Howard L. Taylor, et al v. Farm Credit of North Florida ACA

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 21-13807
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
HOWARD L. TAYLOR,
SONYA R. TAYLOR,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
FARM CREDIT OF NORTH FLORIDA ACA,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 4:20-cv-00059-AW-MJF
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2 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
____________________
Before R OSENBAUM , JILL PRYOR , and G RANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Howard and Sonya Taylor are a married couple who
wanted to purchase more than 300 acres of land in northwest Flor-
ida to build their retirement home and farm and timber the land to
supplement their retirement income. To finance part of the pur-
chase price, they applied for an agricultural loan from Farm Credit
of North Florida ACA (“Farm Credit” or “FCNF”), among other
lenders. Farm Credit denied their loan application, and its Credit
Review Committee upheld the denial.
The Taylors then filed this lawsuit alleging race discrimina-
tion under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Florida Fair
Housing Act, and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Howard and Sonya state that
they are Black, and that Sonya also is of Native American descent.
Ultimately, the district court granted summary judgment in favor
of Farm Credit, concluding that the evidence of record was insuffi-
cient to create a triable issue of pretext regarding Farm Credit’s rea-
sons for denying credit.
On appeal, the Taylors primarily contend that the district
court denied them an adequate opportunity to complete discovery
before ruling on Farm Credit’s motion for summary judgment.
They assert that the court abused its discretion first by denying
their motion to compel loan records possessed by Farm Credit that
were relevant to proving their discrimination claims, and then by
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 3
denying their request to delay or defer ruling on the motion for
summary judgment under Rule 56(d), Fed. R. Civ. P. After careful
review, we affirm.
I.
In March 2019, the Taylors entered into a contract to pur-
chase over 300 acres of land in northern Florida for $815,000. They
sought to build a retirement home and generate income from the
land, which was suitable for ranching, farming, and timbering.
Howard, who is African American, and Sonya, who is “of African
American and Native American descent,” intended to finance part
of the purchase price (approximately $650,000) through a federal
loan guarantee program for socially disadvantaged groups, from
the Farm Credit System, a federally regulated, nationwide network
of borrower-owned lending institutions. The Taylors initially ap-
plied with Farm Credit of Southwest Georgia and believed they
had been approved. But before closing, they were transferred to
FCNF and forced to begin the approval process anew.
The Taylors had been warned that “minority credit appli-
cants, particularly [B]lack borrowers, did not fare well with FCNF.”
According to statistics compiled by the Taylors, from 2010 to 2020,
Farm Credit issued nearly $350,000,000 in loans secured by real es-
tate mortgages, but just 0.67% of this amount went to Black bor-
rowers (38 total), while over 98% went to white borrowers (2,100
total).
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4 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
Farm Credit denied the Taylors’ loan application, citing rea-
sons of past bankruptcies, insufficient income, excessive obliga-
tions relative to income, and an unfavorable current financial posi-
tion. Believing that Farm Credit had relied on incorrect or incom-
plete information, the Taylors appealed the denial to Farm Credit’s
Credit Review Committee. Before the start of the hearing, Chair-
man Richard Terry engaged the Taylors in discussion about “eth-
nic foods that carry racial overtones,” including chitlins and collard
greens, which made them feel degraded, humiliated, and embar-
rassed. Ultimately, the Credit Review Committee upheld the de-
nial of credit. The Taylors believe that Farm Credit applied differ-
ent standards to them to deny their loan application, and that the
reasons it offered were a pretext to conceal its discriminatory prac-
tices against Black borrowers.
A. Motion to Compel
During discovery, the Taylors viewed Farm Credit’s loan
records as critical to establishing similarly situated comparators and
supporting their discrimination claims. The Taylors’ first request
for production, served in September 2020, sought copies of all of
Farm Credit’s loan origination data from March 2017 and Decem-
ber 2019, among other things. Farm Credit objected to the request
as overbroad, unduly burdensome, and not proportional to the
needs of the case. Farm Credit advised that it was “ready to meet
and confer and to produce documents responsive to an appropri-
ately tailored request.” No agreement was reached, though.
