The opinion
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF ALABAMA, NORTHERN DIVISION
STACY TRIMBLE, )
)
Plaintiff, )
)
v. )
) CIVIL ACTION NO.
HYUNDAI MOTOR ) 2:25cv235-MHT
MANUFACTURING OF ALABAMA, ) (WO)
LLC, )
)
Defendant. )
OPINION
Plaintiff Stacy Trimble brings this
employment-discrimination lawsuit against defendant
Hyundai Motor Manufacturing of Alabama, LLC claiming that
he was not promoted because of his race, in violation of
42 U.S.C. § 1981.1 Jurisdiction is proper under 28 U.S.C.
§ 1331 (federal question) and 28 U.S.C. § 1343 (civil
rights). Before the court is Hyundai’s motion for
summary judgment. For the reasons below, the motion will
be granted.
1. Trimble initially also brought a retaliation
claim, but he has since expressly abandoned that claim.
Pl.’s Br. Opp’n (Doc. 50) at 2 n.1.
I. LEGAL STANDARD
Summary judgment may be granted “if the movant shows
that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact
and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of
law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). In deciding a motion for
summary judgment, the court must view the evidence in the
light most favorable to the non-moving party and draw all
reasonable inferences from the facts in favor of that
party. See Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio
Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986). When “the record taken
as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to
find for the non-moving party,” summary judgment is
appropriate. Id. at 587.
II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
The facts, taken in the light most favorable to
Trimble, are as follows.
Hyundai is a company with several departments, and
each department has the following corporate ladder. At
the first rung of the ladder are ‘team members,’ who are
assigned to work in teams of about 6-to-8 in a department.
Each team is supervised by a ‘team leader,’ the position
on the second rung of the ladder. There are two positions
on the third rung: ‘group leaders’ and ‘specialists.’
Group leaders oversee a group of teams, including the
team leaders of those teams, in a specific area, such as
the chassis area. Specialists, as their name implies,
specialize in a particular job, for example, purchasing
or quality control. They operate more independently,
and, unlike many of Hyundai’s other positions--which are
often blue-collar assembly line jobs with late hours or
night shifts--specialist positions are often
white-collar jobs with a 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. schedule.
The final three rungs on the ladder involve junior
and senior management positions. First, ‘assistant
managers’ oversee an entire area of a department and
directly supervise specialists and group leaders.
Second, ‘mangers’ supervise the assistant managers and
oversee an area of a department. Third and finally, the
‘Head of a Department’ oversees the managers and
supervises an entire department, for example, the General
Assembly Department.
Hyundai has formal multi-step processes for
employees seeking to climb the corporate ladder.
Relevant here is the following process for promotions to
assistant manager or below. First, when a position
opens, the company creates an online post on its Career
Opportunity Program portal; eligible employees may apply
to that position through that post. Second, once the
application submission period ends, the Human Resources
Department screens applications and weeds out employees
who are ineligible for the posted position. Third, the
remaining applicants “are required to respond to a
questionnaire about their experience and skills or to
take an assessment--depending upon the position for which
they are applying.” Fletcher Decl. (Doc. 43-20) ¶4.
Fourth, a group of applicants with a sufficiently high
questionnaire score are chosen to be interviewed by a
panel. The panel includes at least one representative
from Human Resources and one from the Hiring Department.
After the interview, the panel fills out a matrix that
grades each candidate based on a combination of factors
including the applicant’s interview performance, work
history, work performance, and qualifications. Fifth,
that matrix is given to the Hiring Department, which
makes a recommendation from an even smaller list of
applicants “whose final [matrix score] is above an
established threshold.” Id. ¶6. Sixth and finally, the
Hiring Department’s recommendation is sent to Human
Resources for approval.
Trimble, who is Black, was hired as a team member in
2004 in Hyundai’s car manufacturing plant in Montgomery,
Alabama. In 2008, he was promoted to team leader in the
Predelivery Inspection Department and, in 2019, to group
leader. Two years later, he was transferred to the
General Assembly Department.
Trimble contends that, during his years at Hyundai,
he “observed a larger number of Blacks in [assistant
management] positions in general assembly, which is a
[department] more focused on physical labor,” Pl.’s Br.
Opp’n (Doc. 50) at 14, and that this pattern diverges
from other departments where he observed that more
non-Black employees are promoted to assistant manager.
He also alleges that he observed a similar pattern across
departments where non-Black employees were promoted to
specialist positions more often than Black employees.
Trimble contends that his own experience in the
promotion process fits with that racialized pattern of
promotion. From December 2018 to December 2022, he
applied to five assistant manager positions and four
specialist positions but was denied a promotion each
time. Instead, Hyundai selected non-Black employees for
seven out of the nine positions.
III. TRIMBLE’S FAILURE-TO-PROMOTE CLAIM
Trimble’s sole claim is that Hyundai failed to
promote him because of his race, in violation of 42 U.S.C.
