Diverse Docket: Gender Bias Suit Against Meharry Medical College Dismissed

Meharry Medical College has won dismissal of a Title VII suit by a female instructor who alleged gender discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. of Nashville held that Dr. Michelle Bruce failed to produce enough evidence for any of her claims to go to trial.

According to the decision, the college hired Bruce as an instructor in 2005 and transferred her to another department in 2008. In 2013, the Internal Medicine Department asked her, a second female physician and two male physicians to work at its new clinic in Antioch, Tennessee, but all declined.

She resigned her $138,000-a-year position in 2014 and took another job with a $185,000 salary.

In dismissing the case, Crenshaw said there was no showing of an adverse employment action because there was no proof that accepting the requested reassignment would have changed Bruce’s benefits, title or salary, or significantly reduce her responsibilities or position.

Meharry treated Bruce “the same as the other male and female physicians,” he said, and it presented a nondiscriminatory business need to staff the new clinic.

Next, Crenshaw said no reasonable jury could find that a single comment by a Meharry vice president about a “personal physical assessment” during Bruce’s nine years at the college constituted a hostile work environment.