[00:00:02] Speaker 02:
We'll wait just a second while the folks who want to leave make their way out quietly.

[00:01:02] Speaker 03:
Ms.

[00:01:03] Speaker 03:
Miller, please proceed.

[00:01:04] Speaker 00:
Your Honors, the district court grossly abused its discretion by denying Ms.

[00:01:10] Speaker 00:
Crews' basic discovery of her Title VII claims at the outset of this case.

[00:01:15] Speaker 00:
There were five types of documentary evidence that she sought in discovery, most importantly relating to comparators.

[00:01:22] Speaker 00:
As you all know in Title VII claims, you ruled before recently as the Georgetown University Hospital case, the Wheeler versus Georgetown University Hospital case in 2016.

[00:01:32] Speaker 03:
that your evidence is a way... Remind me, how did she describe the comparators that she wanted to take discovery from?

[00:01:41] Speaker 03:
How did she describe them?

[00:01:42] Speaker 03:
Because I believe the district court thought she didn't give a sufficient

[00:01:46] Speaker 03:
description.

[00:01:47] Speaker 03:
Would you discuss that?

[00:01:48] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:01:50] Speaker 00:
Our client, unlike the Wheeler case, did not identify specific people that were comparators, but in this particular case, she described the comparative evidence that she wanted, which were the demographics of the Mount Weather and the headquarter staff at the Office of the Chief Information Officer, disciplinary actions, information about reassignments, demotions, administrative inquiries,

[00:02:10] Speaker 00:
how they were conducted differently for her versus other people, evidence about working relationships between the crews or peers and subordinates, as well as

[00:02:21] Speaker 00:
competitive evidence can potentially establish deviations in how the agency conducted administrative inquiries.

[00:02:28] Speaker 00:
So she did not identify specific people.

[00:02:31] Speaker 00:
She did not know specific managers who'd been treated differently.

[00:02:34] Speaker 00:
But in fact, based on her own experience, she knew that she'd been treated differently and was certainly entitled to discovery.

[00:02:40] Speaker 05:
I'm sorry to explain that.

[00:02:41] Speaker 05:
She didn't know the identity of other people who'd been treated differently, but she knew on the basis of her own experience

[00:02:51] Speaker 05:
people similarly situated have been treated.

[00:02:55] Speaker 05:
I can't put those two propositions together.

[00:02:57] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:02:59] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, our client was unaware of any manager who was removed after allegations of rude behavior.

[00:03:07] Speaker 00:
In fact, she doesn't believe it.

[00:03:10] Speaker 05:
You have to have the rude behavior of the same quality and persistence and numbers.

[00:03:16] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:03:18] Speaker 00:
So she didn't know of any specific managers.

[00:03:20] Speaker 00:
But by discovering, by conducting discovery, what we hope to establish was either there were some others.

[00:03:26] Speaker 00:
Look at the demographics, the race, and the gender of these folks.

[00:03:30] Speaker 00:
If there were others, if there were no others, then that would be instructive as well.

[00:03:35] Speaker 05:
She didn't know of any such people.

[00:03:37] Speaker 05:
And then the question is, did she have

[00:03:40] Speaker 05:
any reason to believe that they existed, right?

[00:03:46] Speaker 05:
People identically situated with respect to conduct, differently situated with respect to ethnicity, etc., who are treated differently.

[00:04:00] Speaker 05:
I didn't see anything pointing to reason to believe that such people existed.

[00:04:06] Speaker 00:
That's true.

[00:04:08] Speaker 00:
However,

[00:04:09] Speaker 00:
However, the discovery that she would take would not only demonstrate the demographics of the workforce, but also helped, in fact, to prove just her point, which is she was one of the only female minority managers operating as a manager in the Office of the Chief of Information Officer.

[00:04:26] Speaker 00:
Because she was really one of a kind, she believed that she was being treated differently and removed precipitously from her position based on just comments or alleged rude behavior.

[00:04:36] Speaker 00:
So no, she wasn't aware of any.

[00:04:38] Speaker 00:
But we believe that the evidence of the demographics as well as the fact that there were others, that could certainly be probative.

[00:04:47] Speaker 00:
The complainants, that's the purpose of discovery.

[00:04:50] Speaker 00:
Given her own experience, she knew that there was no one else, at least in her experience, had been so quickly removed based on mere rude behavior.

