Background
Peng Guo, a Chinese-born Asian woman, joined Michigan Technological University’s College of Business as a tenure-track assistant professor of accounting in August 2015, alongside her husband, J. Daniel Eshleman, under a dual-hire arrangement. When Guo announced her pregnancy in fall 2016 and took maternity leave during the Spring 2017 semester, Dean L. Johnson told her she had “lots of free time” and expected her to continue performing service duties despite the university’s leave policy. Johnson later told Guo directly that her below-average merit raise was “because you took maternity leave and you didn’t do enough service.” Guo’s subsequent review also incorrectly characterized her as having been “expected to continue to perform her research and service duties” during leave. Additionally, the university withheld a $1,750 Ten Haken Fellowship stipend she had earned for the 2018–2019 academic year.
Guo filed EEOC charges and sued Michigan Tech and Johnson, asserting pregnancy discrimination, race, sex, and national origin discrimination under Title VII and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), retaliation, and Equal Pay Act violations, along with §§ 1981 and 1983 claims against Johnson individually. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants on all claims except pregnancy discrimination, which it allowed to proceed to trial. A jury found Michigan Tech liable for pregnancy discrimination under ELCRA—but not Title VII—and awarded Guo $5,000 in economic damages and $200,000 for emotional distress. Both sides appealed.
Before trial, Eshleman passed away. On appeal, Guo challenged the grant of summary judgment on her Equal Pay Act, Title VII/ELCRA race and national origin discrimination, and retaliation claims. Michigan Tech cross-appealed, arguing the pregnancy-discrimination verdict should be set aside entirely.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Circuit affirmed across the board. On the Equal Pay Act claim, the court held that although Guo established a prima facie wage-disparity case—she and Eshleman started at the same salary but he received higher merit raises—Michigan Tech successfully proved an affirmative defense. Eshleman published significantly more and higher-quality peer-reviewed articles (five non-coauthored articles, including pieces in A* and A-rated journals, versus Guo’s single B/C-rated article) and consistently received higher teaching evaluations. No reasonable juror could find these differences pretextual, so summary judgment was proper. Because the Title VII and ELCRA wage-discrimination claims rested on the same facts, Michigan Tech’s Equal Pay Act defense disposed of those claims as well.
The court also affirmed summary judgment on Guo’s race, sex, and national origin discrimination claims under the McDonnell Douglas framework. For most alleged adverse actions—being required to perform service during maternity leave, cancellation of database subscriptions, the Ten Haken fellowship being awarded to another professor, and constructive discharge—Guo failed to identify similarly situated comparators outside her protected classes who were treated more favorably. Her retaliation claims failed for lack of a causal link between her protected complaints and the adverse actions she alleged.
On Michigan Tech’s cross-appeal, the court affirmed the jury’s pregnancy-discrimination verdict. Johnson’s own statements that Guo’s lower raise was due to her maternity leave, his written suggestion that she was expected to perform service duties during leave, and the university’s withholding of her stipend were sufficient evidence from which the jury could find pregnancy-based discrimination. The court rejected all of Michigan Tech’s arguments that the verdict should be set aside.
Key Takeaways
- A supervisor’s direct statement that a lower merit raise was “because you took maternity leave” is potent evidence of pregnancy discrimination and can support a jury verdict even when other discrimination claims fail at summary judgment.
- Under the Equal Pay Act, an employer can defeat a wage-disparity claim by demonstrating objective differences in research output and teaching evaluations; working papers and conference presentations, without more, do not create a triable issue when the employer’s own policy credits published articles more heavily.
- Title VII and ELCRA wage-discrimination claims grounded in the same facts as an Equal Pay Act claim rise and fall together—a successful EPA affirmative defense will ordinarily doom the parallel statutory claims.
- To survive summary judgment on a constructive-discharge or other adverse-action discrimination claim, a plaintiff must identify comparators who were similarly situated in all relevant respects but treated more favorably; a bare allegation of unfair treatment is insufficient.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that pregnancy and parental-leave status remain a live source of employer liability even where broader discrimination claims fail. A supervisor’s candid admission—here, that leave-taking itself drove a pay decision—can be enough to send a pregnancy-discrimination claim to a jury and sustain a six-figure emotional-distress award, underscoring the risk of informal punishments tied to protected leave.
For employers defending pay-disparity claims, the decision illustrates how documented, objective performance metrics (publication records graded against an established ranking system, teaching evaluations) can successfully rebut an Equal Pay Act prima facie case and simultaneously defeat parallel Title VII and state civil-rights wage claims. Institutions that rely on merit-based compensation should ensure those metrics are applied consistently and that supervisors never tie pay decisions—even informally—to an employee’s use of protected leave.