By Mitchell Riese and Mitchel Wilson
In Vicino v. Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland denied the defendant employer’s motion for summary judgment because the plaintiff park ranger had sufficiently alleged sexual discrimination. The Court determined that material facts for a jury existed and that summary judgment was improper.
Megan Vicino was hired by the Department of Natural Resources as a probationary park ranger at Seneca Creek State Park in July 2009. She managed daily park operations and recruited park volunteers. Her immediate supervisor as well as her only other coworker were both male. Her supervisor provided her coworker with a larger work area and storage space than he gave her; she encountered frequent problems communicating with the supervisor while her coworker had no such problem, and he frequently gave guidance to her coworker but was generally reluctant to give assistance to Vicino.
Later, during ranger school, Vicino injured herself during a walk in the forest, and her incident report differed significantly from her original story. She also discovered her male coworker had left his keys in the door of his work truck, and instead of telling him, she informed the school’s dean. This led to two supervisors discussing terminating Vicino, but they ultimately favored letting her return to work. After returning, Vicino’s supervisors informed her that she was not meeting performance expectations, although she received a “meets standards” rating on her evaluation. Another female employee approached Vicino and told Vicino she felt Vicino’s supervisor was sexually harassing her; Vicino reported this to a female supervisor. One month later, that same supervisor recommended discharging Vicino for declining performance in an apparent about face from her previous evaluation of Vicino.
Because another supervisor with greater authority than Vicino’s male supervisor terminated her, Vicino had to show that her male supervisor’s “discriminatory animus” was the motivation behind the termination:
Here, Plaintiff has raised circumstantial evidence probative of the issue of retaliation. The evidence suggests an apparent change in [the female supervisor’s] opinion closely following Plaintiff’s protected activity. The protected activity occurred on April 29, 2010. On May 12, 2010, less than two weeks after speaking with Plaintiff, [the female supervisor], for the first time, advocated that Plaintiff be terminated.
The Court concluded that the closeness in time between Viceno’s sexual harassment report and the termination, as well as the dramatic change in opinion by the female supervisor, could cause a jury to infer that retaliatory animus motivated the decision to terminate Viceno. That discriminatory animus was sufficiently demonstrated by the difference in treatment of Vicino and her male coworker by the supervisor.
This case is an excellent illustration of how employers create problems for themselves by retaliating against employees who raises claims of discrimination or express support for another employee’s discrimination claim. The discrimination laws prohibit retaliation against employees for raising or supporting discrimination claims. Even if an employee is unable to prove an underlying claim of discrimination, it is frequently retaliation by the employer that an employee is able to establish, particularly in circumstances, such as this case, where the employer retaliated so quickly after the employee had engaged in protected activity and the employer suddenly changed its assessment of the employee’s performance.