[00:04:58] Speaker 00:
In fact, she'd observed rude behavior by many white males that worked in that

[00:05:03] Speaker 00:
office for years.

[00:05:06] Speaker 00:
But that's just one aspect of the evidence that she was seeking, Your Honors.

[00:05:09] Speaker 00:
Highly relevant evidence also in this case included witness evidence.

[00:05:15] Speaker 00:
And what's really shocking

[00:05:17] Speaker 00:
is the district court ignored, just completely ignored the written documentary evidence of witnesses that she sought to depose.

[00:05:26] Speaker 00:
And those included witnesses who were directly privy to offensive racially and gender-charged comments, such as women cannot make rational decisions because of their hormones, that this was an old boy's club.

[00:05:44] Speaker 00:
the office of the chief information officer, and that there were two things holding her back, that she was a black and female.

[00:05:50] Speaker 00:
So this was not a case where there was no evidence of direct offensive racially and gender-based comments that would certainly support the discovery that was sought in this case.

[00:06:05] Speaker 00:
And that's why the judge abused his discretion.

[00:06:08] Speaker 00:
Not only did he ignore that evidence,

[00:06:11] Speaker 00:
which the agency doesn't even quibble with, but just denied her the opportunity to prove pretext.

[00:06:19] Speaker 00:
And that's not going to happen in any Title VII case without the potential of there being comparator evidence, which she wasn't even able to obtain, or much less take depositions of witness that she could not because of the absence of subpoena authority in the EEOC.

[00:06:34] Speaker 00:
deposed, who were no longer agency employees.

[00:06:39] Speaker 00:
So there was no phishing expedition here.

[00:06:42] Speaker 00:
And in fact, the judge denied discovery in this case based on a misapprehension of the record.

[00:06:48] Speaker 00:
That's another indication for you all that he abused his discretion.

[00:06:53] Speaker 00:
If you read it, his decision was simply that any discovery would be futile because the government's case was unassailable.

[00:07:03] Speaker 00:
Well, first of all, not only do direct witness statements contradict that, but the judge appears to rely, in fact, relies exclusively on an administrative inquiry that was conducted by a human resources person who the judge said didn't know Ms.

[00:07:18] Speaker 00:
Cruz's race and national origin and gender or

[00:07:22] Speaker 00:
probably knew her gender because she had a female first name.

[00:07:25] Speaker 00:
But the reality is that human resources official was not the decision maker.

[00:07:30] Speaker 00:
That human resources official, Ms.

[00:07:33] Speaker 00:
Gunsalas, was instructed to conduct the administrative investigation by the managers that my client alleged discriminated against her.

[00:07:40] Speaker 00:
The only people that Ms.

[00:07:42] Speaker 00:
Gunsalas interviewed were people that the manager, the alleged responsible management official, told her to interview.

[00:07:48] Speaker 00:
Those people were only white males.

[00:07:49] Speaker 01:
Can I ask you a process question?

[00:07:52] Speaker 01:
The discovery that you sought, was that related solely to the discrimination claim or was the discovery sought in opposition to summary judgment on the retaliation claim as well?

[00:08:10] Speaker 00:
The discovery that was denied related to just the discrimination claim, because the witnesses that we sought to depose and the comparative evidence related directly to the reasons for removing her from her position, Your Honor.

[00:08:25] Speaker 01:
And so what about the government's argument with respect to affirming the summary judgment on the retaliation claim?

[00:08:36] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, the

[00:08:38] Speaker 00:
With respect to the retaliation claim, the district court just missed the mark.

[00:08:43] Speaker 00:
He missed the mark because he found, and the agency doesn't even quibble with this, the judge erred by failing to address pretext in his retaliation analysis.

[00:08:55] Speaker 00:
He simply said that Ms.

[00:08:56] Speaker 00:
Cruz failed to establish a prima facie case by lacking this

[00:09:00] Speaker 00:
causal connection, the agency itself doesn't even try to defend that decision.

[00:09:04] Speaker 05:
There was clearly... Did you break the retaliation claim into its separate parts, because they seemed quite different?

[00:09:11] Speaker 05:
I mean, there's certainly a difference between being sent to a department that didn't use her skills versus being demoted within her own, what she'd always been doing.