§ 1981. “Section 1981 prohibits intentional race
discrimination in the making and enforcement of public
and private contracts, including employment contracts.”
Ferrill v. Parker Grp., 168 F.3d 468, 472
(11th Cir. 1999). A plaintiff may establish racial
discrimination by amassing a “convincing mosaic of
circumstantial evidence that would allow a jury to infer
intentional discrimination by the decisionmaker,” which
approach is just a rearticulation of the summary-judgment
standard. Tynes v. Fla. Dep’t of Juv. Just., 88 F.4th
939, 946-47 (11th Cir. 2023) (internal quotation
omitted). Therefore, to survive summary judgment Trimble
must provide enough evidence for a reasonable juror to
conclude that it was more likely than not that “race was
a but-for cause” of Hyundai’s failure to promote him.
Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Ass’n of Afr. Am. Owned Media, 589
U.S. 327, 333 (2020). See also Ossmann v. Meredith Corp.,
82 F.4th 1007, 1014 (11th Cir. 2023). That is, he must
show that if he were not Black, he would have been
promoted.
To begin, Trimble asserts that Hyundai has a pattern
of racial discrimination in its promotion process. One
of the ways that a plaintiff may prove race
discrimination is by providing statistical or anecdotal
evidence that he was discriminated against as part of a
larger pattern or practice of racial discrimination. See
Jenkins v. Nell, 26 F.4th 1243, 1250-51 (11th Cir. 2022).
To prove a claim of race discrimination based on pattern
or practice evidence, a plaintiff must provide evidence
that his employer repeatedly treated employees of one
race better than those of another race. See id. In
other words, Trimble must provide some admissible
statistical or anecdotal evidence that Hyundai’s
non-Black employees were repeatedly promoted over
similarly or more qualified Black employees. See, e.g.,
id.; Brown v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 939 F.2d 946, 952
(11th Cir. 1991); Ingram v. Hyundai Motor Mfg. of Ala.,
LLC, No. 2:22-cv-666-MHT, 2025 WL 1139123, at *4-5
(M.D. Ala. Apr. 17, 2025) (Thompson, J.).
Trimble contends that Hyundai had a pattern of
promoting more Black employees to assistant manager
positions in the labor-intensive General Assembly
Department. He asserts that this contrasts with
non-Black employees who were promoted to less
labor-intensive positions, such as assistant manager
positions in other departments or specialist positions
in any of the departments, including the General Assembly
Department. He further asserts that across all
departments, the company had a pattern of promoting
thinly credentialed or unqualified non-Black candidates,
over highly qualified Black candidates. In essence, he
argues that the company had a pattern of using its Black
employees as physical laborers while non-Black employees
received cushy desk jobs. He submits that the company’s
failure to promote him was part of that alleged
discriminatory pattern.
The problem is that Trimble offers no evidence to
back up his allegations of a pattern of racial
discrimination. He has not provided employee files,
resumes, or job applications (outside of those for which
he and two other employees applied). Nor has he produced
demographic data about the employees in Hyundai’s various
departments or who applied to the specialist or
leadership positions. The only supporting evidence is
Trimble’s own beliefs. But “[a] mere belief of the
existence of a fact is not evidence of that fact.”
Ingram, 2025 WL 1139123, at *5.
Trimble suggests that his observations based on many
years of working at Hyundai should count. He contends
that, although he does not have evidence of the
credentials of specific candidates, the court should at
least consider his general observations that he has seen
more non-Black people promoted than Black people. Yet,
even if the court were to credit these observations, such
general observations, “without an analytic foundation,
are virtually meaningless.” Am. Honda, 939 F.2d at 952.
“To say that very few black[ people] have been selected
by [Hyundai] does not say a great deal about [its]
practices unless we know how many black[ people] applied
and failed and compare that to the success rate of equally
qualified [non-Black] applicants.” Id.
Still, Trimble contends that, even if Hyundai did
not have a pattern or practice of discrimination against
Black employees generally, the company specifically did
not promote him because of his race. He contends that
for the four years before he filed suit against the
company, he applied nine times for a promotion and was
denied each time. He submits that despite having similar
qualifications to the chosen applicants, in seven out of
the nine times he applied, the company chose non-Black
employees over him.
The problem with Trimble’s second theory is that he
has not rebutted the reasons that Hyundai gave for its
selections. An employer may refuse to promote an
employee “for a good reason, a bad reason, a reason based
on erroneous facts, or for no reason at all, as long as
its action is not for a discriminatory reason.” Nix v.
WLCY Radio/Rahall Commc’ns, 738 F.2d 1181, 1187
(11th Cir. 1984), abrogated on other grounds by Lewis v.
City of Union City, 918 F.3d 1213 (11th Cir. 2019). And,
so, when an employer gives a legitimate,
nondiscriminatory reason for its decision, “the employee
must confront the employer’s seemingly legitimate
reason ... ‘head on and rebut it.’” Kidd v. Mando Am.
