Freund

MEMORANDUM ***

The district court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of Sierra Pacific Resources and Nevada Power Company (collectively, “NPC”) on Freund’s ADEA and state law age discrimination claims. Freund failed to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination, because NPC replaced Freund with employees who had superior qualifications. See Breitman v. May Co. Cal., 37 F.3d 562, 565 (9th Cir.1994) (a plaintiffs failure to establish that he “was replaced by a substantially younger employee with equal or inferior qualifications” justifies summary judgment for failure to establish prima facie case); see also Ritter v. Hughes Aircraft Co., 58 F.3d 454, 457 (9th Cir.1995).

Nor did the district court err in granting NPC’s motion for summary judgment on Freund’s claim of retaliation. Even assuming Freund established a prima facie case of retaliation, he failed to create a triable issue as to whether NPC’s stated reason for firing Freund (poor job performance) was pretextual. See Godwin v. Hunt Wesson, Inc., 150 F.3d 1217, 1222 (9th Cir.1998). The record establishes that after NPC restructured Freund’s department to focus on providing engineering services, both…