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 5
Instead, in April 2021, after the filing of the second amended
complaint in February 2021 and extensions of the discovery period
through June 2021, the Taylors served a second request for produc-
tion seeking all “Account Data and Underwriting Information re-
lated to all Loan Applicants in the past five (5) years who applied
for a Loan.” The request noted that the responses should be “re-
dacted of all personal information identifiers” but should include
fifteen specified pieces of information for each applicant. Farm
Credit again objected that the request was overbroad, unduly bur-
densome, and not proportional to the needs of the case, since it
covered all loans, “without regard to the type of loan requested,”
and not just loans comparable to the loan requested by the Taylors.
In Farm Credit’s view, for example, a $25,000 line of credit was not
comparable to a $650,000 real estate loan. Farm Credit also said
that federal and state law prevented the disclosure of personal in-
formation, and that “the labor required to redact thousands, if not
tens of thousands, of records” was unduly burdensome and not jus-
tified by the needs of the case. Farm Credit again invited the Tay-
lors to narrow the request.
The Taylors responded by moving to compel production of
the loan data, and requesting oral argument. In their view, the re-
quest was “directly relevant to locating comparator evidence” and
to the criteria Farm Credit applied in the Taylors’ case and other
cases, and they should not be limited to similar loans because the
focus of the comparator inquiry was “on the borrower, not the
product.” Farm Credit opposed the motion, arguing that the
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6 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
request was not reasonably limited in scope and would require the
“production of hundreds (or thousands) of irrelevant loan applica-
tions.”
About a month later, on June 15, 2021, the district court de-
nied the motion to compel without a hearing, finding that the bur-
den and expense of the proposed discovery outweighed its likely
benefit. In the court’s view, the Taylors’ request was “overbroad”
because it sought the files for all loan applicants over a five-year
period and “would thus cover loans and applicants nothing like the
proposed loan and the applicants at issue here.” And the likely ben-
efit of the proposed discovery was “low” or “marginal,” according
to the court, because there was “no indication” that many of the
“voluminous” requested files would relate to loan applicants who
could be valid comparators. Finally, the court found that the bur-
den and expense to produce the proposed discovery was “great,”
because it covered “detailed files of hundreds, if not thousands, of
borrowers” and would require redaction of personal information.
B. Motion for Summary Judgment
About a month later, Farm Credit moved for summary judg-
ment. Responding in opposition, the Taylors first requested that
the district court deny or defer summary judgment as premature
under Rule 56(d), Fed. R. Civ. P. They said they had been denied
a meaningful opportunity to obtain essential discovery, which was
relevant for three reasons: (a) “to locate comparator evidence”; (b)
“to obtain proof that the Taylors were qualified for the loan they
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 7
sought”; and (c) “to validate the statistical evidence compiled by
the Taylors and establish their statistical significance.”
In granting Farm Credit’s motion for summary judgment,
the district court first rejected the Taylors’ arguments that they had
not received a full and fair opportunity for discovery and denied
their request for delay under Rule 56(d). In the court’s view, the
Taylors’ briefing made clear that they did not seek “extra time to
pursue more narrowly tailored discovery,” but rather sought the
full scope of information originally requested. The court explained
that it had already declined to compel production of that proposed
discovery because it was “not narrowly targeted to yield valid com-
parators and it imposed significant burden and expense on Farm
Credit.” The district court also reasoned that the Taylors had more
than sufficient time for full discovery. It noted that the Taylors
could have acted sooner by requesting reconsideration of the orig-
inal ruling or seeking to reopen discovery to permit a narrower re-
quest for production. It also observed that, after Farm Credit ob-
jected to the Taylors’ first request for voluminous loan documents,
they never moved to compel production, and they did not serve a
revised request for production until nearly seven months after the
original one.
Turning to the merits, the district court concluded that,
without any comparator evidence, the Taylors could not establish
a triable issue of race discrimination in relation to the denial of their
loan application. The court stated that it could not draw a reason-
able inference in the Taylors’ favor based on the statistical evidence
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8 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
they presented without other evidence “contextualizing the Tay-
lors’ data.” This appeal followed.
II.
