[PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 22-12577 ____________________

JULIA MCCREIGHT, REBECCA WESTER, Plaintiffs-Appellants, versus AUBURNBANK, AUBURN NATIONAL BANCORPORATION, INC., MICHAEL KING,

Defendants-Appellees.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama USCA11 Case: 22-12577 Document: 43-1 Date Filed: 09/19/2024 Page: 2 of 63

2 Opinion of the Court 22-12577

D.C. Docket No. 3:19-cv-00865-RAH-SMD ____________________

Before GRANT, ABUDU, and HULL, Circuit Judges. GRANT, Circuit Judge: Title VII prohibits employers from intentionally discriminating against their employees based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). That seems simple enough. But it has not turned out to be; employment discrimination law has grown into a tangle of doctrines, tests, and claim types. We are doing our best to clear a path. In recent cases we have explained that the McDonnell Douglas order of proof and what we have called the “convincing mosaic” approach are just two ways to meet the same summary judgment standard: enough evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that illegal discrimination occurred. See Tynes v. Florida Dep’t of Juv. Just., 88 F.4th 939, 943–47 (11th Cir. 2023); Ossmann v. Meredith Corp., 82 F.4th 1007, 1020 (11th Cir. 2023); Yelling v. St. Vincent’s Health Sys., 82 F.4th 1329, 1342 (11th Cir. 2023). Here we clear up two other strands of our case law: sex-plus claims and mixed-motive theories of liability. These terms mean different things. A sex-plus claim is based on one kind of discrimination—sex discrimination—targeting one subclass of a sex. Black women and mothers are subcategories of women that have been recognized. So too for older women, the relevant category here. USCA11 Case: 22-12577 Document: 43-1 Date Filed: 09/19/2024 Page: 3 of 63

22-12577 Opinion of the Court 3

Mixed-motive discrimination, on the other hand, allows for liability when an employment decision motivated by a legitimate reason—usually poor work performance—is also infected by an illegitimate reason—illegal discrimination. So mixed-motive is not a theory that more than one illegal motive was at play. Nor is it the same thing as a “sex-plus” claim. Indeed, because mixed-motive discrimination is a theory of liability, not a type of claim, it need not be alleged in the complaint to survive; raising a mixed-motive argument by summary judgment offers notice to defendants about what to defend, and to courts about what to decide. Plaintiff Julia McCreight raised a sex-plus discrimination claim, but she did not offer enough evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that her boss fired her because of her sex. We therefore affirm summary judgment for the defendants on the sex discrimination claim. McCreight and co-plaintiff Rebecca Wester’s age discrimination claims fail for the same reason—neither woman offered enough evidence for a reasonable jury to conclud