Stephanie Spears v. Thermo Fisher Scientific

Summary

The United States District Court for the District of Kansas grants Thermo Fisher Scientific’s motion for summary judgment against Stephanie Spears. The court rejects or finds unsupported her claims involving race, sex, and national-origin discrimination, retaliation, failure to promote, termination, and Equal Pay Act violations.

Holdings

1. A plaintiff may not add a new discrimination theory for the first time in a pretrial order without satisfying the applicable amendment requirements, including good cause after expiration of the scheduling-order deadline.
2. Title VII bars Spears's claims based on employment decisions occurring more than 300 days before her November 5, 2021 EEOC charge.
3. A § 1981 failure-to-promote claim is subject to a two-year limitations period when the sought promotion would have created a new and distinct contractual relationship, and a four-year period under 28 U.S.C. § 1658 when the claim depends on the post-1991 expansion of § 1981.
4. Spears failed to establish that Thermo Fisher's stated reasons for not selecting her— principally that other candidates were better qualified—were pretextual.
5. Spears failed to produce evidence that Thermo Fisher's stated reason for terminating her—failure to meet the requirements of her performance improvement plan—was pretextual.
6. On the facts presented, denial of Spears's requests to work remotely was not a materially adverse employment action sufficient to support a Title VII or § 1981 retaliation claim.
7. Spears failed to establish a causal connection between protected activity and placement on the performance improvement plan.
8. Spears failed to establish an Equal Pay Act prima facie case because she did not produce evidence that she performed substantially equal work to higher-paid male employees.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Spears could add a national-origin discrimination claim for the first time in the pretrial order.
2. Whether Title VII and § 1981 failure-to-promote claims were barred by applicable statutes of limitations.
3. Whether Spears produced evidence that Thermo Fisher's legitimate reasons for rejecting her promotion applications were pretextual.
4. Whether Spears produced evidence that her termination was motivated by race or sex discrimination.
5. Whether denial of remote-work requests or placement on a performance improvement plan constituted actionable retaliation and was causally connected to protected activity.
6. Whether Spears established a prima facie Equal Pay Act claim by showing that she performed substantially equal work to higher-paid male employees.

Disposition

other