A 72-year-old woman who spent decades working for the City of Fountain's utilities department lost her bid to prove she was pushed out of her job because of her age, after a federal appeals court found she failed to show the city intentionally discriminated against her. Carmen Tafoya, who began working for the department in 1971, was fired after she accessed a prospective tenant's utility account information and shared it with her husband and son during what she described as a personal business matter.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled 3-0 on September 8 in Tafoya v. City of Fountain, affirming a lower court's decision against her. According to law.justia.com, the panel wrote plainly that “we affirm summary judgment for the City,” concluding that Tafoya “fails to show that the City intentionally discriminated against her on the basis of age.” The case had originated in the U.S. District Court for Colorado, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell had already ruled that Tafoya had not stated a plausible age-discrimination claim, as reported by the Denver Gazette.
A Phone Call While on Medical Leave
The trouble began in November 2022, when Tafoya, then on medical leave, called a 36-year-old coworker and asked her to look up the tenant's address to see whether the tenant was lying about where he lived and already had utilities. Tafoya later returned to work and looked up the tenant's utility account information herself, then shared it with her husband and son; the conduct concerned a potential tenant at her rental property and was unrelated to her employment.
A supervisor reported that Tafoya had used her position to transfer private account information and help the potential tenant get around a required utility deposit, according to the Denver Gazette's account of the case. Kaitlin Parker, an assistant city attorney, investigated the allegations and interviewed Tafoya along with several other city employees. Parker's report found that Tafoya had admitted asking a coworker to check whether the tenant's deposit could be waived based on his account history, and concluded that Tafoya had violated multiple city policies covering unauthorized use of city property or equipment, communications devices, and use of her position for personal gain.
Termination and the Discrimination Claim
City Utilities Director Dan Blankenship reviewed Parker's investigation and recommended terminating Tafoya's employment. Fountain City Manager Scott Trainor agreed with that recommendation, ultimately deciding to fire Tafoya because she had accessed the renter's information and sought to waive his deposit in violation of city policy, the court opinion states. Tafoya was 72 years old at the time of her termination.
Tafoya sued, arguing that a 36-year-old coworker had also violated city policy by sharing potentially confidential information with a fellow city employee, yet was not fired, and that her supervisors were unaware of that coworker's conduct at the time. She also pointed to the city's history of employing workers her age or older, noting that its billing department was 90% staffed by employees over 40, with a third of those employees over 60, according to the appellate record cited by the Denver Gazette. Tafoya further noted she was not replaced by a younger employee and was never pressured to retire.
What the Appeals Panel Decided
Circuit Judge Nancy L. Moritz authored the opinion. For purposes of its analysis, the panel assumed Tafoya had credibly alleged age discrimination, but disagreed that alleged supervisor bias had led to her termination. Moritz wrote that the supervisor's original complaint led to an independent investigation by a city attorney, and the panel found that the remaining managers who made the termination decision had no reason to believe the younger coworker had violated city policies in the same way.
Moritz also questioned whether Tafoya and her coworker were truly similarly situated, undercutting the comparison at the heart of Tafoya's argument. As the Denver-based appeals court reiterated, Tafoya carried the ultimate burden of proving her employer intentionally discriminated against her, a burden the panel found she did not meet. With the ruling, the Tenth Circuit's affirmance leaves the City of Fountain's decision to terminate Tafoya intact.
