United States District Court, W.D. Wisconsin
OPINION AND ORDER
WILLIAM M. CONLEY, DISTRICT JUDGE.
Plaintiff
Lethea King, a former project manager for the Bureau of
Computing Services (“BCS”) within the Wisconsin
Department of Justice (“DOJ”), has sued her
former superiors, defendants Susan Schneider, Igor Steinberg
and Bonnie Cyganek, alleging that they discriminated against
her based on race, created a hostile work environment, and
retaliated against her in violation of the Equal Protection
Clause and 28 U.S.C. § 1983.[1] Pending before the court is
defendants' motion for summary judgment on all claims
(dkt. #16), which the court will now grant because plaintiff
has failed to meet her burden to produce sufficient evidence
to establish her claims.
UNDISPUTED
FACTS[2]
A.
Background
King,
an African American woman, was hired by the Wisconsin
DOJ's BCS as a project manager in October 2012. King is a
certified project management professional with degrees as a
Cobol Programmer, as well as technical and project management
experience at American Family Insurance. DOJ hired King to
implement project management methodology.
King's
first performance evaluation was completed by her initial
supervisor, David Wolfe, in January 2013; her second was
completed by defendant Bonnie Cyganek in April 2013. King was
provided copies of these evaluations and had the opportunity
to review each with the evaluator.[3]
Cyganek
served as the Administrator for the DOJ's Division of
Management Services (“DMS”) beginning in March
2012. She was appointed by the state attorney general to
oversee the operations of the Bureau of Budget and Finance
and the BCS Bureau of Human Resources. Cyganek did not,
however, supervise King's daily activities. Instead,
Wolfe initially acted as King's direct supervisor, a
responsibility assumed by defendant Susan Schneider when she
became the Deputy IT Director for the DOJ on September 30,
2013, to manage and oversee BCS generally. In turn, defendant
Igor Steinberg was Schneider's immediate supervisor and
the Director of BCS.
When
Steinberg began working for the DOJ in August 2013, he met
with BCS staff to introduce himself and outline his
expectations. Among other expectations, he told BCS staff
that they needed to own and be accountable for their work, to
admit mistakes, to solve problems collaboratively, to trust
their colleagues and to be team players.
B.
Employment Issues
DOJ
personnel complaint investigations generally mark the
beginning of any disciplinary action and involve at least one
supervisor and one human resources professional. These
investigations look into formal complaints received by
supervisors or human resources. During the investigation, the
employee accused of violating work rules receives a notice of
the investigation, which would tell the employee to
participate in an investigatory interview. Nevertheless, the
parties devote a lot of their submissions to detailing
criticisms of King that did not result in disciplinary
action, so the discussion of King's employment issues
will begin with those matters before turning to more formal
disciplinary actions.
1.
Non-Disciplinary Actions
a)
General complaints and alleged inappropriate tone
Defendants
assert that over the course of 2013, King's first full
year of employment by DOJ, DMS Administrator Cyganek heard
that King was hard to work with, although no formal
complaints had been made. For example, former defendant BCS
project manager Dave Tolmie avers that in the summer of 2013,
King berated a co-worker named Yanbing, giving him the
impression that King “had verbally destroyed
[Yanbing].” (Tolmie Decl. (dkt. #18) ¶ 6.)
Plaintiff denies “berating” or “verbally
destroying” anyone.
On
August 6, 2013, King emailed the director of special
operations, Jody Wormet, in an attempt to schedule a meeting.
After Wormet replied that he was unavailable at the time King
selected, she asked him to “ensure that [his] calendar
is up to date -- as it showed you as being available.”
King went on to obverse, “For this project to succeed
we will need to meet and it will be difficult to do so, if
I'm scheduling meetings for when you are here and in
essence you aren't.” (Aug. 6, 2013 Email (dkt.
#22-2) 1.) Wormet forwarded a different email from King,
asserting that his “schedule is up to date, ” and
continuing “I don't know what she is talking about
and I am getting irritated with her tone and persistence on
the issue.” (Id. at 3.)
Defendants
further contend that defendant Schneider, as Director of IT
and King's direct report, personally became aware of
complaints about her behavior from BCS employee Tom Gries
during a transition meeting in October 2013. Gries reportedly
told Schneider that “it's not working, she has
taken on authority, she doesn't seek to understand,
doesn't take criticism well, alienates people and he
didn't like her style.” (Schneider Decl. (dkt. #23)
¶ 6.) On November 26, 2013, King then emailed a
colleague with a copy to Schneider, stating
What concerns me right now is this, I don't understand
why you are just now alerting me to this as you have had the
disk in your possession since November 4th or thereabouts.