We review the grant of summary judgment
de novo.
Pat-
terson v. Ga. Pacific, LLC, 38 F.4th 1336, 1345 (11th Cir. 2022). We
review for an abuse of discretion the denial of a motion to compel
discovery,
Josendis v. Wall to Wall Residence Repairs, Inc., 662
F.3d 1292, 1306 (11th Cir. 2011), and the denial of a motion under
Rule 56(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,
Burns v. Town
of Palm Beach, 999 F.3d 1317, 1330 (11th Cir. 2021). The abuse-of-
discretion standard “means that a district court is allowed a range
of choice in such matters, and we will not second-guess the district
court’s actions unless they reflect a clear error of judgment.”
Hol-
loman v. Mail-Well Corp., 443 F.3d 832, 837 (11th Cir. 2006) (quo-
tation marks omitted). So we will not upset a court’s discovery
ruling where “its decision was within the realm of reasonable
choices allotted to it.”
Josendis, 662 F.3d at 1306, 1310.
Parties may obtain discovery on any nonprivileged matter
that is relevant to a claim or defense and “proportional to the needs
of the case.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1);
see Wright v. AmSouth Ban-
corporation, 320 F.3d 1198, 1205 (11th Cir. 2003) (“[T]he infor-
mation sought must be relevant and not overly burdensome to the
responding party.”). Relevance for discovery “has been construed
broadly to encompass any matter that bears on, or that reasonably
could lead to other matter that could bear on, any issue that is or
may be in the case.”
Akridge v. Alfa Mut. Ins. Co., 1 F.4th 1271,
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 9
1276 (11th Cir. 2021) (quotation marks omitted). Proportionality
concerns include the importance of the requested discovery, the
parties’ relative access to the information, and “whether the bur-
den or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely ben-
efit.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1).
Rule 56(d) permits a court to “defer” or “deny” a motion for
summary judgment, allow additional time for discovery, or issue
an appropriate order “[i]f a nonmovant shows by affidavit or decla-
ration that, for specified reasons, it cannot present facts essential to
justify its opposition.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(d). The party seeking
relief under Rule 56(d) must “specifically demonstrate how post-
ponement of a ruling on the motion will enable them, by discovery
or other means, to rebut the movant’s showing of the absence of a
genuine issue of fact.”
Burns, 999 F.3d at 1334 (cleaned up). Sum-
mary judgment may be premature when a motion to compel dis-
covery is pending,
see Snook v. Trust Co. of Ga. Bank of Savannah,
N.A., 859 F.2d 865, 870–71 (11th Cir. 1988), and
Fernandez v. Bank-
ers Nat’l Life Ins. Co., 906 F.2d 559, 570–71 (11th Cir. 1990), or
where important discovery remains ongoing,
see Jones v. City of
Columbus, Ga., 120 F.3d 248, 253–54 (11th Cir. 1997).
III.
On appeal, the Taylors maintain that the district court
abused its discretion by denying them access to relevant infor-
mation possessed by Farm Credit, that they viewed as necessary to
defend against the motion for summary judgment. From the Tay-
lors’ perspective, the court failed to consider all the proper factors,
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10 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
relied on conclusory statements as to the burdens involved in pro-
duction and redaction of the requested discovery, and made a clear
error of judgment by focusing solely on the comparator purpose of
the discovery.
Here, the district court did not abuse its broad discretion to
manage pretrial discovery.
See Klay v. All Defendants, 425 F.3d
977, 982 (11th Cir. 2005). No one disputes that at least some of the
information requested was relevant to the case, whether to estab-
lish a “similarly situated comparator” who was treated more favor-
ably,
Lewis v. City of Union City, Ga. (Lewis I), 918 F.3d 1213,
1227–28 (11th Cir. 2019) (
en banc), to show the “general stand-
ard[s]” that were applied to others in comparison to the plaintiffs,
Adkins v. Christie, 488 F.3d 1324, 1331 (11th Cir. 2007), or to de-
velop statistical evidence suggesting that an individual decision
conformed to a general pattern of discrimination and so is pre-
textual,
Sweat v. Miller Brewing Co., 708 F.2d 655, 658 (11th Cir.
