By: Loyd Willaford and Clive Pontusson
In Webb v. City of Eufaula, a federal court in Oklahoma ruled that a female employee had offered enough facts and evidence to bring her lawsuit for gender discrimination to trial. Candy Webb was the only woman employed as a Police Officer by the City of Eufaula, and was subjected to different standards of training and fitness than other Officers. She was fired by the Police Department and filed a lawsuit.
To support her claim for gender discrimination, Webb relied on several facts. First, she alleged that the Chief of Police had misled her: he told her she did not have to show up for a physical agility test, and then later used the fact she did not show up as a reason for firing her. She also provided evidence that male officers did not have to perform the test at all. She provided evidence that male employees on medical leave did not face any retaliation, but she was criticized for taking leave. Importantly, Officer Webb placed the blame for this discrimination with both the Chief of Police and the City of Eufaula itself.
The City of Eufaula argued that Webb’s lawsuit should be dismissed by the Court, because she had not shown that she was qualified to be a Police Officer in the first place: she was fired for performance-related issues (such as the failure to perform the agility test) and this meant that she did not have a “right” to her job that could be violated. The City also argued that Officer Webb had not really proved that other (male) Officers were treated differently than she was.
The City was asking the Court to dismiss Webb’s lawsuit at a very early stage, and the Court refused to do so. At this point in the lawsuit, Webb did not have to prove she was discriminated against because she was a woman. She only had to point out some basic facts—that she was a woman, that she suffered a harm (the loss of her job) and that some evidence pointed to different treatment for male Officers. As the Court explained,
The Plaintiff has met this minimal pleading standard because she has alleged her protected class as a woman, that she was terminated from her employment, and that her termination was the result of discrimination based on gender.
As a result of this ruling, Officer Webb will be able to gather more evidence that she was fired because she was a woman. Later, Officer Webb may face greater challenges to prove that her gender was the reason she was fired, but for now her lawsuit will continue through the Courts.
This case illustrates the importance of alleging sufficient facts in a complaint to make out a cause of action. The Court had previously dismissed Webb’s complaint because she had not given the court enough facts to infer she had been discriminated against based on gender. Webb’s new complaint provided just enough facts to keep her gender discrimination complaint alive. In particular, the fact the Webb was the only woman employed as an officer was enough to raise an inference that gender might have motivated her firing. She will still have to prove that this was true in a trial. To do this, she will likely need to show that the reasons the City gave for firing her were false or that the City treated male officers differently under similar circumstances.
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