When you provide dates and duration for completing a task in
the plan, that means you will provide your deliverable on
that date. You[r] inquiry below lets me know that those
agreed upon dates were never achievable. Please know that
from a project management perspective that is unacceptable.
(Nov.
26, 2013 Email (dkt. #23-1) 1.) Defendants assert that
Schneider was concerned about King's tone in this email,
while plaintiff argues there was nothing inappropriate about
her tone.
In
December 2013, defendants also aver that Schneider spoke with
other project managers, Tolmie and Hampton, about King, and
they, too, complained about working and interacting with
King. Plaintiff denies this as well.[4] On December 16, 2013,
however, Tolmie forwarded an extensive email chain between
himself, King, Hampton and others to Schneider. In response
to a suggested meeting, the parties agree that plaintiff
advised everyone that she had “nothing to discuss,
” and that she was “not sure why this is becoming
such a big deal. . . . I'm just amazed at the amount of
time this one thing has consumed, when in the big scheme of
things it's not that big of a deal.” (Dec. 16, 2013
Email (dkt. #23-4) 1.) According to Schneider, this email
exchange reinforced concerns identified by Tolmie and
Hampton.
On
March 26, 2014, King emailed another DOJ employee and a
Department of Administration (“DOA”) employee
with a question. When the DOA employee responded, she
addressed her email to Karen VanSchoonhoven, the DOJ
employee, who King had included in the “To” field
of her email. King then responded “I was the originator
of the email below, therefore it is unclear to me -- why your
response was to Karen. . . . In the interim, please let
me know what else may be required.”
(Mar. 26, 2014 Email (dkt. #22-6) 1-2 (emphasis in
original).)
b)
Amber Alert project
As the
project manager for the Amber Alert project, King drafted the
project plan, with input from team members. She was also
responsible for ensuring that the software testing was
completed before providing it to the client. The plan
specified January 23, 2014, as the target date for a meeting
with Dane County 911 operators. During this meeting, program
bugs were discovered, leading King in February to ask Dane
County 911 to reschedule the meeting. In response, Dane
County 911's contact said he was waiting to hear from the
liaison to “make sure everyone is on the same page
before [he] pull[ed his] entire team together again for
this.” (Feb. 26, 2014 Email (dkt. #22-5) 4.) In
response, King expressed uncertainty as to why she would need
to check with the DOJ liaison since King only “needed
the developers to fix the issues that were found, which they
have.” (Id. at 3-4.)
On
February 20, 2014, Schneider reports learning of concerns
about the Amber Alert website project, as well as King's
role in it. Specifically, concerns were again raised that
King was abrupt, rude, and resistant to creating a poster for
consistent layout, and she did not view the Division of
Criminal Investigation (“DCI”) as the customer.
To combat some of these concerns, Schneider added Alli
Jerger, a business analyst for DCI, to the team.
After a
meeting on March 10, 2014, Jerger informed Schneider that DCI
felt like it was not receiving enough support from BCS, that
BCS was unwilling to listen to DCI's needs, and that BCS
seemed to care more about deadlines than DCI's
requirements. (Mar. 11, 2014 Email (dkt. #23-6) 1.) Jerger
also complained that King had scheduled a training with Dane
County 911 without first showing the product to DCI,
resulting in a waste of Dane County 911's time and money,
and that DCI had never before “had such an adversarial
relationship in a project.” (Id.)
c)
GeneMapper project
Following
the completion of the GeneMapper project, King emailed
Schneider a document titled “GeneMapper Lessons Learned
Summary” on May 1, 2014. The parties agree that King
informed Schneider that she relied on the feedback provided
and had not cherry-picked. (Defs.' Resp. Pl.'s PFOF
(dkt. #35) ¶ 7.) Still, Schneider was “surprised
and disappointed [that the summary contained] no reference to
the team effort involved in making this project a success,
” while addressing King's input a number of times.
(May 1, 2014 Email (dkt. #23-7) 1, 4-5.) Schneider claims her
reaction was due in part to the fact that in March, King and
others received an email from William Peterson, who was part
of the project team, complementing the work of BCS on the
GeneMapper project (May 1, 2014 Email (dkt. #22-8) 2),
although the parties disagree whether that email was
submitted as part of the “Lessons Learned”
process. The parties do agree that the team did very good
work on this project, while plaintiff disagrees ...