Corp., 731 F.3d 1196, 1206 (11th Cir. 2013) (quoting
Chapman v. AI Transp., 229 F.3d 1012, 1030
(11th Cir. 2000)). But Trimble has not rebutted
Hyundai’s reasons, and, therefore, he has not established
a claim of race discrimination.
For starters, although Trimble applied to nine
positions, he concedes that he was ineligible to apply
for six of them; and he does not argue that the
eligibility criteria were discriminatory. So, while he
says his claim is about nine positions, it is really
about only three.
Hyundai had four openings for those three positions,
and for each opening it selected a non-Black applicant.
The company gave legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons
for its selections. First, it asserts that it selected
Travis Wyatt for the single opening for assistant manager
of Quality Assurance “because of his extensive knowledge
and experience troubleshooting Powertrain systems and his
experience with Quality Assurance systems and tools.”
Def.’s Br. (Doc. 44) ¶18. Second, it contends that Soyun
Lee was selected for the single opening for assistant
manager in Engine Support because of her good interview
answers, relevant work experience, and “familiarity with
the issues the department faces and potential solutions.”
Id. ¶19. Finally, for the two openings for assistant
manager in Welding, the company selected Jeremy Lawrence
and Shane Ruxton. It explains that “Lawrence was
selected based upon his leadership experience, process
engineering background, as well as his understanding of
the welding processes, new model launch process and
welding and dimensional control principles.” Id. ¶20.
And the company submits that “Ruxton was selected because
of his experience leading project level activities,
including design and implementation, as well as his
understanding of process control, dimensional control and
process standardization.” Id.
While Trimble makes two arguments in response,
neither rebuts Hyundai’s reasons for its selections.
First, Trimble argues that Hyundai did not give
legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its
selections. He asserts that it did not give reasons for
why he was not selected; it only gave reasons for why
other employees were selected. He is mistaken; as when
the company gave its reasons for selecting the chosen
candidates, with those reasons it clearly also gave
legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for why he was not
selected.2 See Alexander v. Fulton Cnty., 207 F.3d 1303,
1341-42 (11th Cir. 2000) (finding that an employer gave
a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its selection,
when it gave a reason for why another employee was
selected), overruled on other grounds by Manders v. Lee,
338 F.3d 1304 (11th Cir. 2003).
2. In a transparent attempt to backfill a scarce
initial brief, Trimble’s attorney filed an unprompted
supplemental brief after oral argument, which cited Brown
v. Alabama Dep’t of Transp., 597 F.3d 1160
(11th Cir. 2010), as support for his assertion. The
arguments in this brief are due to be rejected as
untimely. Yet even if they were considered, it would
make no difference. Brown does not establish that
providing a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for why
a candidate was selected is inadequate to provide a
reason for why another candidate was not selected.
Second, Trimble contends that, for the Welding and
Engine Production Control positions, Hyundai’s reasons
were pretextual because he scored similarly or slightly
below the chosen candidates on several criteria in the
decision-making matrix. But this argument does not
establish pretext. For one, the company’s stated reasons
were based on qualitative assessments of the candidates,
not just their matrix scores. In fact, for three out of
the four openings, the company did not select the
candidate with the highest overall matrix score.
Even if the matrix scores were the basis for
Hyundai’s decision, Trimble’s similar scores on some
criteria that make up the scores, standing alone, would
not have been enough to show pretext. In
failure-to-promote cases, “a plaintiff cannot prove
pretext by simply arguing or even by showing that he was
better qualified than the [applicant] who received the
position he coveted.” Id. at 1339. Rather, if he seeks
to prove pretext solely by comparing the qualifications
of applicants, “[he] must show that the disparities
between the successful applicant’s and his own
qualifications were ‘of such weight and significance that
no reasonable person, in the exercise of impartial
judgment, could have chosen the candidate selected over
the plaintiff.’” Springer v. Convergys Customer Mgmt.
Grp., 509 F.3d 1344, 1349 (11th Cir. 2007) (quoting
Cooper v. S. Co., 390 F.3d 695, 732 (11th Cir. 2004),
overruled on other grounds by Ash v. Tyson Foods, Inc.,
546 U.S. 454 (2006)). Yet Trimble simply asserts that
he scored similarly or slightly below the chosen
applicants in some matrix criteria, not that he was so
superior in qualifications “that no reasonable person,
in the exercise of impartial judgment, could have chosen”
those selected. Id. Indeed, both overall, and in most
individual matrix criteria, he scored worse than all the
chosen candidates.
IV. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, no reasonable factfinder could find,
based on the evidence before the court, that Trimble was
denied a promotion because of his race. Summary judgment
will, therefore, be entered in favor of Hyundai.
An appropriate judgment will be entered.
DONE, this the 20th day of June, 2025.
/s/ Myron H. Thompson
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE