19] Speaker 03: Giles, the only evidence, if you want to call it that, of how much it cost is that one time, [00:23:30] Speaker 03: Persisfelder testified that Ms. [00:23:33] Speaker 03: Giles told her that the treatment was costly. [00:23:37] Speaker 03: Well, that doesn't in and of itself mean anything to me or, frankly, to the credit union, and coupled with Ms. [00:23:46] Speaker 03: Giles' own testimony that she actually believed that the employer was paying her medical bills [00:23:54] Speaker 03: which which obviously is not the case. [00:23:55] Speaker 03: I mean, I don't think there's any dispute of fact that, you know, the employer was paying the premiums and the insurance company was paying the medical bills, you know, and you asked Mr. Goldberg and he said, I don't, you know, I don't know and it's unknowable how much any single individual is costing in terms of increases or decreases or changes in rates. [00:24:15] Speaker 01: Well, your friend on the other side says, you know, look at our brief and page, I guess it's 41 of their brief where they have a table where they show [00:24:24] Speaker 01: premiums going up year after year, and then they plateau after Ms. [00:24:30] Speaker 01: Giles' turbidity. [00:24:33] Speaker 01: Now, there's a page that's cited in the appendix for this, and when I look at that page, I can't see where this data appears on that page, but put that aside. [00:24:44] Speaker 01: Well, let's not put it aside. [00:24:46] Speaker 01: Do you dispute these numbers? [00:24:49] Speaker 03: Well, the numbers in the table on page 41 accurately represent the cost. [00:24:58] Speaker 03: For instance, at the August 2009 renewal, I believe that it correctly states it was $449 cost to the employer per month to provide insurance to individuals with the same level of coverage, individual with [00:25:18] Speaker 03: with prescriptions and dental that Ms. [00:25:21] Speaker 03: Giles had. [00:25:22] Speaker 03: I believe that's correct. [00:25:24] Speaker 03: I believe the next number, $437, is also correct. [00:25:28] Speaker 03: However, what Mr. Goldberg doesn't state is that there are two factors. [00:25:37] Speaker 03: The first is the total cost, the per contract cost, not just individual coverage, but taking into account all the coverages [00:25:46] Speaker 03: It was $517.07 per employee across the board for the 2009-2010 contract year. [00:25:56] Speaker 03: For the 2010-2011 contract year where the plaintiff says, see they fired me and look how much it went down, the per contract cost over the entire organization actually went up 6.6% to $551.18. [00:26:08] Speaker 03: So that's one issue. [00:26:11] Speaker 03: The other issue is if you look at the benefit statements and if you look at all of the [00:26:15] Speaker 03: all of the very fine print language that's in there, the individuals who had the type of coverage that Ms. [00:26:25] Speaker 03: Giles had, their deductible increased by 100 percent, their out-of-pocket increased by 50 percent, their out-of-network increased, it was either by 80 or 100 percent, so while the cost to the employer may have gone down a little bit, the cost to the employee actually increased, so [00:26:44] Speaker 03: There is no real benefit. [00:26:45] Speaker 03: The other issue that the plaintiff doesn't really deal with is they fired Ms. [00:26:53] Speaker 03: Childs, but they offered her Cobra. [00:26:54] Speaker 03: And I mean, I realize that they're required to offer her Cobra, but they did. [00:26:59] Speaker 03: And in doing so, how are they going to get any benefit from firing her? [00:27:03] Speaker 03: If she takes Cobra, they still have to pay for it. [00:27:06] Speaker 03: And the plaintiff wants to argue, well, I couldn't afford Cobra. [00:27:08] Speaker 02: Is Cobra permanent? [00:27:09] Speaker 02: Excuse me? [00:27:10] Speaker 02: Is Cobra permanent? [00:27:11] Speaker 03: At the time that they offered her the Cobra, she could have been on it for up to 36 months. [00:27:16] Speaker 01: But if she takes another job, and they have benefits, then she would be off, right? [00:27:23] Speaker 03: To the extent that they actually benefited, and that was their motivation, sure. [00:27:27] Speaker 03: If she doesn't take the COBRA, or if she gets another job, I guess they benefit. [00:27:31] Speaker 03: But the facts are that they didn't really benefit, one. [00:27:34] Speaker 03: And two, there's absolutely no evidence that that was their motivation for terminating her. [00:27:39] Speaker 03: They terminated her because she was a bad employee. [00:27:43] Speaker 03: That's what the performance reviews say. [00:27:44] Speaker 01: But that's not what they told the EEOC. [00:27:47] Speaker 