[00:09:27] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:09:29] Speaker 05:
They certainly offered an explanation for that.

[00:09:32] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:09:33] Speaker 00:
And hence the judge's error.

[00:09:35] Speaker 00:
There was clearly a problem facing case established.

[00:09:38] Speaker 00:
What the judge misconstrued the record about is that it was after her protected EEO activity that she alleges that her detail was extended by four months.

[00:09:48] Speaker 00:
In addition, that she was reassigned from a position to a position she was completely unfamiliar with.

[00:09:53] Speaker 05:
The principal underlined that.

[00:09:55] Speaker 05:
the detailing her out of the prior position was clearly established for any retaliatory, any action fighting retaliation occurred, right?

[00:10:11] Speaker 00:
Yes, your honor.

[00:10:12] Speaker 00:
However, the record shows that prior to her EEO complaint, protected activity, the plan, the manager's plan was to demote her to the position of deputy.

[00:10:24] Speaker 00:
which would have continued to allow her to work as the Chief Information Security Officer career field.

[00:10:29] Speaker 00:
And it was only after her protected activity that she was just moved out of the CISO.

[00:10:36] Speaker 05:
You're mixing the two things.

[00:10:37] Speaker 05:
One is an extension of four months of not being in this section, and the other is being removed from the section altogether.

[00:10:48] Speaker 05:
Right?

[00:10:49] Speaker 05:
And maybe this section, I'm sure, is not the technically correct word.

[00:10:55] Speaker 05:
The difference between using her expertise and not using her expertise.

[00:10:59] Speaker 05:
Now, the second, that stands on a different footing from the first.

[00:11:08] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:11:09] Speaker 00:
But there was a prima facie case here, and the judge failed to get at pretext.

[00:11:13] Speaker 00:
He failed to examine the evidence of pretext that existed.

[00:11:16] Speaker 00:
He didn't even touch pretext, which was an error.

[00:11:19] Speaker 00:
But in terms of the prima facie case and the causal connection, there was only a two week period of time from the protected activity until the change of plans for our clients.

[00:11:36] Speaker 00:
So not only, from her perspective, she expected to come back in 90 days, right?

[00:11:42] Speaker 00:
So the judge, you know, I think misapprehends the record when he says that there was a course that was set into motion that was unaltered by the EEO activity.

[00:11:51] Speaker 00:
That is simply not true.

[00:11:52] Speaker 00:
If you actually examine the record, totally different things happened to her after EEO activity within a short period of time afterwards, which helps to establish the temporal proximity that establishes a prima facie case.

[00:12:03] Speaker 00:
The error here

[00:12:05] Speaker 00:
is the judge ignored pretext and failed to conduct that analysis, which he needed to have done.

[00:12:11] Speaker 03:
We'll keep you two minutes back on our panel.

[00:12:13] Speaker 03:
Thank you very much.

[00:12:13] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:12:21] Speaker 04:
May it please the court, my name is Joshua Rogers and I represent the United States.

[00:12:26] Speaker 04:
I'd like to begin by addressing this issue of these two different phases of response to the appellant's behavior.

[00:12:35] Speaker 04:
So there is this inappropriate behavior that they're responding to or what they believe to be inappropriate behavior.

[00:12:43] Speaker 04:
The first

[00:12:45] Speaker 04:
The first action that's taken is to transition her to a deputy position.

[00:12:52] Speaker 04:
The reasons that they have are, I don't have to belabor this, are things like shouting, calling people liars, demeaning people, and making a sexually inappropriate comment.

[00:13:03] Speaker 04:
Okay, so after that what we have is the June change in which she's transitioned into another position.

[00:13:11] Speaker 04:
With respect to that, there are reasons given for that.

[00:13:15] Speaker 04:
First of all is we don't want interference with the new chief.

[00:13:20] Speaker 04:
Everyone in the department is showing signs of being more stable.

[00:13:24] Speaker 04:
more focused, there's better morale now.

[00:13:27] Speaker 04:
They state that, Ms.

[00:13:28] Speaker 04:
Rote states that there was a hostile environment before.

[00:13:31] Speaker 04:
In the meantime, you need to learn how to talk and get training.

[00:13:36] Speaker 01:
And she also states that this ordinance are afraid of you, which really brings in... But here's my question about all of that, Council.

