Barnes v. Simmons, et al

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
August 24, 2006
Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
In the
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
_______________
m 05-41162
Summary Calendar
_______________
GERALD BARNES,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
VERSUS
DAVID SIMMONS; TYLER INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT,
Defendants-Appellees.
_________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Texas
m 6:04-CV-193
______________________________
Before SMITH, GARZA, and PRADO,
Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM*:
Gerald Barnes challenges the exclusion of
evidence from the trial of his civil rights suit.
For the following reasons, we affirm.
I.
Barnes sued Tyler Independent School Dis-
trict (“TISD”) and its superintendent, David
Simmons, after Barnes was demoted from As-
sistant Superintendent to Supervisor of Trans-
portation. According to TISD, Barnes’s de-
motion was part of a district-wide plan to re-
structure the administration to promote effi-
ciency and reduce expenses.
Summary judgment whittled Barnes’s suit
down to one claim against TISD of employ-
ment racial discrimination under title VII of
*Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has de-
termined that this opinion should not be published
and is not precedent except under the limited cir-
cumstances set forth in 5th Cir. R. 47.5.4.

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the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At a pre-trial
hearing, the court excluded, as irrelevant, one
of Barnes’s exhibits, a copy of the standing
1970 federal desegregation order issued
against TISD. The jury found in favor of
TISD.
On appeal, Barnes challenges only the ex-
clusion of the 1970 order. The order imposed
a number of procedural hiring requirements on
TISD in an effort to ensure equal treatment of
minority employees during the integration of
the dual school system that had existed under
segregation. Barnes argues that because
TISD’s decision to demote him did not comply
with the terms of the order, the order should
be admitted as evidence relevant to whether
his demotion was motivated by discrimination.
II.
We review evidentiary rulings only for
abuse of discretion. Johnson v. Ford Motor
Co., 988 F.2d 573, 578 (5th Cir.1993). “The
trial court’s discretion to admit or exclude evi-
dence is generally broad, but competent evi-
dence cannot be excluded without a sound and
acceptable reason.” Seatrax, Inc. v. Sonbeck
Int’l, Inc., 200 F.3d 358, 370 (5th Cir. 2000).
We will reverse an evidentiary ruling only after
finding that the substantial rights of a party
were affected. Id.
III.
Rule 401 of the Federal Rules of Evidence
permits the introduction of evidence “having
any tendency to make the existence of any fact
that is of consequence to the determination of
the action more probable or less probable than
it would be without the evidence.” FED. R.
EVID. 401. Evidence that does not meet this
description is inadmissible. FED R. EVID. 402.
Evidence is inadmissible when its relevance “is
substantially outweighed by the danger of
unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, or mis-
leading the jury . . . .” FED R. EVID. 403.
Barnes contends that the 1970 order was
relevant to whether TISD intended to discrim-
inate against him on the basis of his race when
it demoted him. Such intentional discrimina-
tion is a required element of Barnes’s title VII
claim. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2. The argu-
ment for the order’s relevance is that showing
a knowing violation of the order by TISD
would tend to make it more likely that dis-
criminatory intent existed. Barnes’s challenge
fails for three reasons.
First, it is inaccurate to assume that a hiring
decision that does not abide by the terms of
the 1970 order is more likely to be discrimina-
tory than is any other hiring decision. Even if
TISD’s decision to demote Barnes was legally
governed by the order, the order prescribes
merely one method of making non-discrimina-
tory hiring decisions and is by no means the
only non-discriminatory way for the school
district to make those decisions. TISD’s de-
cision to demote Barnes satisfies title VII if it
was non-discriminatory, and whether the de-
motion complies with the 1970 order is irrele-
vant to that question.
Second, even if we assume that TISD’s in-
tentionallyignoring a desegregation order gov-
erning its decisions would be evidence of
discriminatory intent, there remains a question
whether the 1970 order actually covered
TISD’s decision to demote Barnes. If the
order placed no obligations on TISD in regard
to Barnes, the text of the order is irrelevant to
this case.
TISD claims that the order only governs
employment decisions related to desegrega-
tion, and Barnes’s demotion had nothing to do
with desegregation. There is broad support
for the proposition that desegregation orders

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such as the 1970 TISD order apply only in the
desegregation context and not to a school
district’s everyday employment decisions.1
Thus it is debatable whether TISD officials had
any reason to consider the 1970 order before
demoting Barnes.
It is not for us to decide here whether TISD
was required to follow the 1970 order when it
demoted Barnes. The burden was on Barnes
to show the district court why his proffered
exhibit was relevant to a material issue.
Barnes could have tried to lay a predicate
for his exhibit by establishing that TISD was
legally obligated by the order when it made the
demotion decision, but he failed to do so.
Thus even accepting Barnes’s relevance the-
orySS that TISD’s failure to follow the terms
of a legally binding desegregation order when
demoting him would be evidence of discrimi-
nation against himSSthe challenge to the exclu-
sion of the order fails, because Barnes has not
established that the order applied to the demo-
tion decision.
Finally, introducing the 1970 order into evi-
dence would have created a danger of con-
fusing the issues and misleading the jury, as
warned against by rule 403. The school dis-
trict was not on trial for violating the 1970 or-
der; it was accused only of discriminating
against Barnes in violation of title VII.
Barnes’s admitted strategy was to link vio-
lations of the order to discrimination in the
jurors’ minds. Allowing him essentially to try
TISD for a violation of the 1970 order in the
context of a title VII case would plainly have
risked confusing the issues and misleading the
jury as to the standard of liability.
Because the 1970 order arguably did not
speak to any material issue in the case, argu-
ably did not place any legal obligations on
TISD in regard to Barnes, and was arguably
more confusing than probative, the district
court acted well within its broad discretion
when it excluded the 1970 order. The judg-
ment is AFFIRMED.
1 See, e.g., Lee v. Russell County Bd. of Educ.,
563 F.2d 1159, 1161 (5th Cir. 1977) (declaring
that the state-wide desegregation criteria an-
nounced in Singleton v. Jackson Mun. Separate
Sch. Dist., 419 F.2d 1211 (5th Cir. 1970), apply
only to “demotions or dismissals caused by deseg-
regation” rather than to all employment decisions
the school district makes. The desegregation plan
announced in Singleton was nearly identical to that
prescribed in the 1970 TISD order.

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