The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans recently reinstated a gender discrimination case against the University.
The case, which was originally dismissed in 2010 by a federal judge in Baton Rouge, involves Martha Helen Haire, a former major of the LSU Police Department, who said she was a victim of gender discrimination when vying for a promotion to chief of LSUPD. Haire claims she was discriminated against by her co-worker by current LSUPD Chief of Police Lawrence Rabalais.
Haire is now the director of Public Safety and the chief of police at the University of Northern Iowa.
Rabalais allegedly told a co-worker that he wanted to “get rid of” Haire and would quit if a women were appointed chief, according to court records.
“I never doubted my ability to win the case, and now that the circuit has given me the opportunity, I fully expect a different outcome,” Haire said on Wednesday.
The Circuit Court reinstated the case via the cat’s paw theory of liability. Cat’s paw was established by the U.S. Supreme Court and says employers can be held liable for discriminatory conduct even if the person who made the decision was not discriminatory, but relied in part by those who were.
In the ruling, the court determined Haire had procured sufficient evidence for a jury and that the justification for the original ruling was largely pre-texual.
“For her, what followed … was all a charade that [the University] undertook to cover its tracks in the sexual discrimination suit it anticipated. We agree that Haire has produced evidence sufficient for a jury to rule in her favor,” the ruling said. “There is a bona fide question whether the purported justification for not promoting Haire, whose credentials were superior to those of Rabalais, was pre-texual, and there is further question whether Haire could have committed an official wrongdoing when she complied with her superior’s directives.”
In May 2009, Haire — following her superior’s orders — added information into the police reporting system pertaining to an arrest of a former University dean. According to the original ruling, the incident could have violated police procedure.
After the incident, an investigation took place into Haire’s actions that included Rabalais — the person in direct competition with Haire for the promotion . He then interviewed Haire and subsequently gave her the lowest performance review she had received in her 22 years with the University. The performance review cost Haire her supervisory responsibilities.
In August 2009, Rabalais was named interim police chief. The position was interim because he had not completed his college degree, a requirement of the job.
Former University Chancellor Michael Martin made the formal ruling on hiring Rabalais as the police chief. Martin’s ruling is where the cat’s paw theory of liability is being applied: While Martin may not have discriminated against Haire, Rabalais’ influence over the ruling could have influenced Martin into making his ultimate decision.
In an interview with Business Insurance, Michael W. Fox, a shareholder with law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Smoak and Stewart, said the court’s ruling was influenced by the 2011 Supreme Court decision in Vincent E. Staub v. Proctor Hospital.
“It’s just a classic case where you had a decision maker, who in the past would have argued he couldn’t have discriminated because he did not really know these people and nothing he ever said or had done shows discriminatory intent,” Fox said. “But the court really skipped over looking at his state of mind and focused instead on the state of mind of Mr. Rabalais who made several statements that could be considered sexist.”
