Barnett v. Department of Veterans Affairs,
153 F.3d 338 (6^th Cir. (Ky.) Aug. 28, 1998)

The Plaintiff, Dr. Barnett, worked as a counseling psychologist in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Each year she was evaluated under a system which kept track of her procedural, judgmental, and substantive errors. All employees were allowed to make a certain number of each type of error before facing disciplinary action. Mullins, Barnett’s supervisor, sent the Plaintiff a notice that she had exceeded the yearly allowable number of errors and that she was to be placed on a sixty-day probationary period. Barnett made several errors during that period and, as a result, was terminated and replaced by a younger male. Barnett sued in federal district court alleging age discrimination. The district court held that the reasons for Dr. Barnett’s discharge were not fabricated or pretextual and, therefore, she was not entitled to recover. Dr. Barnett appealed the case.

The Sixth Circuit began by laying out the four prongs of the McDonnell Douglas test, under which an ADEA case is to be analyzed, and by noting that Barnett successfully carried her burden in making out a prima facie case of age discrimination. Specifically, she was age 51 when she was fired and replaced by a significantly younger male. The court did not address whether she was qualified for the position. The court then turned its attention to whether the proffered reasons for the termination were pretexts for discrimination.

The district court found that Barnett failed to demonstrate that the reasons for her termination as provided by the employer were pretextual under St. Mary’s Honor Center v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502 (1993). Under St. Mary’s, a plaintiff seeking recovery bears the burden of proving a discriminatory animus, notwithstanding the failure of the defendant’s proffer of legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons for the adverse employment action. The Court of Appeals reviewed the testimony of the witnesses and ultimately found that there was no reason to place more credibility on Barnett’s statements than those of her supervisors. That being the case, the court deferred to the trial court’s holding that discriminatory treatment did not cause Barnett’s termination. The Sixth Circuit, therefore, upheld the decision of the lower court.

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