[00:13:44] Speaker 01:
Those are all, you know, plausible reasons, but why isn't that something for

[00:13:52] Speaker 01:
a case to go to the jury.

[00:13:55] Speaker 01:
I mean, why is that the only conclusion that a jury could find, especially since she was transitioned ultimately to a new position where she was supervising people?

[00:14:09] Speaker 01:
Well, if she was a problem supervisor, and that's the reason that you're moving her, then why did you move her to another position supervising people?

[00:14:20] Speaker 04:
Well, as I mentioned before, there is that second set of justifications, but at the same time as we note in our brief, the Court found that there was no issue of disputed material facts and explains that there were in fact these facts that have been laid out in the

[00:14:39] Speaker 04:
a defendant's statement of material facts which had gone uncontested.

[00:14:45] Speaker 04:
In this particular, that particular case and before this court, we also have the plaintiff not actually contesting what the United States has alleged with regard to three different types of behavior.

[00:14:57] Speaker 04:
At no point

[00:14:58] Speaker 04:
anywhere, either in the record below or in her briefs, that she ever argued that she did not make, or she doesn't actually do it on a convincing basis, that she didn't make a sexually inappropriate comment in response to an employee who wouldn't lie, and that she also did not retaliate against this employee.

[00:15:19] Speaker 04:
That is not challenged other than erroneously.

[00:15:21] Speaker 01:
What's also not challenged is that

[00:15:25] Speaker 01:
The initial plan with respect to her was that she would be made the deputy chief, branch chief, or whatever the proper term is.

[00:15:39] Speaker 01:
And then after she filed her EEO complaint, the plan changed.

[00:15:47] Speaker 01:
That's not contested by you, right?

[00:15:51] Speaker 01:
We would agree that the plan did change.

[00:15:54] Speaker 01:
So the question for us is, especially since the plan changed very quickly after that happened, during a time period where we said that in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, we can infer discrimination, right?

[00:16:11] Speaker 01:
That's what our case law says, right?

[00:16:13] Speaker 04:
Well, I wouldn't agree because basically what she has to show is that the agency did not believe this was true.

[00:16:19] Speaker 04:
When she hasn't contested these facts, then what we have to conclude is that the agency did, and she has done nothing to show that the real reason was discrimination.

[00:16:31] Speaker 01:
You would concede that the presumption

[00:16:37] Speaker 01:
of discrimination applies with this short time period, right?

[00:16:43] Speaker 04:
The three-month time period?

[00:16:44] Speaker 01:
Yes, under our caseload.

[00:16:48] Speaker 04:
The problem is that fundamentally, under Brady, she just simply hasn't even made a dent in the presumption in this case because there's nothing contested that the agency had a basis for what it did.

[00:17:01] Speaker 04:
And that is that whole slew of reasons.

[00:17:04] Speaker 01:
It just, she doesn't even contest it.

[00:17:06] Speaker 01:
When I was on the district court, I tried lots of employment cases.

[00:17:11] Speaker 01:
And the jury instruction that I used, which came from case law in the Third Circuit and our circuit, gave an example.

[00:17:21] Speaker 01:
And the example was that if a party is discharged because they stole pencils, they took pencils from the office supplies and they took them home, and that was in violation of

[00:17:35] Speaker 01:
policy about, you know, not making personal use of office supplies.

[00:17:41] Speaker 01:
That could be a permissible basis for discipline or terminating them.

[00:17:46] Speaker 01:
But what if, you know, that was a woman and all the men took pencils home and the employer knew that but didn't terminate them?

[00:18:00] Speaker 01:
You can have

[00:18:03] Speaker 01:
a reason to believe that the person violated the policy, but still have a case to go to the jury about whether or not that was the real reason.

[00:18:16] Speaker 01:
That was, you know, the classic example in this jury instruction.

[00:18:20] Speaker 01:
Was I giving a bad jury instruction back then?

[00:18:25] Speaker 04:
I don't believe so.

[00:18:26] Speaker 04:
In this case, she stole the whole store of pencils and there's no evidence any male did.

[00:18:33] Speaker 04:
Well, you didn't give her a chance to look for it for one.

[00:18:37] Speaker 04:
In discovery?

[00:18:38] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:18:40] Speaker 04:
I would disagree with that.