01: I mean, when they know that there's a charge of discrimination, [00:27:51] Speaker 01: The rubber has hit the road here. [00:27:54] Speaker 01: They have a lawyer. [00:27:55] Speaker 01: The lawyer writes a letter and he says it's solely for business reasons and it's related to a restructure. [00:28:02] Speaker 01: Now, taking that in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, which we have to. [00:28:07] Speaker 01: Sure. [00:28:08] Speaker 01: Couldn't the reasonable fact finder then say that there's a pretext because there's a shifting or inconsistent explanation when you say, oh, we followed her for performance reasons, and it was really the thing that really sticks out as a scanning mistake? [00:28:26] Speaker 01: Because even in the EEOC letter, there are some performance issues that are mentioned, but no scanning mistakes are mentioned in the letter. [00:28:35] Speaker 01: So I don't see how you can say that there's not enough evidence to find pretext. [00:28:43] Speaker 03: Well, I see that I've significantly passed my time, but I'll try and answer this as quickly as I can. [00:28:51] Speaker 03: the court considered all of the evidence. [00:28:55] Speaker 03: Everything that was before her and said considering all of this evidence and even considering that there was this shifting [00:29:05] Speaker 03: somewhat shifting reason, although they did mention performance and then that sort of got refined and became very clear what the actual performance issue was, that at the time that the court made its determination and considered all of the evidence, found no pretext and frankly found that the reason was, didn't just say that it was, you know, a reason, it said it was a legitimate reason that she was a [00:29:30] Speaker 03: She was a bad employee and the employer has the right to make that decision and cited the case where it's not the district court's province to act as a super human resource department and determine whether or not it was a good idea or a bad idea, but simply did they act within the law. [00:29:50] Speaker 03: And I think taking all of the evidence into consideration, [00:29:53] Speaker 03: that the court determined that the plaintiff simply had no evidence. [00:29:58] Speaker 03: And the plaintiff's effort to just throw stones and say, they're wrong about this, they're wrong about this, they're wrong about this, wasn't enough. [00:30:05] Speaker 03: Summary judgment, you have to have something. [00:30:07] Speaker 03: You have to have some evidence. [00:30:09] Speaker 03: And the district court determined that the plaintiff just didn't have any evidence and therefore ruled in our favor. [00:30:15] Speaker 03: And I believe that the proper course for this court is to affirm that decision. [00:30:20] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:30:24] Speaker 00: Did Mr. Goldberg have any time left? [00:30:27] Speaker 00: You may have two minutes. [00:30:34] Speaker 04: I just want to brief points, and then I'd like to answer your question, Judge Wilkins. [00:30:38] Speaker 04: Why don't I do that first? [00:30:39] Speaker 04: The citations that you requested from in the table, the move from 308 to 375 is at JA 1137. [00:30:50] Speaker 04: The move from 375 to 449 is at JA 1119. [00:30:59] Speaker 04: Now, I'd also like to address two things that Mr. Hyman mentioned. [00:31:05] Speaker 04: The first is the question about a superhuman resources department. [00:31:13] Speaker 04: The cases that say that are essentially judging between two admittedly qualified individuals. [00:31:18] Speaker 04: And the court says, and this court has said, once we know they're qualified, we're not going to decide who's a little more qualified. [00:31:25] Speaker 04: But at the same time, this court and other courts have said that we do have to figure out whether these potentially pretextual reasons are real. [00:31:35] Speaker 04: Is there really a performance issue or not? [00:31:38] Speaker 04: Second, I'd like to provide the court with a few references on the associational issue for the APA. [00:31:48] Speaker 04: Those are what's been called a seminal decision, Seventh Circuit, Larimer, the IBM Corp, 370 F-3rd, 698, Truleo, T-R-U-J-I-L-L-O, the Pacific Corp, 524 F-3rd, 1149 and the Tenth Circuit. [00:32:09] Speaker 04: There are a number of others. [00:32:11] Speaker 04: There's some reported, some unreported, but Larimer is really the seminal one, and they all flow, most flow from that. [00:32:21] Speaker 04: If there are no further questions. [00:32:23] Speaker 00: All right. [00:32:24] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:32:24] Speaker 00: Thank you very much. [00:32:24] Speaker 00: The case will be submitted.