UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ MARINA DEBITY, │ Plaintiff-Appellant, │ > No. 24-5137 │ v. │ │ MONROE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, │ Defendant-Appellee. │ ┘ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville. No. 3:22-cv-00006—Jill E. McCook, Magistrate Judge.

Argued: October 31, 2024

Decided and Filed: April 2, 2025

Before: GRIFFIN, KETHLEDGE, and BUSH, Circuit Judges. _________________

COUNSEL ARGUED: Jesse D. Nelson, NELSON LAW GROUP, PLLC, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Arthur F. Knight, III, TAYLOR &KNIGHT, GP, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Jesse D. Nelson, NELSON LAW GROUP, PLLC, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Arthur F. Knight, III, TAYLOR &KNIGHT, GP, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

BUSH, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which KETHLEDGE, J., concurred, and GRIFFIN, J., concurred in the judgment. GRIFFIN, J. (pp. 21–25), delivered a separate concurring opinion. No. 24-5137 Debity v. Monroe Cnty. Bd. of Educ. Page 2

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OPINION _________________

JOHN K. BUSH, Circuit Judge. Marina Debity brought claims against the Monroe County Board of Education for sex discrimination and retaliation in violation of the Equal Pay Act (EPA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), and the Tennessee Human Rights Act (THRA). Debity alleges that the Board offered her a lower salary than it had paid Matthew Ancel for the same job two years earlier. According to Debity, when she asked for the same salary as Ancel, the Board withdrew her job offer in retaliation.

A jury found that the Board did offer Debity less money for equal work, but for legitimate reasons having nothing to do with her sex. It also found that the Board did not retaliate against Debity. Based on these findings, she had no claim to damages. Nevertheless, the jury awarded Debity slightly more than $195,000, likely because of poor instructions on the verdict form. The magistrate judge, presiding with the parties’ consent, noticed the inconsistency between the damage award and the jury’s finding of no liability but nonetheless dismissed the jurors without allowing the parties to object.

On appeal, we face two questions. The first is what type of verdicts the jury returned. The second is whether the Board’s affirmative defense, that it offered Debity less money for a reason other than sex, survives a motion for judgment as a matter of law.

We conclude that the magistrate judge presented the jury with a general verdict on the retaliation claims and a general verdict with interrogatories on the discrimination claims. We also conclude that the jury’s answers to the interrogatories on the discrimination claims are consistent with each other but inconsistent with the general verdict. Though we reject the magistrate judge’s classification of these verdicts as special verdicts, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure still permit the magistrate judge’s chosen course (entering judgment based on the interrog