UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ LEE BRIGGS, │ Plaintiff-Appellant, │ > No. 20-4133 │ v. │ │ UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, │ Defendant-Appellee. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Cincinnati. No. 1:18-cv-00552—Matthew W. McFarland, District Judge.

Argued: June 10, 2021

Decided and Filed: August 26, 2021

Before: MOORE, CLAY, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.

_________________

COUNSEL ARGUED: Katherine Daughtrey Neff, FREKING MYERS & REUL LLC, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. Michael J. Hendershot, OFFICE OF THE OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Katherine Daughtrey Neff, FREKING MYERS & REUL LLC, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. Michael J. Hendershot, Benjamin M. Flowers, OFFICE OF THE OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee. _________________

OPINION _________________

JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge. Lee Briggs, a Black man, worked as a compensation analyst for the University of Cincinnati (UC) Human Resources department. In No. 20-4133 Briggs v. Univ. of Cincinnati Page 2

July 2013, the HR department hired Cassandra Wittwer, a Caucasian woman, in the same position but at a much higher salary than Briggs. Over the next several years, Briggs’s pay stagnated while Wittwer’s rapidly increased. Briggs contends that after he submitted a claim of discrimination, UC retaliated by revising a job posting for which he had been encouraged to apply so that he was no longer eligible. Briggs sued UC, asserting claims of wage discrimination on the basis of race and sex, and retaliation for filing his complaint. The district court granted UC’s motion for summary judgment. Because there remain genuine disputes of material fact as to Briggs’s claims, we REVERSE.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

The facts are presented in the light most favorable to Briggs. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986).

In November 2011, Briggs, having previously worked in two other benefits departments, began working as a Benefits Generalist in UC’s HR Department, with a starting salary of $39,000. In October 2013, he became a Compensation Analyst, reporting to Ken Stidham, Director of Compensation, and his salary increased to $43,000. Briggs received a two percent across the board annual raise in each of the two subsequent years, and by the summer of 2015 he was earning $44,737.20 per year.

That July, Stidham and the interim chief HR officer, Peg Buttermore, hired Cassandra Wittwer, a Caucasian woman, as a Compensation Analyst. Wittwer had no prior compensation experience; she had been working at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), earning a salary of $48,066.48 per year. According to Stidham, the Compensation Analyst position was a promotion from Wittwer’s previous position, and so university policy required HR to give her a minimum salary increase of 5 percent. Wittwer was ultimately