[00:18:42] Speaker 01:
Well, what chance did she get?

[00:18:45] Speaker 01:
You filed an answer in the motion for summary judgment five minutes later.

[00:18:50] Speaker 01:
So what chance did she get to have any discovery here?

[00:18:53] Speaker 04:
Well, that's her argument.

[00:18:55] Speaker 04:
I'm just bereft of any chance whatsoever, which is difficult to swallow in light of the fact that

[00:19:02] Speaker 04:
There were the records of informal investigation, 37 sworn witnesses.

[00:19:07] Speaker 01:
So someone who undergoes an administrative process doesn't have the right to take civil discovery under the federal rules?

[00:19:14] Speaker 04:
I wouldn't agree with that.

[00:19:15] Speaker 01:
In fact, I would say... Do we have a different set of standards for when they can get discovery than somebody who doesn't go through the administrative process?

[00:19:25] Speaker 01:
Absolutely not.

[00:19:26] Speaker 01:
And I actually think that... Then why are you arguing that she should be penalized or have to show some higher standard because there were some records that were available to her from the administrative process?

[00:19:40] Speaker 04:
I'm not making an argument about the administrative process.

[00:19:43] Speaker 04:
I'm making an argument about the motion for summary judgment standard.

[00:19:47] Speaker 04:
There were 500 pages of records that the United States placed on the record for its motion for summary judgment, regardless of where it came from.

[00:19:55] Speaker 04:
And the plaintiff included 75 pages of her own record.

[00:19:59] Speaker 04:
So the court says, I have all of this.

[00:20:01] Speaker 04:
And on the issue here, what we have is, did the court have an abuse of this?

[00:20:05] Speaker 01:
OK, so let's go back to my jury instruction question.

[00:20:09] Speaker 01:
Suppose then the district court would be entitled to say, she stole pencils.

[00:20:17] Speaker 01:
The records that the government provided in their statement of fact shows that she stole pencils and they believe she stole pencils.

[00:20:27] Speaker 01:
What the records don't show is whether other people stole pencils and weren't disciplined, right?

[00:20:34] Speaker 01:
None of the records get to that.

[00:20:36] Speaker 01:
She doesn't get a chance to have discovery to try to establish that.

[00:20:41] Speaker 04:
The problem is in her 56D affidavit, she says nothing about pencils.

[00:20:46] Speaker 04:
Instead, she simply says, I want information with respect to demographics, culture, standard culture.

[00:20:53] Speaker 01:
She says she wants information about whether other people were disciplined for similar reasons.

[00:21:04] Speaker 04:
She says that, doesn't she?

[00:21:06] Speaker 01:
Would you grant me that?

[00:21:08] Speaker 04:
Those other people include pretty much every protected category.

[00:21:13] Speaker 01:
Well, I mean, that's why, you know, you have limits on discovery.

[00:21:17] Speaker 01:
Maybe the 56D affidavit was too broad, but does that mean that the court has to, the way that they're supposed to exercise their discretion is to say you ask for too much discovery so you get none?

[00:21:31] Speaker 04:
Well, the answer to that would be that the court is, there's an abuse of discretion standard here, and essentially what she's saying to the court is, I'm not gonna tell you what exactly it is what I'm looking for, so why don't you do the deep dive into the record, and then tell me exactly what I can find that might be helpful.

[00:21:48] Speaker 04:
Instead, she says, tell me everything with regard to all relevant times, all these different categories.

[00:21:54] Speaker 04:
There is nothing that narrows us down to who's stealing the pencils.

[00:22:07] Speaker 04:
There are no further questions.

[00:22:08] Speaker 04:
I'll take my seat.

[00:22:14] Speaker 00:
Your Honors, I think it's telling that the government defends its appeal based on arguments that it never even raised in its motion for summary judgment, or that the court raised or based its decision on in granting summary judgment.

[00:22:28] Speaker 00:
Not anywhere was the adequacy or the inadequacy alleged of the Rule 56 affidavit a basis for this court's decision.

[00:22:35] Speaker 00:
Not only was the plaintiff specific in the examples of the documented evidence of comparators that she was seeking,

[00:22:44] Speaker 00:
She also satisfied all the other necessary elements for a Rule 56 affidavit.

[00:22:52] Speaker 00:
The government followed this motion for summer judgment.

