Okeke v. Admin of Tulane Educ Fund

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedApril 6, 2022
Docket21-30451
StatusUnpublished

This text of Okeke v. Admin of Tulane Educ Fund (Okeke v. Admin of Tulane Educ Fund) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Okeke v. Admin of Tulane Educ Fund, (5th Cir. 2022).

Opinion

Case: 21-30451 Document: 00516270592 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/06/2022

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

FILED April 6, 2022 No. 21-30451 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk

Ocheowelle Okeke, Doctor,

Plaintiff—Appellant,

versus

Administrators of Tulane Educational Fund,

Defendant—Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana No. 2:20-CV-450

Before Stewart, Clement, and Elrod, Circuit Judges. Per Curiam:* The plaintiff in this case brought three types of Title VII claims against the Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund (Tulane), alleging that she was discriminated against because of her race and sex while a resident at the medical school. Because she has failed to satisfy at least one necessary

* Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4. Case: 21-30451 Document: 00516270592 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/06/2022

No. 21-30451

element for each of her claims, we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Tulane on all of the claims. I. Plaintiff Dr. Ocheowelle Okeke is licensed to practice medicine in the State of Missouri. She attended Tulane’s Combined Residency Program in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics (Med-Peds) from 2014 to 2018. After completing the program, Dr. Okeke became a board-certified specialist in both internal medicine and pediatrics, and she obtained her top-choice fellowship in rheumatology at the University of St. Louis School of Medicine. She brought this Title VII lawsuit alleging that she, a Black physician, suffered race and gender discrimination and a hostile work environment during her time at Tulane. A. The facts that Dr. Okeke alleges to support her claims generally can be sorted into two categories: (1) those suggesting that she was treated poorly regarding scheduling; and (2) those suggesting racial prejudice on a more personal or social level. First, the scheduling facts: As background, when Dr. Okeke rotated through the Internal Medicine program during her Med-Peds residency, most of the Internal Medicine residents—and the program director—were White. However, the Med-Peds program director, Dr. Princess Dennar, was the first Black-woman program director and brought in an entirely minority- female resident class for the Med-Peds program, of which Dr. Okeke was a member. Dr. Okeke asserts that she and other minority-female residents were given harder rotations and poorer educational and employment experiences by the Internal Medicine program director compared to White- male Internal Medicine residents. Specifically, she claims that Dr. Jeffrey Wiese, a White-male director of the Internal Medicine program, seized

2 Case: 21-30451 Document: 00516270592 Page: 3 Date Filed: 04/06/2022

authority over Med-Peds residents’ schedules (an authority which, she says, belonged to Dr. Dennar) and: (1) prevented Dr. Okeke from completing four weeks of rotation in the Emergency Department; and (2) in general assigned the minority-female residents of the Med-Peds program to harder rotations and less training. She claims that she spent considerably more time working in inpatient wards and on harder rotation teams compared to White-male residents in Internal Medicine. Dr. Okeke contends that these actions prevented the Med-Peds residents from meeting graduation requirements set by their program director1 (however, Dr. Okeke was certified for graduation and she graduated on time). Next, the other facts which Dr. Okeke claims demonstrate racial prejudice at a personal level by other doctors associated with the Internal Medicine program: She presented testimony from Dr. Dennar that a White- male faculty member assumed that Dr. Okeke failed her STEPS,2 and that during applicant review he often would make that assumption when he would see the picture of a Black person’s face. Dr. Dennar also testified that although Dr. Wiese and the residency programs chairman would typically send congratulations to Dr. Dennar whenever a new class of residents was “match[ed],” she received no such congratulations upon the matching of Dr. Okeke’s all-minority-female class. The chairman instead expressed that in the future they needed to review the metric used to rank applicants.

1 Similarly, she asserts that the scheduling actions prevented her from “moonlighting”—a privilege which residents can sometimes take advantage of and which allows them to earn some extra money by working additional time. 2 “STEPS” are criteria from the United States Medical Licensing Examination used for residency ranking.

3 Case: 21-30451 Document: 00516270592 Page: 4 Date Filed: 04/06/2022

Dr. Wiese stated in an e-mail to the chair of Internal Medicine that he was considering reducing the number of Med-Peds residents from six to four in the upcoming year. He explained his reasoning in the e-mail: There are also some cultural issues that are arising out of the med-peds program because of, I believe, some excessively elevated expectations (and when those excessively elevated expectations are not met, people are unhappy). Having a more manageable number might allow addressing those expectations. Dr. Okeke asserts that this statement about “cultural issues” actually reflects a displeasure from Dr. Wiese with the all-minority-female nature of the Med- Peds resident class. She also points to some occasions in which she believes Dr. Wiese failed to give her proper recognition. She claims that Dr. Wiese did not know her name on one occasion and at another point initially left her out of an e-mail congratulating all residents who obtained a fellowship. And she points to an incident in which, after Dr. Okeke and some co-residents complained about harder rotations, Dr. Wiese told them, “I control the schedule, and you need to be team players.” On a similar note, Dr. Dennar reports an occasion in which an assistant program director contacted Dr. Dennar and described Dr. Okeke as angry and difficult to deal with. Ultimately, though, no one reported such a thing about Dr. Okeke in any written evaluation. In response to Dr. Okeke’s claims, Tulane presents these facts: First, Tulane claims that Dr. Okeke is simply wrong that she was treated poorly as to scheduling compared to similarly situated parties. The residency program, Tulane explains, is intense, condensing six years’ worth of specialty training into four. Tulane contends that Dr. Okeke is mistaken that the amount of emergency training she received was deficient. Although the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)

4 Case: 21-30451 Document: 00516270592 Page: 5 Date Filed: 04/06/2022

provides accreditation standards for residency programs to satisfy, much of the scheduling is driven institutionally by Tulane and the needs of its partner hospitals. To that end, for the Internal Medicine rotation, residents are assigned to a “firm” or “learning community” made up of Internal Medicine residents or residents and interns who, like Dr. Okeke, are part of a combined program like Med-Peds. At any given time, four out of the five “firms” work in hospitals and one works in the clinics. The harder and easier rotations are divided among the firms in a generally equal manner, and within Dr. Okeke’s firm (Red Firm), the more difficult rotations generally were spread evenly. At a more detailed level, residents had some degree of agency over their schedules—after the first year, there was a process for residents to seek their preferred weeks for the various rotations and for time off. Tulane asserts that Dr. Okeke participated in this scheduling process and was able to select and complete every rotation she asked for.

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Okeke v. Admin of Tulane Educ Fund, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/okeke-v-admin-of-tulane-educ-fund-ca5-2022.