Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. BC 342329. Conrad R. Aragon, Judge. Affirmed.
Michael B. Montgomery for Plaintiff and Appellant.
Leal & Trejo and Arturo N. Fierro for Defendants and Respondents Lynwood Unified School District and Harold Cebrun.
ROTHSCHILD, J.
Plaintiff Norma Lopez-Reid, a former principal in the Lynwood Unified School District (District), brought this action against the District and its former superintendent, Harold Cebrun, alleging she was demoted from principal to teacher because she rebuffed a sexual advance by Cebrun. The trial court granted the defendants’ motions for summary judgment and entered judgment in their favor. We affirm.
FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW
The District hired plaintiff as principal of the Mark Twain Elementary School in the summer of 2002. She received a favorable evaluation of her performance in the 2002-2003 school year.
In the 2003-2004 school year, plaintiff’s supervisors began receiving complaints from both teachers and parents about plaintiff’s performance.
Parents complained that plaintiff frequently was not available to handle their concerns. From September 23, 2003 to December 12, 2003, plaintiff was absent 20 days due to illness and other reasons. Between January 14 and June 14, 2004, plaintiff missed an additional 20 days due to illness and for other reasons.
The teachers’ union complained that plaintiff assigned teachers tasks which, under the union contract, should have been handled by administrators and acted with “heavy handiness” [sic] in the reassignment of one of her teachers.
Assistant Superintendent Trinidad Garcia-Nava reprimanded plaintiff for hiring a consultant without school board approval. Garcia-Nava also found that plaintiff failed to pay sufficient attention “to staff development to improve the effectiveness of the instructional program.”
In March 2004, the District notified plaintiff that she would be removed as principal and reassigned to a teaching position at the end of the 2003-2004 school year. Plaintiff declined to accept a teaching position and her employment with the District ended in June 2004.
In a letter to plaintiff dated May 18, 2004, the District stated the reasons for her demotion: “Failure to follow administrative directives; Inability to work collaboratively with the Lynwood Teachers’ Association, resulting in an excessive number of grievances; Using a teacher on special assignment; Insubordination toward her immediate supervisor; Failure to provide sufficient cooperation in providing staff development; and Failure to ensure her accessibility to other members of the administration while on duty.”
In plaintiff’s final evaluation in June 2004, Garcia-Nava stated that plaintiff’s performance had deteriorated since her midyear evaluation in January. He noted that plaintiff “has been excessively absent from the school” and that “[t]his absenteeism rate has seriously detracted from her effectiveness as a school administrator contributing to some parental dissatisfaction and missed opportunities to implement critical timelines.” He acknowledged that some of plaintiff’s absences were attributable to an injury but concluded “[a]n effective coordination with the assistant principal could have ameliorated these difficulties.”
Plaintiff contends the District’s grounds for removing her as principal were pretextual and that the true reason for her demotion was her rejection of a sexual advance by Superintendent Cebrun.
In support of this claim, plaintiff gave the following testimony at her deposition.
In the fall of 2003, while Cebrun was making an on-site inspection of her school, he took her hand and held it while they walked together down a hall. Plaintiff pulled her hand away and went into her office. At the time of the incident she thought that Cebrun’s conduct was “inappropriate” and it made her feel “very uncomfortable.” Cebrun did not make any further sexual advances toward plaintiff.
Plaintiff testified that she could not remember the date of the hand-holding incident but that it occurred sometime between the last few days of September and the end of November.
In November 2003, a short time after the hand-holding incident, plaintiff began receiving written reprimands from District’s administrators. She also heard that Cebrun was telling others that her school was “dirty” and otherwise criticizing her performance as principal. Plaintiff met with Garcia-Nava, her immediate supervisor, regarding these administrative complaints and Cebrun’s comments. Garcia-Nava told her: “‘You know, [Cebrun’s] out to get you.’” He also told her Cebrun instructed him to “write [her] up for disciplinary action for whatever he could find.” Garcia-Nava said he did not understand Cebrun’s sudden change of attitude toward plaintiff and asked plaintiff: “‘What did you do to piss him off?’” When plaintiff responded that she could not think of anything, Garcia-Nava asked her: “‘[D]id he like maybe try to come on to you and then like did you reject him?’” Plaintiff started to tell Garcia-Nava about the hand-holding incident but he interrupted her, saying: “‘Never mind, I don’t want to know about it.’”
Cebrun denied the hand-holding incident. He also denied having conversations with Garcia-Nava or anyone else regarding plaintiff’s job performance and denied that he instructed anyone to give plaintiff reprimands regarding her work.
It is undisputed that plaintiff never complained to the District’s Board of Education or to anyone in the District’s administration about Cebrun’s holding her hand. It is also undisputed that Cebrun left his employment with the District in February 2004, a month before the District demoted plaintiff from principal to teacher.
