Graciani v. Providence Health and Services - Oregon

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS AUG 17 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

DEBRA RENA GRACIANI, No. 25-4412 D.C. No.

Plaintiff - Appellant, 3:18-cv-00087-MJP v.

MEMORANDUM*

PROVIDENCE HEALTH & SERVICES - OREGON; KELLI RINAS; JAMES EFIRD; BRENDA FRANZ; JAMES BLANKENSHIP,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Alaska Marsha J. Pechman, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted August 13, 2026** Anchorage, Alaska

Before: CALLAHAN, BEA, and BUMATAY, Circuit Judges.

Debra Rena Graciani (Graciani), who identifies as African American, worked in Alaska as a registered nurse for Providence Health & Services –

*

This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

**

The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

Washington (“Providence”) from 2014 until August 2022. Providence initially terminated Graciani’s employment on November 1, 2016, following an incident on October 8, 2016, when a patient, who was transported out of the dialysis suite by Graciani without a proper handoff, shortly thereafter coded and died. Graciani was reinstated in January 2018, following an arbitration award. Graciani, nevertheless, filed this action in the U. S. District Court for District of Alaska in March 2018 alleging disparate treatment and retaliation.

The October 8, 2016, incident was reported to the Alaska Bureau of Nursing which investigated Graciani. In June 2022, an administrative law judge (“ALJ”) issued a decision revoking Graciani’s nursing license and Providence terminated her employment in August 2022. Graciani appealed the ALJ’s decision to the Alaska Superior Court, which in November 2023 affirmed the revocation.

Meanwhile, in several pretrial orders, the district court narrowed the issues to claims of race discrimination and disparate treatment by Providence and two of its employees, Kelli Rinas and Brenda Franz (collectively the “Defendants”). Following a jury trial in May 2025, the jury returned a verdict for the Defendants.

On appeal from the final judgment against her, Graciani essentially argues that the district court erred by (1) granting summary judgment on her retaliation claim concerning the 2016 termination decision because there is evidence of retaliatory motive and temporal proximity; (2) finding that Providence’s reasons

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for her termination in 2016 were not pretextual: and (3) using Providence’s after- acquired evidence to preclude her from denying her misconduct on October 8, 2016.

We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and we affirm.

1. Graciani has not shown that the district court erred in rejecting her claim that the November 2016 termination order was retaliatory. Graciani’s misconduct—her admitted accessing of a patient’s protective health information in 2014, and her role in the October 8, 2016, incident—provided Providence with a sound non-discriminatory basis for terminating her employment. She has not shown that the individuals responsible for her termination knew of her alleged prior protected activities or that the Providence employees who allegedly knew of those activities had a pervasive influence on the decision. See Lakeside-Scott v. Multnomah Cnty., 556 F.3d 797, 806 (9th Cir. 2009).

Furthermore, the two documents Graciani cites as showing temporal proximity—an August 2016 notice from the EEOC (which contained no specific allegations) and an August 2016 complaint by Graciani against another nurse, did not alert Providence to her alleged protected activities. She has not shown that unlawful discrimination more likely than not motivated the termination. See Kama v. Mayorkas, 107 F.4th 1054, 1061-62 (9th Cir. 2024) (“When there are equally

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likely causes of Plaintiff's termination that arise during the same period, temporal proximity does not establish that ‘unlawful discrimination more likely [than not] motivated the employer.’” (citation omitted).

2. Graciani has not shown that the district court erred in failing to find that Defendants’ reasons for terminating her employment were pretextual. Graciani does not challenge the jury verdict finding that Providence and its employees, Rinas and Franz, did not deny her any benefits because of her race. Rather, she argues that the district court prevented her from presenting evidence of a critical pattern of retaliation by limiting her retaliation claim to five specific acts. But Graciani has not shown that the district court limited her presentation of evidence at trial to five incidents. The trial transcript shows that Graciani was able to present evidence allegedly showing that she suffered from a pattern of retaliation extending over eighteen months starting in June 2015.

Graciani’s reliance on Flores v. City of Westminster, 873 F.3d 739 (9th Cir.

2017), as recognizing that systematic retaliatory conduct can constitute adverse action is not persuasive because: (1) as noted, the record does not support her assertion that she was prevented from presenting evidence allegedly showing a critical pattern of retaliation; (2) the November 2016 termination was based on two objective facts—her admitted 2014 accessing of a patient’s private medical information and her role in the October 8, 2016 incident; and (3) Flores, which

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involved an appeal from a jury verdict in favor of the plaintiffs, reiterated the policy of not intruding on the province of the jury. Id. at 751.

3. Graciani has not shown that the district court erred in granting partial summary judgment based on Providence’s after-acquired evidence. The district court held, based on the state proceedings, that Graciani was precluded from disputing that she had deleted and falsified patient data on October 8, 2016. In doing so, the district court properly applied the criteria for issue preclusion set forth in Syverson v. International Business Machines Corporation, 472 F.3d 1072, 1078 (9th Cir. 2007). Graciani litigated the issue in the state proceedings and appealed the ALJ’s decision to the Alaska Superior Court.

The preclusion order did not violate Graciani’s constitutional right to a jury trial. Although University of Tennessee v. Elliott, 478 U.S. 788 (1986), held that “unreviewed state administrative proceedings [do not] have a preclusive effect on Title VII claims,” it further stated, “that state-court judgments [should] be given both issue and claim preclusive effect in subsequent actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.” Id. at 796. Here, the district court cited both the ALJ’s decision and the Alaska Superior Court’s affirmance.

Nor has Graciani shown that the Alaska proceedings applied a fundamentally different standard in determining that substantial evidence supported the finding that Graciani manually deleted a patient’s vital signs.

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Finally, contrary to Graciani’s assertions, the seriousness of her misconduct and the uncontroverted affidavits from Providence’s employees show that Providence would have terminated Graciani’s employment if it had known of the deletion of the vital signs.

The judgment in favor of Defendants is AFFIRMED.