Crawford v. Carroll
529 F.3d 961 (11th Cir. 2008)
A former employee, who was African American, sought review of an order granted summary judgment to a university, a supervisor, and a manager, in the employee's suit asserting claims of race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C.S. §§ 1981, 1983, as well as claims of retaliation. The employee alleged that the defendants improperly denied her a promotion; improperly gave her a negative performance evaluation, which resulted in the employee being denied merit pay; and that her salary was comparatively lower than her Caucasian colleagues' salaries. On appeal, the court held that (1) the negative performance evaluation, which led to the denial of a raise, constituted an adverse employment action for purposes of the employee's retaliation and race discrimination claims because the employee's compensation was affected; (2) the university's granting of the merit raise retroactive to when it would have been authorized at least 10 months earlier, absent the negative evaluation, did not preclude the claims based on the negative evaluation, as the employee lost the use of the funds during the time she was not receiving them; and (3) the employee sustained her summary judgment burden of offering evidence to show that appellees' proffered legitimate reasons for denying the employee a promotion were pretextual, particularly where there was evidence that the employee was considered to be the best candidate and that appellees posted the position three times. The court reversed the district court's judgment in part, thus remanding to the district court the employee's retaliation and race discrimination claims against the university and the 42 U.S.C.S. § 1983 race discrimination claim against the supervisor. The district court's judgment was otherwise affirmed.