Plaintiff claims Assistant Superintendent Yvonne Contreras warned her that if she complained to the Board about the hand-holding incident she could “end up back in the classroom.” Plaintiff misstates Contreras’ testimony. Contreras testified she warned plaintiff not to go to the Board regarding her request for a leave of absence, not the hand-holding incident.
Following her demotion plaintiff filed sex discrimination complaints against the District and Cebrun with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) and received right-to-sue letters. She then brought this action against the District and Cebrun for discrimination based on sex, termination in violation of public policy, breach of contract and delayed wages. Defendants answered the complaint and moved for summary judgment. The trial court granted the motion and entered judgment for the defendants. Plaintiff filed a timely appeal.
Plaintiff’s third cause of action for breach of contract alleged an implied agreement with the District that she could only be terminated for good cause. Plaintiff’s brief on appeal does not address this claim so we treat it as abandoned.
DISCUSSION
California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibits an employer or a supervisor from harassing an employee because of the employee’s sex (Gov. Code, § 12940, subd. (j)(1), and retaliating against any person because the person has “opposed” sexual harassment (Gov. Code, § 12940, subd. (h)). Sexual harassment includes “‘the proffering of unwanted sexual advances, and/or conditioning employment benefits on the victim’s acquiescence.’” (Fisher v. San Pedro Peninsula Hospital (1989) 214 Cal.App.3d 590, 607, citation omitted.) We will assume for the sake of argument that Cebrun’s holding plaintiff’s hand during a business meeting was an unwelcome sexual advance.
Plaintiff’s causes of action are based on her theory that she was demoted from principal to teacher in retaliation for rebuffing Cebrun’s single sexual advance. Whether this demotion is viewed as quid pro quo sexual harassment or retaliation for opposing sexual harassment, in order to establish defendants’ liability plaintiff must be able to show a causal connection between her rebuffing Cebrun’s sexual advance and her demotion. (Mogilefsky v. Superior Court (1993) 20 Cal.App.4th 1409, 1414 [in a quid pro quo action plaintiff must show her reaction to harassment resulted in a tangible employment action]; Yanowitz v. L’Oreal USA, Inc. (2005) 36 Cal.4th 1028, 1042 [in a retaliation action plaintiff must show “a causal link existed between the protected activity and the employer’s action”].)
Defendants have shown that plaintiff cannot establish causation.
Defendants produced undisputed evidence that plaintiff was notified of her demotion by the acting superintendent in March 2004, a month after Cebrun resigned.
During the time that plaintiff was principal she received only two reprimands, both by Garcia-Nava. One is dated September 5, 2003, and is therefore before the alleged hand-holding incident. The other is on April 2, 2004, two months after Cebrun left the District and one month after plaintiff was notified of her demotion. The other complaints came from parents and teachers, not from Cebrun or anyone else in the District’s administration.
Furthermore, the District sent plaintiff a letter stating six nondiscriminatory reasons for her demotion. The District cited plaintiff’s “[f]ailure to follow administrative directives,” an “excessive number of grievances” from the teachers’ union, improper assignment of teacher duties, “[i]nsubordination toward her immediate supervisor,” failure to provide adequate staff development and failure to “ensure her accessibility to other members of the administration while on duty.” And, in plaintiff’s final evaluation Garcia-Nava stated plaintiff had been “excessively absent from school” and that her absenteeism “has seriously detracted from her effectiveness as a school administrator.” The fact the District’s letter and Garcia-Nava’s evaluation were written before plaintiff filed her discrimination complaints with the EEOC and the DFEH adds credibility to the District’s reasons for her demotion.
When an employer moving for summary judgment articulates credible, legitimate reasons for its job action—reasons that are facially unrelated to prohibited discrimination—the burden shifts to the employee to produce evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact could conclude the reasons are pretextual. (Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 317, 358, 362.) Plaintiff failed to do so.
Plaintiff admitted she did not tell the District’s board about the hand-holding incident and that she did not complain about the incident to Cebrun or anyone else in the District administration. Although plaintiff testified that Garcia-Nava told her Cebrun was “out to get her,” Cebrun left his post as superintendent a month before plaintiff’s demotion and plaintiff produced no evidence to raise an inference that Cebrun directed, encouraged or played any role in that action. Finally, plaintiff offered no evidence showing any of the District’s grounds for her demotion were factually incorrect or not reasonably related to the duties and responsibilities of a school principal.
In sum, plaintiff failed to produce any evidence raising a triable issue of fact that the District’s proffered reasons for demoting her were a pretext for prohibited discrimination based on sex. Because plaintiff’s causes of action for breach of contract and delayed wages were linked to her discrimination claim, they too must fail. Accordingly, defendants were entitled to summary judgment.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Respondents are awarded their costs on appeal.
We concur: MALLANO, Acting P. J, JACKSON, J.
(Judge of the L. A. S.Ct. assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to art. VI, § 6 of the Cal. Const.)