1983).
But the problem is that the Taylors’ discovery request was
clearly overbroad. Their discrimination claims were based on the
denial of a real-estate loan, so the natural focus of any meaningful
comparison would be other real-estate loan files.
Cf. Earley v.
Champion Int’l Corp., 907 F.2d 1077, 1085 (11th Cir. 1990) (limiting
discovery about an employment decision to the local employing
unit, the “natural focus” of the inquiry). But the Taylors instead
requested all loan files indiscriminately, including equipment loans
and lines of credit of any size, without any attempt to narrow the
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 11
inquiry with an eye for potential comparators.
See Lewis I, 918
F.3d at 1227–28 (stating that valid comparators must be “similarly
situated in all material respects”).
Aside from locating comparators, the Taylors’ other pur-
poses do not support the scope of the request. The discovery re-
quest swept more broadly than necessary to provide context for
the statistical evidence they had compiled, which related to the nar-
rower category of loans secured by real-estate mortgages. And the
Taylors have offered no reason to believe that a narrower request
would have been inadequate to establish Farm Credit’s qualifica-
tion standards or a general pattern of discrimination relevant to
their claim.
See Adkins, 488 F.3d at 1331 (finding an abuse of dis-
cretion where a discovery limitation prevented a plaintiff from
“plac[ing] his case in the context of larger disciplinary processes of
the hospital” and so “place[d] an excessive burden on his ability to
pursue his claim”). The mere “possibility that loose and sweeping
discovery might turn up something” indicative of discrimination
“does not show particularized need and likely relevance” that
would justify the sweeping scope of the discovery request.
See Ear-
ley, 907 F.2d at 1085 (stating that a plaintiff seeking “much broader
discovery” than the “natural focus of the inquiry” generally must
show “particularized need and likely relevance”).
For similar reasons, the district court also reasonably con-
cluded that the discovery request was unduly burdensome and not
proportional to the needs of the case. The Taylors do not dispute
the necessity of redacting personal-information identifiers in the
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12 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
loan files. They argue, though, that the court abused its discretion
by not requiring a “specific showing” by Farm Credit of “the time
and expense that might be required to conduct redaction.” We are
not persuaded that such a detailed showing was required here.
Farm Credit’s objection to the request for production was
specific enough to make clear the factual grounds for its objection.
See Panola Land Buyers Ass’n v. Shuman, 762 F.2d 1550, 1559 (11th
Cir. 1985) (stating that objections to discovery should be plain and
specific). And its representations regarding the voluminous nature
of the loan files were supported by the Taylors’ own evidence that
Farm Credit made over 2,000 secured real-estate loans over a 10-
year period. Given the expansive scope of the discovery request,
which swept in loan files regardless of loan type or amount, the
court did not need more detailed information to reasonably con-
clude that the request was unduly burdensome and not propor-
tional to the needs of the case.
Nor were the Taylors denied a full and fair opportunity to
conduct discovery—which spanned from April 2020 to June 2021—
before the district court ruled on the summary-judgment motion.
See Fla. Power & Light Co. v. Allis Chalmers Corp., 893 F.2d 1313,
1316 (11th Cir. 1990) (“Before entering summary judgment the dis-
trict court must ensure that the parties have an adequate oppor-
tunity for discovery.”); Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(d). This is not a case
where the court granted summary judgment while a motion to
compel remained pending or discovery remained ongoing.
See
Jones, 120 F.3d at 253–54;
Fernandez, 906 F.2d at 570–71;
Snook,
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 13
859 F.2d at 870–71. Rather, when the court ruled on summary
judgment in October 2021, discovery had closed, and the court had
(reasonably) denied the Taylors’ motion to compel.
Importantly, the district court did not wholly prevent the
Taylors from obtaining Farm Credit’s loan records. Nothing in the
court’s orders suggests the court would have denied a more tai-
lored request for loan data. Farm Credit has never disputed that at
least some loan files were relevant and discoverable. Yet it appears
the Taylors “made no attempt to narrow [their] request to some-
thing more meaningful and relevant during the discovery period
despite an appropriate objection” by Farm Credit.
