Assata Hackman v. Inductev

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Decided: July 1, 2025
• Docket: 24-3223
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ___________

No. 24-3223 __________

ASSATA ACEY HACKMAN, Appellant

v.

INDUCTEV ____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2:23-cv-01438) District Judge: Honorable Paul S. Diamond ____________________________________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) May 16, 2025 Before: KRAUSE, PHIPPS, and ROTH, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: July 1, 2025) ___________

OPINION* ___________

PER CURIAM

Assata Acey Hackman, proceeding pro se, appeals from orders granting a motion

to dismiss in part and granting a motion for summary judgment in an action raising race

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. and sex-based employment discrimination and related claims. We will affirm the District

Court’s judgment.

I.

Hackman was hired as a technician at InductEV (formerly Momentum Dynamics

Corporation) in June 2021. In May 2022, she filed a pro se complaint with the

Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission alleging that she experienced sex and race-

based discrimination, harassment, and retaliation while working at InductEV. She later

amended the complaint, and shortly thereafter the case was transferred to the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

In September 2022, Hackman participated in a private mediation with InductEV

during which the parties reached an agreement: in exchange for Hackman’s resignation

and release of her claims, InductEV would pay her $50,000 and provide a neutral

reference for future employment. A few days later, after a disagreement over her request

for two days of paid time off, Hackman refused to sign the written settlement agreement

and InductEV, operating under the belief that she had resigned, terminated her

employment. A few weeks later, Hackman filed an amended charge of discrimination

with the EEOC, alleging several categories of violations, including that she was

terminated in retaliation for filing her original complaint.

The EEOC subsequently issued a Notice of Right to Sue, and in March 2023,

proceeding pro se, Hackman filed an employment discrimination action against InductEV

in the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County. InductEV timely removed the action to

federal court and moved to dismiss. The District Court partially granted the motion,

2 dismissing seven of Hackman’s twenty claims with prejudice and three without prejudice.

It denied the motion to dismiss as to the remaining ten claims, and granted Hackman

leave to amend her complaint as to the claims dismissed without prejudice. Hackman

filed a motion for reconsideration regarding some of the claims dismissed with prejudice

which the District Court denied.1 The District Court later granted the defendant’s motion

for summary judgment and dismissed the remaining claims, and Hackman timely

appealed.

II.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. “We review the District Court’s

grant of summary judgment de novo.” Jutrowski v. Twp. of Riverdale, 904 F.3d 280, 288

(3d Cir. 2018). Summary judgment is proper when, viewing the evidence in the light

most favorable to the nonmoving party and drawing all inferences in favor of that party,

there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to

judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); Kaucher v. County of Bucks, 455 F.3d

418, 422–23 (3d Cir. 2006). We construe Hackman’s pro se filings liberally. See

Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (per curiam).

Hackman’s opening brief challenges the District Court’s grant of summary

judgment with respect to her racial discrimination claims, Title VII and Pennsylvania

Human Relations Act (PHRA) hostile work environment claims, and Title VII and PHRA

1 At this point, Hackman filed an interlocutory appeal (docketed in this Court at C.A. No. 24-1521) of the denial of her motion for reconsideration and the dismissal of certain claims with prejudice, which we dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

3 retaliation claims.2 Her arguments are difficult to parse, in large part because she

provides minimal citations to the voluminous record available in the District Court. Of

the citations she does provide, many either do not exist, are not what she says they are,

lack sufficient context, or merely direct our attention to other citations to the record. See

Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A) (explaining that an appellant’s “argument . . . must

contain . . . [the] appellant’s contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the

authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies”); 3d Cir. L.A.R. 28.3(c)

(“All assertions of fact in briefs must be supported by a specific reference to the

record.”). Nevertheless, we address each set of claims in turn.

III.

To establish her racial discrimination claims, Hackman needed to show (1) she is a

member of a protected class; (2) she was qualified for the position she sought to attain or

retain; (3) she suffered an adverse employment action; and (4) the action occurred under

circumstances that could give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination. Makky v.

