Goins v. United Parcel Service Inc

Background

The plaintiffs—Galena Goins, Terry Jones-Jackson, and Sonia Lopez—were part-time UPS employees assigned to the Small Sort at UPS’s Oakland Hub. Their work was governed by a collective bargaining agreement between UPS and the Union. The surviving claims concerned alleged gender, disability, and age discrimination; equal-pay violations under the federal Equal Pay Act and California Equal Pay Act; and an unfair-competition claim under California’s Unfair Competition Law.

The court’s earlier order on UPS’s motion to dismiss had narrowed the case. It struck the class allegations and certain named plaintiffs, found that some allegations had not been administratively exhausted, and limited the claims that could proceed. The court explained that Goins’s surviving gender-related allegation concerned being required to stand for long periods and being assigned to heavy-duty areas despite management’s knowledge of her knee injury. Lopez’s surviving allegations concerned denial of reasonable accommodations for shoulder injuries based on gender and more difficult work assignments than male colleagues. Jones-Jackson’s surviving allegations concerned gender-based backpay, denial of overtime opportunities, and preferential treatment given to younger women. Jones-Jackson alone pursued the federal and California equal-pay claims. The court treated the UCL claim as derivative of the other claims.

UPS moved for summary judgment on the remaining claims. Summary judgment is a decision entered without a trial when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over a fact that could affect the result and the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law. The plaintiffs opposed the motion and sought a delay under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d) to obtain records from the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, or DLSE.

Rule 56(d) Request for Additional Discovery

The court denied the plaintiffs’ request. It concluded that the summary-judgment motion was not premature because the plaintiffs had had years to conduct discovery and UPS filed the motion after discovery closed. The plaintiffs’ motion and supporting declaration did not identify specific facts that additional discovery would produce. Instead, the request generally listed possible investigation materials, payroll records, employee statements, policies, and reports.

The court also found that the plaintiffs had not shown that the requested materials were essential to opposing summary judgment. The payroll records could have been sought from UPS or obtained from Jones-Jackson’s own records. Finally, the court found a lack of diligence because the plaintiffs knew about the DLSE investigation for years and did not subpoena its records before discovery closed. The Rule 56(d) motion was therefore DENIED.

Title VII and FEHA Gender-Discrimination Claims

Title VII is the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination based on protected characteristics, and the Fair Employment and Housing Act, or FEHA, is California’s corresponding law. The court applied the burden-shifting framework commonly used for discrimination claims. Under that framework, a plaintiff generally must first show membership in a protected group, qualification for the position, an adverse employment action, and more favorable treatment of similarly situated people outside the protected group. The employer may then provide a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason, after which the plaintiff must show that reason was a pretext—a false explanation masking unlawful discrimination.

Goins. The court ruled that Goins did not present sufficient evidence of an adverse employment action or of similarly situated male employees receiving more favorable treatment. The court held that her exhausted allegation was a failure to accommodate her knee injury and that, under the authorities discussed, a failure to accommodate is not an adverse employment action supporting a discrimination claim. The court also rejected Goins’s reliance on unexhausted allegations, including claims involving cleanup duties and safety testing. Even assuming she had established an initial case, the court found that UPS provided legitimate reasons related to operational efficiency, safety compliance, and attempts to accommodate her. Goins did not provide sufficient evidence that those reasons were pretextual. The court therefore GRANTED summary judgment for UPS on Goins’s Title VII and FEHA gender-discrimination claims.

The court separately granted summary judgment on Goins’s disability-discrimination claims. It found that only her gender-based claim had been exhausted and that she had abandoned any disability-based claim by failing to address it in her opposition. The court GRANTED UPS’s motion as to those claims.

Lopez. The court found that Lopez failed to establish a prima facie, or initial, case of gender discrimination. She did not argue or cite evidence that she was qualified for her position, did not provide sufficient record evidence of an adverse employment action, and did not identify a similarly situated male employee who was treated more favorably. The court also found that Lopez abandoned the pretext issue by declining to address it. Assuming she had made an initial showing, the court held that UPS had offered legitimate reasons involving performance, operational efficiency, safety, and the automated distribution of packages. The court GRANTED summary judgment for UPS on Lopez’s Title VII and FEHA gender-discrimination claims.

The court also GRANTED summary judgment on Lopez’s disability-discrimination claims. It held that its earlier order had limited Lopez’s exhausted claims to gender discrimination, so an independent disability-discrimination claim was not administratively exhausted. The court did not reach the merits of that non-exhausted claim.

Jones-Jackson. The court found that Jones-Jackson failed to provide evidentiary support that she was qualified for the position, suffered an adverse employment action, or was treated less favorably than a similarly situated male employee. Her claim that she was paid less than Steve Smith was not supported by evidence showing that their jobs were similar in all material respects. Her overtime allegation was supported only by an assertion that statistical data would show discrimination, without providing or citing such data. The court also found that her pretext argument was vague and conclusory.

The court nevertheless considered UPS’s stated reason for the pay difference. UPS presented evidence that Jones-Jackson and Smith had different job classifications under the collective bargaining agreement, that Smith’s position was considered skilled and paid a higher rate, and that Jones-Jackson lacked the certification required for that position. UPS later agreed to increase Jones-Jackson’s rate and paid her $514.56 in retroactive pay for the disputed pay difference. The court GRANTED summary judgment for UPS on Jones-Jackson’s Title VII and FEHA gender-discrimination claims.

The court also GRANTED summary judgment on Jones-Jackson’s age-discrimination claim because she did not address it in her opposition after UPS moved for summary judgment on that claim.

Equal-Pay Claims

Jones-Jackson was the only plaintiff asserting claims under the federal Equal Pay Act and California Equal Pay Act. The court assumed, without deciding, that the longer three-year limitations period for a willful violation applied and that UPS had not established that the claims were untimely.

On the merits, the court held that Jones-Jackson did not show that she and Smith performed substantially equal work. She did not provide evidence about whether their jobs shared a common core of tasks or whether additional duties made the jobs substantially different. The undisputed evidence instead showed that their different job codes reflected different skill levels under the collective bargaining agreement. The same evidence established a legitimate pay difference based on a factor other than sex. The court therefore GRANTED UPS’s motion for summary judgment on the federal and California equal-pay claims.

Unfair-Competition Claim

The plaintiffs’ sixth claim under California’s Unfair Competition Law was derivative of their discrimination and equal-pay claims. The plaintiffs attempted in their opposition brief to base the claim on additional allegations concerning timecards and later conduct. The court held that they could not amend the complaint through an opposition to summary judgment and that the new allegations were also unsupported by understandable record citations.

Because the court granted summary judgment on every claim underlying the derivative UCL claim, it GRANTED UPS’s motion for summary judgment on the UCL claim as well.

Evidentiary Objections and Disposition

The court denied most of the plaintiffs’ evidentiary objections because they were general, insufficiently specific, unsupported, or failed to identify the challenged material. It granted some hearsay objections to particular statements in UPS declarations and to certain UPS letters. It denied as moot an objection to a document that was irrelevant to the order. The court stated that it nevertheless considered the plaintiffs’ declarations despite UPS’s arguments that they were late and lacked required signatures or attestations.

In its conclusion, the court GRANTED UPS’s motion for summary judgment and DENIED the plaintiffs’ Rule 56(d) motion. It vacated the pretrial conference and trial dates. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton signed the order.