[00:22:54] Speaker 00:
She opposed it.

[00:22:55] Speaker 00:
Not even in this reply brief did they say that the Rule 56 affidavit was incomplete or inaccurate.

[00:23:05] Speaker 01:
But the local rule, the local rule 7-H, I believe it is,

[00:23:10] Speaker 01:
they filed a statement pursuant to that local rule, and your client did not file a response to that statement rebutting any of those facts, right?

[00:23:23] Speaker 00:
Well, in its argument, our client argued that it needed

[00:23:31] Speaker 00:
additional discovery, including witness depositions that were unable to be taken before, to be able to effectively address some of these allegations that she was such a bad manager, she didn't even deserve to be in this job.

[00:23:47] Speaker 00:
It's absolutely not true that our client conceded that she wasn't the victim of discrimination.

[00:23:53] Speaker 00:
If you simply look at our briefs and our pleadings, that's the essence and the engravement of her case.

[00:23:59] Speaker 00:
The witnesses that she was denied having would have direct evidence.

[00:24:02] Speaker 00:
The witnesses that she denied the opportunity to oppose would provide direct evidence supporting her claims of race and gender bias.

[00:24:10] Speaker 00:
The government suggests that this HR representative relied heavily on some allegations that our client committed gender discrimination against another employee.

[00:24:22] Speaker 00:
If you look at the testimony of the HR specialist, she herself says that didn't matter to her.

[00:24:27] Speaker 00:
That wasn't even part of her investigation.

[00:24:29] Speaker 00:
So the government is reinventing this record, making new arguments that it never made before, all of which

[00:24:35] Speaker 00:
don't get to the fundamental point here, which is that Judge, in a hasty rush to judgment, closed the doors to justice on this cruise.

[00:24:43] Speaker 00:
There was direct evidence of gender and race bias here, from witnesses who worked with these same managers who criticized or complained about her being rash.

[00:24:55] Speaker 00:
This is just not a case where denying discovery was appropriate.

[00:24:59] Speaker 05:
I have one question.

[00:25:01] Speaker 05:
Are you saying that if you looked at the

[00:25:04] Speaker 05:
portions of the administrative record we have for us, particularly not all of them, we will find that you have no opportunity to inquire into comparators?

[00:25:20] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, the only comparator evidence that was offered was offered by client.

[00:25:24] Speaker 00:
And the government didn't even offer comparative evidence because it wasn't produced.

[00:25:28] Speaker 00:
And her effort to exhaust administrative remedies and her effort to seek discovery in the EEOC process doesn't preclude her ability in a de novo review under Title VII to prove her claims.

[00:25:41] Speaker 05:
I understand that, but the government relies to some extent on this view that

[00:25:45] Speaker 05:
She had various opportunities in the administrative process.

[00:25:50] Speaker 05:
And stated this general proposition, that seems clearly true.

[00:25:53] Speaker 05:
The question that seems to me, at least a question, is the extent to which she sought information on the question of comparators and was thwarted, or if there was something about the process which made it helpless to even seek information.

[00:26:11] Speaker 00:
Well, she certainly, and this record is very lengthy as you might imagine, and the government didn't even bring forward any evidence or argument that the discovery taken below was inadequate.

[00:26:26] Speaker 05:
I'm just talking about what's in the record.

[00:26:27] Speaker 00:
We didn't have the evidence, Your Honor.

[00:26:29] Speaker 00:
The government refused to produce computer evidence.

[00:26:31] Speaker 00:
The government never even produced evidence about the racial composition, as it should have, of the staff in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, which, by the way, there are about 800 people working there, multiple scores of managers.

[00:26:45] Speaker 00:
And you sought information and reported?

[00:26:48] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:26:49] Speaker 00:
We took discovery in the EEOC process, and we did not obtain

[00:26:55] Speaker 00:
information about the actual demographics.

[00:26:57] Speaker 00:
But that was only one aspect of the information we sought.

[00:27:00] Speaker 00:
And that includes information about similarly situated employees that were disciplined.

[00:27:07] Speaker 00:
So what I would urge you to consider here is that she was denied the opportunity to pursue a de novo claim that she's entitled to pursue.

[00:27:21] Speaker 03:
Thank you very much.

[00:27:23] Speaker 03:
The case is submitted.

[00:27:24] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.