Chertoff, 541 F.3d 205, 214 (3d Cir. 2008) (citing McDonnell Douglass Corp. v. Green,

411 U.S. 792, 802 (1973)). The District Court granted summary judgment on her claims

2 Hackman’s opening brief does not make any arguments regarding the District Court’s dismissal of Counts II, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, and XX of her complaint, nor any of its orders denying her motions thereafter. She has thus forfeited these issues. See In re Wettach, 811 F.3d 99, 115 (3d Cir. 2016) (explaining that litigants forfeit claims that they fail to develop in an opening brief). To the extent that she attempts to raise arguments regarding whether the defects noted by the District Court in Counts I, III, IV, and IX of her complaint were curable and whether she should have been granted leave to amend, she does so by reference to the brief from her interlocutory appeal (which she has included within the over 1200 pages attached as her index). Even if we were to consider these arguments, but see Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8), they lack merit.

4 of racial discrimination because “the undisputed evidence shows that she was unqualified

for the Senior Technician position,” ECF No. 168 at 7, and she failed to demonstrate that

this nondiscriminatory reason for not promoting her to that position was pretextual. We

agree. Hackman argues that the District Court misinterpreted her claim—rather than

specifically seeking the Senior Technician position, she sought to be “reclassified” after

being given job tasks “that were beyond [her] job description” and was denied, and that

“the company had a history of . . . promoting or modifying contracts[] more often to

white employees than black employees.” Appellant’s Brief at 29. But she fails to cite

anything in the record that supports this version of the claim.3

To establish her hostile workplace environment claims, Hackman needed to prove

the following: (1) she suffered intentional discrimination because of her race or sex; (2)

the discrimination was pervasive and regular; (3) the discrimination detrimentally

affected her; (4) the discrimination would detrimentally affect a reasonable person of the

same race or sex in that position; and (5) the existence of respondeat superior liability.

Huston v. Procter & Gamble Paper Prods. Corp., 568 F.3d 100, 104 (3d Cir. 2009).4 The

District Court granted summary judgment on Hackman’s hostile work environment

3 She cites to examples of what appear to be some kind of work product, as well as excerpts from the deposition of her husband Daniel Hackman, a former employee of InductEV, who explains that at some point she was assigned a project by her supervisor that was not expected of other technicians and was consistent with the work expected of an electrical engineer. But she does not direct our attention to anything else in the record which establishes the required elements for the claim in this context, and we decline to comb through the record and make her argument for her. 4 This analysis is the same under both Title VII and the PHRA. See Bowser v. Clarion Cnty., 206 A.3d 68, 75 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2019).

5 claims because she “offers no evidence to support any of [her] allegations” of intentional

discrimination. ECF No. 168 at 5. We agree with the District Court’s analysis of the

evidence. Hackman argues that the District Court ignored several pieces of evidence she

submitted. She fails to provide record citations for most of the examples she provides,

and those for which she does provide citations fail for the same reasons as those analyzed

by the District Court—they either fail to demonstrate intentional discrimination on the

basis of her race or sex or are not severe or pervasive enough.

Finally, to state a retaliation claim, Hackman needed to provide evidence that

“(1) she engaged in [protected activity]; (2) the employer took an adverse employment

action against her; and (3) there was a causal connection between her participation in the

protected activity and the adverse employment action.” Moore v. City of Philadelphia,

461 F.3d 331, 340-41 (3d Cir. 2006), as amended (Sept. 13, 2006). The District Court

granted summary judgment on Hackman’s retaliation claims because “the undisputed

evidence shows that the company did not allow Hackman to return to work because it

believed the matter had settled—not for a retaliatory motive.” ECF No. 168 at 9. We

agree. In her brief, Hackman asserts that this is not true, but fails to cite to anything in the

record that shows a genuine dispute as to whether her termination occurred because

InductEV believed it was accepting her resignation as agreed at mediation, or that this

reason was pretextual.

Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.