Wright, 320
F.3d at 1205 (affirming the denial of a motion to compel where the
plaintiff made no such attempt). They also did not seek to reopen
discovery to pursue a narrower request or otherwise suggest that
they would have accepted anything less than all that they had de-
manded.1 Without any indication that the Taylors were willing to
tailor their request more narrowly, we cannot say that the district
court made a clear error of judgment or otherwise abused its dis-
cretion in concluding that no continuance was warranted.
1 Perhaps these issues could have been ironed out at a hearing. But the district
court did not hold a hearing on the motion to compel, and the Taylors’ brief-
ing does not properly challenge the failure to hold a hearing or to
sua sponte
order more limited discovery than they had requested.
See Sapuppo v. All-
state Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 680–81 (11th Cir. 2014) (issues not plainly
raised on appeal are deemed abandoned).
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14 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
IV.
Having affirmed the district court’s discovery rulings, we
have little difficulty concluding that the court properly granted
summary judgment to Farm Credit. The Taylors concede that
they lack comparator evidence and so cannot establish a triable is-
sue of discrimination through the
McDonnell Douglas framework.
See Lewis I, 918 F.3d at 1218 (“[A] plaintiff asserting an intentional-
discrimination claim under
McDonnell Douglas must demonstrate
that she and her proffered comparators were ‘similarly situated in
all material respects.’”). And the other evidence they presented is
insufficient to permit a reasonable jury to infer intentional discrim-
ination based on a “convincing mosaic” theory of discrimination.
See Lewis v. City of Union City, Ga. (Lewis II), 934 F.3d 1169, 1185
(11th Cir. 2019) (“A plaintiff will always survive summary judg-
ment if he presents . . . a convincing mosaic of circumstantial evi-
dence that would allow a jury to infer intentional discrimination.”
(cleaned up)).
The Taylors cite statistical data suggesting that, from 2010
to 2020, the overwhelming majority—98% or more—of Farm
Credit’s real-estate borrowers were white. As the Taylors admit,
though, the record lacks evidence to provide necessary context for
these numbers, such as the racial composition of the applicants.
See Brown v. Am. Honda Motor Co., Inc., 939 F.2d 946, 952 (11th
Cir. 1991) (“To say that very few black[ applicants] have been se-
lected by Honda does not say a great deal about Honda’s practices
unless we know how many black[ applicants] have applied and
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21-13807 Opinion of the Court 15
failed and compare that to the success rate of equally qualified
white applicants.”). Without additional context, the current record
does not permit a reasonable inference that the racial imbalance is
due to discrimination rather than some other factor.
The Taylors also cite comments made to them by Chairman
Terry of the Credit Review Committee just before the hearing to
appeal the denial of their loan application. According to the Tay-
lors, Terry spontaneously engaged them in discussion about tradi-
tionally southern foods “carry[ing] racial overtones,” such as chit-
lins and collard greens, which they took to be racially insensitive
and demeaning.
The district court correctly viewed these comments as insuf-
ficient to create a triable issue of discrimination, whether viewed
alone or in combination with other record evidence. Isolated dis-
criminatory comments not directly related to the decision at issue
can contribute to a circumstantial case, but they are usually insuf-
ficient on their own to create a triable issue of discrimination.
See
Rojas v. Florida, 285 F.3d 1339, 1342–43 (11th Cir. 2002) (isolated
comments unrelated to the termination decision alone are “insuffi-
cient to establish a material fact on pretext”);
Crawford v. City of
Fairburn, Ga., 482 F.3d 1305, 1309 (11th Cir. 2007) (“Crawford er-
roneously argues that evidence of a discriminatory animus allows
a plaintiff to establish pretext without rebutting each of the prof-
fered reasons of the employer.”).
Here, the comments about southern foods, while close in
time to the denial review hearing, were isolated and had no
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16 Opinion of the Court 21-13807
apparent connection to that proceeding. Plus, the Taylors do not
point to any other evidence suggesting that Farm Credit’s non-dis-
criminatory reasons for denying the loan were pretextual. In these
circumstances, the district court did not err in granting summary
judgment.
AFFIRMED.
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