This page uses extracted PDF text. Text can misread numbers, dates or table columns. Check the PDF before quoting or interpreting it. Redacted areas remain redacted.
seek to expose that rationale as pretextual by focusing on minor dis-
crepancies that do not cast doubt on the explanation’s validity, or by
raising points that are wholly irrelevant to it. The former would not
create a "genuine" dispute, see Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith
Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586-87 (1986), the latter would fail to be
"material," see Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248
(1986). And it thus follows that in a suit alleging failure to promote,
a plaintiff seeking to rebut an employer’s reliance on inferior job
qualifications cannot simply compare herself to other employees on
the basis of a single evaluative factor artificially severed from the
employer’s focus on multiple factors in combination. See Anderson,
406 F.3d at 271 (plaintiff "cannot establish pretext by relying on
criteria of her choosing when the employer based its decision on other
grounds"); see also Diamond v. Colonial Life & Accident Ins. Co.,
416 F.3d 310, 319-20 (4th Cir. 2005).
Brushing aside the materiality and genuineness components of
summary judgment in these cases would in due course substitute
courts for employers as the decisionmakers of last resort in personnel
matters, see Jiminez v. Mary Washington Coll., 57 F.3d 369, 377 (4th
Cir. 1995). Duty-bound though we are to examine employment deci-
sions for unlawful discrimination, we are not cloaked with the author-
ity to strip employers of their basic business responsibilities. See
Anderson, 406 F.3d at 269; DeJarnette v. Corning Inc., 133 F.3d 293,
298-99 (4th Cir. 1998). The obligation of courts to enforce the essen-
tial mandate of anti-discrimination law coexists with the duty not to
invade the province of another in circumstances which the law does
not allow. The summary judgment standards, as applied to the famil-
iar McDonnell Douglas framework, are designed to respect the bal-
ance.
With these principles in place, we turn to the record before us.
III.
The Fire Department conducts the promotional process for Fire
Captain positions on an as-needed basis, and all candidates are inter-
viewed by a panel usually comprised of the Fire Chief and two Dep-
uty Fire Chiefs. Pursuant to Department policy, each member of the
interviewing panel typically ranks the candidates based on the various
6 HUX v. CITY OF NEWPORT NEWSJump to an indexed page (12 of 12)