NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 21a0572n.06 No. 21-1061 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT KYISHA JONES, ) FILED ) Dec 07, 2021 ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk Plaintiff-Appellant, ) ) v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT DAVID PEKOSKE, Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, Individual and Official ) COURT FOR THE EASTERN ) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN Capacity, ) ) Defendant-Appellee. ) Before: COLE, GIBBONS, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges. LARSEN, Circuit Judge. Kyisha Jones began working for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 2002. She became a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer in 2003 and a CBP enforcement officer in 2007. She twice sought a promotion in 2011 but was passed over. Believing that discrimination had blocked the promotions, Jones filed suit against DHS, raising numerous claims. After protracted litigation and multiple appeals, only Jones’s Title VII sex discrimination claim remained before the district court. The district court granted summary judgment to DHS. For the reasons stated, we AFFIRM. I. Jones began working as an Immigration Maritime Inspector for INS in 2002. When DHS was created in 2003, Jones became a CBP officer at the Port of Detroit. Then in 2007, Jones No. 21-1061, Jones v. Pekoske applied for and received a position as an enforcement officer for CBP. An enforcement officer focuses on complex immigration violations. Jones at times acted as team lead for her unit. Team lead was not a permanent position or a supervisory role, but rather a rotating assignment. As team lead, Jones was responsible for organizing the shift, determining who would be working on which cases, and receiving and passing on directions from the supervisor. Given her high level of expertise, Jones also trained other members of her unit. She also was the Lead Post Advisor for the CBP Explorer Program, where she helped with community outreach. In 2007, Jones was suspended for five days because she failed to work an overtime shift as directed. At the time, it was CBP policy that if CBP needed an employee to work overtime, overtime was assigned to the officer who had the lowest overtime earnings. Because she had the lowest overtime earnings on a day in summer of 2007 when overtime was needed, two supervisors ordered Jones to work overtime after her normal shift. Jones finished her normal shift but, instead of working the overtime as directed, she “just left.” According to Jones, she was exhausted from having worked an on-call shift and a regular shift and could not physically work the overtime shift and then work on-call the next morning. Jones also notes that after her suspension, the overtime policy was deemed unfair and was changed. In 2011, CBP began soliciting candidates for supervisory positions. Promotions in CBP are governed by the Merit Promotion Plan. CBP’s Hiring Center evaluates applicants and assigns a rating based on “their job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities.” The Hiring Center selects the best-qualified …
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