Employment Discrimination – Title VII – Exhaustion Of Remedies

An African-American Director of IT services for defendant financial company waited too long to file an EEOC charge alleging discrimination resulting from removal of his supervisory responsibilities, and neither that race discrimination claim nor his age discrimination claim can survive summary judgment, says a Richmond U.S. District Court.

To assert his claim that his lack of direct reports at the end of 2007 was discriminatory under Title VII, plaintiff was required to file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC within 300 days of the last date of discrimination. However, he did not file his earliest EEOC charge until approximately 18 months later, and the claim did not raise his lack of direct reports. Even if plaintiff’s claims did not fail for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, he has not presented supportive facts to rebut defendant’s assertion that his reports were taken away because he received pushback from other associates who did not want to work with plaintiff because of his leadership style and because he was coming off a poor performance appraisal. No reasonable jury could find facts to support removal of plaintiff’s supervisory responsibilities through direct reports resulted from discrimination on the basis of age or race.

Plaintiff also claims discrimination in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 from defendant’s failure to promote him, but he has not offered factual evidence to show he was qualified for the positions in question, other than his own opinion. Defendant has presented evidence through the inconsistent performance evaluations and appraisals from 2007 to 2009 that plaintiff was not performing at a satisfactory level during the pertinent time frame. Nor has plaintiff presented factual support for his claim that defendant’s evaluation process had a disparate impact on African-American employees.

Finally, the court exercises supplemental jurisdiction and dismisses plaintiff’s state law claim for breach of contract. Although his offer letter from defendant stated, “if you voluntarily terminate your employment with Capital One within one year of the effective date in the new position, you will be expected to front-end payment.” Plaintiff conceded, however, that no one ever made any verbal promises to him regarding the terms of his employment.

McKelvy v. Capital One Services LLC (Spencer, J.) No. 3:09cv821, Aug. 20, 2010; USDC at Richmond, Va. VLW 010-3-437, 17 pp.