Phipps v. University Med Ctr

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT _______________

m 99-60191 _______________

MOSSIE R. PHIPPS, Plaintiff-Appellant, VERSUS

UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI MEDICAL CENTER and CATHLEEN REID, Individually and as a Superior and as an Official of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Defendants-Appellees. _________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi (3:98-CV-186-BN) _________________________

November 10, 1999

Before DAVIS, SMITH, and Phipps was a registered nurse with BARKSDALE, Circuit Judges. defendant University of Mississippi Medical Center. One morning, she was being PER CURIAM:* supervised by defendant nurse Cathleen Reid and attended to patient Nat haniel Barnes. Mossie Phipps, a black female, seeks Although Barnes was discharged no later than reversal of a summary judgment entered 10:00 a.m., Phipps made entries in her against her on her various claims of racial progress notes for Barnes claiming work at discrimination brought under title VII and 42 7:55 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., and 12:00 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and 1985. We review p.m. That same day, the medical a summary judgment de novo. Freeman v. centerSSthrough its Associate Director of City of Dallas, 186 F.3d 601, 606 (5th Cir. Human Resources, who also is 1999). Because Phipps fails to raise a genuine blackSSconcluded that Phipps had falsified a issue of material fact that her discharge was patient’s medical records, and therefore motivated by race, we affirm. terminated her.

Phipps responds that her conduct was either “a mistake or at worse constitutes her * prognosis that the patient, who is a diabetic, Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has will remain a diabetic at 12 . . . and will determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the continue to show no signs and symptoms of limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia.” Thus, R. 47.5.4. Phipps admits the fact of her misconduct and

offers nothing more than a bare and for summary judgment. unsupported allegation that she did not intend to mislead. She then claims that her discharge AFFIRMED. was motivated by race. Of ten other Medical Center employees who have been caught for the same act of falsifying medical records, however, all tenSSincluding five white employeesSSwere also discharged.

Unable to find disparate treatment as compared to this most similarly-situated group of whitesSSthe five also accused of falsifying medical recordsSSPhipps attempts to contrast her treatment with that of a group of white employees who were charged with different offenses and were not immediately fired. Essentially, Phipps demands trial to determine whether those other offenses were of equal, less, or greater significance than her own misconduct, in hopes of showing that those white employees were situated similarly to (or worse than) was she.

Phipps cannot show how the terms of her discharge permit an inference of racism. Far from irrational, the decision to discharge her w a s p r e m i s e d o n a l e g it i m a t e , nondiscriminatory reason. See Walton v. Bisco Indus., Inc., 119 F.3d 368, 370 (5th Cir. 1997); St. Mary’s Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 510-11 (1993); Texas Dep’t of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 252-55 (1981).

The medical center apparently was acting out of intolerance of an employee’s misrepresentation and deception. An employer is entitled to grade various forms of employee misconduct to its own liking, so long as it does not do so on account of race or some other prohibited basis. See Bodenheimer v. PPG Indus., Inc., 5 F.3d 955, 958 (5th Cir. 1993) (holding that to win summary judgment, an “employer need only articulate a lawful reason, regardless of what its persuasiveness may or may not be”). Applying our familiar burden- shifting analysis, see St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 510-11, we conclude that, having failed to make a sufficient evidentiary showing that the stated nondiscriminatory purpose was pretextual, Phipps cannot survive the motion