No. 18-2115

JOYCE PAUL,

Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.

EMILY W. MURPHY, Administrator, General Services Administration,

Defendant, Appellee.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. George A. O'Toole, Jr., U.S. District Judge]

Before

Lynch, Selya, and Barron, Circuit Judges.

Ana Muñoz, with whom Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP was on brief, for appellant. Erin Brizius, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

January 24, 2020 BARRON, Circuit Judge. This appeal concerns a federal sex and age discrimination suit against the Administrator of the United States General Services Administration ("GSA") by a former employee of that agency. The District Court granted summary judgment to the defendant on each of the former employee's claims. We affirm.

I.

The former employee is Joyce Paul. She was employed as a Contract Specialist with the GSA from 2000 until she retired in February of 2009 at the age of sixty-five.1 Her suit against the Administrator may be traced to actions that were taken by Ivan Lopez, who, in April of 2006, became her supervisor at the GSA and began overseeing her work and conducting her performance reviews.2

1 "We recite the relevant facts in the light most favorable to [Paul], the non-moving party." Santangelo v. N.Y. Life Ins. Co., 785 F.3d 65, 67 n.1 (1st Cir. 2015). 2 On appeal, Paul asserts that Lopez became her supervisor in April of 2007, but she points to no evidence in the record to support this contention. The District Court found that Lopez became Paul's supervisor in April of 2006, and the record evidence shows that Lopez began conducting Paul's performance reviews as her supervisor in 2006. Under the Local Rules of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Paul was deemed to have admitted any material facts on which the defendant said there was no genuine issue to be tried if she did not set them forth in her own motion in opposition to summary judgment. See D. Mass. R. 56.1. The defendant's Rule 56.1 motion included the April 2006 date as an undisputed fact, and the plaintiff wrote that she "agree[d]" with the defendant on this point. See Cochran v. Quest Software, Inc., 328 F.3d 1, 12 (1st Cir. 2003) (explaining that a plaintiff's failure to contest a fact in the Rule 56.1 statement caused that fact to be admitted).

- 2 - GSA supervisors are required to conduct, at a minimum, a midyear and an annual performance review. Performance reviews are based on a ranking between Level 1 and Level 5 (with 5 being the highest) for individual critical elements, such as communication, teamwork, and customer relationship management. Those rankings are used to determine the employee's summary ranking (also between Level 1 and 5).

A Level 3 summary ranking is the expected level of performance. An employee cannot receive a summary ranking above Level 2 if the employee receives a Level 2 ranking or lower for any individual critical element.

If an employee receives a summary ranking of Level 2, GSA policies strongly suggest that the employee's supervisor should develop a corrective action plan. Further, under GSA policies, employees who receive a Level 2 summary ranking are no longer eligible for telework arrangements, within-grade pay increases, promotions, or organizational performance awards.

Before Lopez began conducting Paul's perfo