In Sorokina v. The College of New Jersey, No. 24-1365, 2025 WL 1289148 (3d Cir. 2025), the court, inter alia, reversed a lower court’s order granting summary judgment to defendant on plaintiff’s claim of gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
Sorokina alleges that the College took two adverse employment actions based on gender discrimination: removing her from the MBA program and opting not to renew her contract. The College is entitled to summary judgment as to Sorokina’s removal from the MBA program, but Sorokina’s challenge to the non-renewal of her contract may proceed to trial.
We will assume without deciding that Sorokina established a prima facie case that the College removed her from the MBA program due to gender discrimination. In response, the College articulated several legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for its action. See supra Section I (discussing Sorokina’s position about the number of courses she would teach, her syllabus and textbook, the use of Bloomberg terminals, and who would teach another MBA course). Sorokina disputes certain facts underlying the College’s articulated non-discriminatory reasons. But she “cannot simply show that the employer’s decision was wrong or mistaken, since the factual dispute at issue is whether discriminatory animus motivated the employer, not whether the employer is wise, shrewd, prudent, or competent.” She must demonstrate “weaknesses, implausibilities, inconsistencies, incoherencies, or contradictions” in the College’s explanations such that a reasonable factfinder could rationally find the explanations were “either a post hoc fabrication or otherwise did not actually motivate the employment action.” This she has not done.
Turning to the College’s non-renewal of Sorokina’s contract, the parties do not dispute that Sorokina established a prima facie case of gender discrimination or that the College articulated legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for its action. And Sorokina has carried her burden to withstand summary judgment at the third step of the McDonnell Douglas scheme.
At McDonnell Douglas’s step three, Sorokina points to the College’s denial of her request for blended teaching for the Spring 2018 semester after she expected to give birth to a child.9 A reasonable jury could find the College’s explanations for that denial lack credibility.
Keep claimed that as a “traditional face to face institution,” the College did not wish to establish a precedent for the teaching of blended classes during academic semesters. App. 290. Yet the College permitted two male professors to teach fully online when those professors wished to spend academic semesters abroad. Moreover, Keep reasoned that teaching a blended course while pregnant “could have posed a problem,” and that if Sorokina “had the baby while teaching an online course no one else would be able to take the course.” But Sorokina’s request concerned a timeframe after she would have given birth, not while she was pregnant. And even assuming Keep’s concerns were valid, they would apply equally to non-blended teaching.
During Sorokina’s third-year-review process, the PRC stated that the Department’s change to Sorokina’s schedule in Spring 2018 (when she requested to teach blended courses after giving birth to a child) “in effect, provided her with an additional seven weeks of paid maternity leave.” Soon thereafter, the PRC faulted Sorokina for “fail[ing]” to “pull [her] own weight.” A reasonable jury could find that this PRC report injected discriminatory bias into the review process when it addressed her request for a childbirth-related schedule change alongside her capacity to support the department.
Additionally, Patrick made a comment about Sorokina’s appearance during her interview process and otherwise treated female faculty members differently from male faculty members. A reasonable jury could find this evidenced gender bias by Patrick—one of the two professors who signed the PRC’s report. Moreover, Patrick and Mayo wrote the PRC report without meaningful collaboration or discussion with the sole woman on the PRC, deviating from the College’s regular process. See Stewart v. Rutgers, The State Univ., 120 F.3d 426, 433–34 (3d Cir. 1997) (concluding that procedural and substantive inconsistencies by a PRC was evidence upon which a jury could find a “tenure denial was a product of discrimination”); cf. Kairys v. S. Pines Trucking, Inc., 75 F.4th 153, 164 (3d Cir. 2023) (affirming pretext concerning an ERISA discrimination claim when, among other things, “circumstances surrounding [a termination] were unusual”).
This evidence of gender discrimination, along with disputes about some bases for the PRC’s recommendation (e.g., late and cancelled classes), could cause a reasonable jury to disbelieve the PRC’s explanations for its recommendation. See Fuentes, 32 F.3d at 764 n.7 (3d Cir. 1994) (explaining that “[i]f the defendant proffers a bagful of legitimate reasons, and the plaintiff manages to cast substantial doubt on a fair number of them, … a factfinder may rationally disbelieve the remaining proffered reasons”); Tomasso v. Boeing Co., 445 F.3d 702, 707, 709 (3d Cir. 2006) (same, and explaining that “[e]ven if a rational factfinder would have to conclude that [an employer’s] rationales played some role in [an employee’s termination], the factfinder would not have to conclude that they provide a sufficient explanation”). A reasonable jury could also find that the discriminatory bias infecting the PRC’s recommendation influenced the higher levels of review—i.e., that bias “bore a direct and substantial relation” to the College’s non-renewal of Sorokina’s contract.
[Citations and internal quotation marks omitted.]
The court concluded that, “taken as a whole and viewed in a light favorable to Sorokina’s case, there is a convincing mosaic of circumstantial evidence upon which a reasonable jury could conclude that discriminatory bias more likely than not motivated or determined the College’s decision to not renew Sorokina’s contract” and, therefore, that summary judgment was not warranted to the College on plaintiff’s gender discrimination claim concerning the non-renewal. [Internal quotation marks omitted.]