Christine Moorehead v. Hi-Health Supermart Corporation

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
CHRISTINE MOOREHEAD,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
HI-HEALTH SUPERMART
CORPORATION,
Defendant-Appellee.
No. 17-15202
D.C. No. 2:14-cv-02542-JJT
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona
John Joseph Tuchi, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted March 13, 2018
San Francisco, California
Before: WATFORD and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and FEINERMAN,**
District Judge.
1. The district court properly granted summary judgment to Hi-Health
Supermart Corporation on Christine Moorehead’s Title VII retaliation claim. See
FILED
JUN 07 2018
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The Honorable Gary Feinerman, United States District Judge for the
Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.

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42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3. Moorehead failed to establish a causal connection between
her protected activity and her termination. The 12-year gap between the two
events was too long to support an inference of retaliation. See Manatt v. Bank of
America, NA, 339 F.3d 792, 802 (9th Cir. 2003). Moorehead also received
multiple bonuses during that period, and her supervisor ceased making statements
about her protected activity more than one year before her termination. See id.
2. The district court properly granted summary judgment to Hi-Health on
Moorehead’s Age Discrimination in Employment Act claim. See 29 U.S.C. § 623.
Moorehead’s supervisor’s repeated statements linking Moorehead’s age to her
performance go beyond “a stray remark,” but they are not enough alone to defeat
summary judgment. See France v. Johnson, 795 F.3d 1170, 1173 (9th Cir. 2015).
We therefore assess Moorehead’s claim using the burden-shifting framework
established in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802–04 (1973).
Because Moorehead provided no evidence that the performance objectives she was
required to meet were unreasonable, she has failed to raise a genuine issue of
material fact as to whether Hi-Health’s proffered non-discriminatory reason for
terminating her—that she failed to meet her objectives—was pretextual. See
France, 795 F.3d at 1175.
AFFIRMED.

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