Armanda Coles v. Post Master General United States Postal Services

711 F. App'x 890
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedSeptember 26, 2017
Docket16-15364 Non-Argument Calendar
StatusUnpublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 711 F. App'x 890 (Armanda Coles v. Post Master General United States Postal Services) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Armanda Coles v. Post Master General United States Postal Services, 711 F. App'x 890 (11th Cir. 2017).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

Armanda Coles, a longtime United States Postal Service (“USPS”) employee, sued the Postmaster General under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 et seq,, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”), 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq., on race and age discrimination, retaliation, and hostile work environment theories. She asserted that the Postmaster discriminated against her by twice terminating her, urging her (but not her white or under-40 coworkers) to retire, giving her unfavorable work assignments, shouting at her, improperly searching her vehicle, investigating her absences, and warning her that her job assignment would be eliminated. The district court granted the Postmaster summary judgment as to each of Coles’s claims. Having thoroughly reviewed the record, we affirm.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Coles, an African American woman over the age of forty, began working as a mail handler for USPS in 1986. Since 1990, she has worked at USPS’s mid-Florida postal plant. Coles became eligible for retirement in or around 1995, after thirty years of federal service. USPS terminated Coles in 1999, ostensibly for taking medical leave without prior approval, and then again in 2005, for reasons that the record does not fully explain. Each time, Coles appealed to the Merit. Systems Protection Board (“MSPB”), which reinstated her, and filed complaints with USPS’s Equal Employment Opportunity Office (“EEO complaints”) alleging racial discrimination— one in 1999 and two in 2005. 1 The dispositions of these prior EEO complaints are not apparent from the record.

Shortly after Coles’s 2005 reinstatement, USPS’s Human Resources personnel sent her two notices informing her of her eligibility to retire. Coles requested that USPS stop sending her these notices unless it was sending them to all retirement-eligible employees, and the notices ceased. Several other USPS employees eligible for retirement, including a white man named Chip Shron, did not receive similar notices.

Within USPS, mail handlers bid for their preferred job assignments, which were meted out according to seniority. At all relevant times, Coles’s bid assignment was “Spurs Cancellation/OlO/Other Duties As Assigned.” Doc. 31-2 at 8. 2 The “010” designation refers to the plant’s arrival and cancellation function. “Spurs” referred to “small parcels and rolls”; working the spurs belt entailed manually processing packages too big or awkwardly shaped to process by machine. Fernando Aguilar, manager of distribution operations at the mid-Florida plant and Coles’s direct supervisor from 2009 to 2015, was responsible for assigning Coles other necessary duties. Most days, too little spurs processing work had accumulated by the time Coles began her shift to justify having her perform spurs duties. When too little spurs work was available, Aguilar would often assign' Coles to work the culling belt, which involved interacting with a conveyor belt; Coles disliked culling belt duties due to her motion sickness. All employees at Coles’s plant occasionally were assigned culling belt duties when they did not have other work to do. Coles was assigned to work the culling belt over 100 times. On one occasion, she told Aguilar that she wished to file a grievance with her union steward over her culling belt assignments. Aguilar began to shout at Coles, telling her he could make her work wherever he wanted. Aguilar asserted that he was raising his voice to be heard over nearby machines, although he and Coles were in a quiet location within the plant. According to Coles, Aguilar never shouted at a white, Hispanic, or under-40 mail handler.

In 2012, Dorothea Reda, Aguilar’s manager and the USPS official who had made the decision to terminate Coles in 2005, received a notification from Human Resources that a USPS employee had been observed selling snacks and beverages at the plant, in violation of the Randolph-Sheppard Act, 20 U.S.C. § 107 et seq. The employee in question was described as a “stocky black woman,” Doc. 31-5 at 3, who drove a silver Mercedes station wagon and frequently parked in a handicapped space. No employee at the mid-Florida plant but Coles matched that description. Reda requested that Aguilar investigate the matter. Aguilar confronted Coles, who denied the misconduct. Reda and Aguilar located and searched a champagne or beige-colored Mercedes SUV, which belonged to Coles, in a handicapped parking space in the employee parking lot. Reda and Aguilar, who had not received Coles’s permission to search the vehicle, looked into the SUV’s windows. They denied searching inside the vehicle, but two witnesses observed a USPS manager open the trunk of Coles’s SUV and then shut it. No contraband was found in Coles’s vehicle, and she was not found to have acted improperly. No other mail handler’s vehicle was searched.

USPS regulations require regular attendance of employees. Coles was absent without excuse on four occasions within a 30-day period during May and June 2012. Coles acknowledged her absences, but asserted that she had submitted paperwork to receive medical leave. A week after Aguilar shouted at Coles, he administered an investigative interview questionnaire to Coles concerning her unscheduled absences. Coles did not explain her absences to Aguilar, instead asserting her “right to remain silent.” She was not disciplined for her absences.

USPS’s regional management decided to reorganize Florida mail processing operations. Several months after the vehicle search incident, Coles’s union president, Felix Rodriguez, informed Coles that Reda had told him Coles’s bid assignment would be abolished. Coles and several other mail handlers asked Aguilar whether the 010 operation would be moved to a different plant. Aguilar told them that to the best of his knowledge, the 010 operation would be relocated. The plant’s entire 010 operation, consisting of about fifteen to thirty employees, ultimately was relocated to Orlando in 2013. Due to her seniority, however, Coles was able to select a new bid assignment at the plant.

Coles filed an EEO complaint, which resulted in a ruling favorable to the Postmaster. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission affirmed and notified Coles that she had 90 days to file a suit in the district court. Coles then filed a complaint'against the Postmaster in the district court, raising claims of disparate treatment, retaliation, and hostile work environment. The district court granted the Postmaster’s motion for summary judgment as to all counts. Coles moved to alter or amend the judgment, arguing that the district court, in granting the Postmaster summary judgment on her retaliation claim, had erred in requiring her to establish a prima facie case and in applying too stringent a standard in determining whether she had suffered an adverse employment action. The district court rejected Coles’s first argument but agreed that it had erred with respect to its adverse employment action analysis.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
711 F. App'x 890, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/armanda-coles-v-post-master-general-united-states-postal-services-ca11-2017.