District court dismisses teacher's claims of race and national origin discrimination following the school's non-renewal of her employment contract.

The district court granted a charter school's motion for summary judgment on a former teacher's claims of race and national origin discrimination, harassment and retaliation. Specifically, the employee alleged that the school's principal harassed her and caused her not to receive a new employment contract following the academic school year. In addition, the employee alleged that she complained to community officials regarding the alleged discrimination and that her employment was terminated in retaliation for making those complaints. The court, however, disagreed with the employee's contentions and held that the "plaintiff has not provided any evidence from which a fact finder might reasonably disbelieve defendant's articulated reasons for not renewing the employment contract; actually, plaintiff admits to most of the actions upon which defendant based its decision." In so holding, the court rejected the employee's proffered affidavit from a former employee, which certified that he heard the school's principal make a derogatory comment about the plaintiff, reasoning that the affidavit makes no indication when the comment was made or whether the comment was in any way related to the alleged employment decision. Moreover, the court expressly noted that it was the school's chief executive officer who made the decision to not offer the plaintiff a renewed employment contract based on an independent assessment of the employee's work performance. The court, likewise, rejected the employee's retaliation claim. In so holding, the court reasoned that her alleged complaints to public officials did not constitute "protected activities" under Title VII and, even if they did, "[s]he does not provide any evidence, aside from her baseless suspicion, that anyone involved in the decision not to renew her contract was aware of plaintiff's complaints to public officials."

Case Law Alert - 2nd Qtr 2012