Alves v. Emerald Correctional Management, LLC

MEMORANDUM

1. Plaintiff Grisell Alves (“Alves”) did not submit evidence from which a reasonable jury could infer that Emerald Correctional Management, LLC (“Emerald”) acted with a retaliatory motive against her when she complained of sexual harassment by terminating her employment.

The evidence Alves relies on to prove that Emerald’s stated reason for firing her was pretext does not suffice to avoid summary judgment. Emerald produced evidence to support a finding that it fired Alves for a legitimate non-retaliatory reason-sexually harassing two of her coworkers. Once Emerald put forth a legitimate, non-retaliatory explanation for Alves’s termination, the burden shifted to Alves to show that this explanation was pretext for discrimination. See Miller v. Fairchild Indus., Inc., 797 F.2d 727 , 732 (9th Cir.1986). Alves produced several arguments in support of her claim that the investigation that led to her firing was done in bad faith, and thus pretextual, e.g., she was not informed of the sexual-harassment allegations against her, Emerald unreasonably discredited her version of events, and Emerald instructed an employee to file a complaint against her. However, none of these…