Nikolova v. University of Texas At Austin, 585 F.Supp.3d 936

Plaintiff Evdokia Nikolova, an assistant professor in UT Austin’s ECE Department, took a pregnancy-related probationary extension and modified duties and was later denied tenure.
Nikolova sued UT Austin alleging sex/pregnancy discrimination, retaliation, and an Equal Pay Act claim; TCHRA claims were dismissed on sovereign immunity grounds and summary judgment on Title VII claims was pending.
Plaintiff designated Dr. Peter Glick, a social psychologist, to provide a "social framework" expert report about stereotyping, bias, and discrimination and applied that framework to Dean Sharon Wood’s tenure decision.
UT Austin moved to exclude Glick under Federal Rule of Evidence 702/Daubert, arguing his methods were unreliable, he relied only on plaintiff-provided materials, failed to rule out non-discriminatory explanations, and risked juror prejudice/confusion.
The magistrate judge granted UT Austin’s motion and excluded Glick’s report and testimony, concluding his case-specific opinions were not grounded in scientific methods, were untested/unreviewed, relied on unrepresentative data, and could mislead the jury.
The case was returned to the district court for further proceedings (trial was scheduled for March 7, 2022 and a summary-judgment motion remained pending).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility under Rule 702/Daubert	Glick’s social-framework testimony informs jurors about well-established social-psychological principles relevant to bias	Glick’s application to this case is not scientific, lacks tested methodology, and is unreliable	Excluded — court found case-specific opinions were not scientific and failed Daubert reliability requirements
Reliance on source material	Glick used documents he reviewed to apply framework to facts	Glick relied solely on materials supplied by plaintiff and did not independently verify or review key defendant materials/policies	Excluded — report based on unrepresentative, plaintiff-selected data undermining reliability
Ruling out alternative explanations	Framework shows patterns supporting inference of bias	Glick conceded he could not rule out non-discriminatory reasons for the decision and did not control for alternative variables	Excluded — failure to consider or rule out alternatives left an impermissible analytical gap
Helpfulness / prejudice to jury	Social-framework testimony would assist by providing context on stereotypes and bias	Testimony would likely lead jurors to assume bias generally, confuse issues, and be more prejudicial than probative	Excluded — court concluded testimony would not reliably assist the trier of fact and risked unfair prejudice/confusion

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., 509 U.S. 579 (gatekeeping standard for scientific expert testimony)
Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (Daubert standard applies to non-scientific expert testimony)
General Elec. Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (exclude testimony where analytical gap between data and opinion is too great)
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (criticized extrapolating general social-science to specific-case proof)
Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (social-psychology evidence used at trial; distinct procedural posture)
Simmons v. United States, 470 F.3d 1115 (court discretion in social-science reliability assessments)
Moore v. Ashland Chem. Inc., 151 F.3d 269 (Daubert admissibility factors in Fifth Circuit)
Watkins v. Telsmith, Inc., 121 F.3d 984 (Daubert framework application in Fifth Circuit)
Munoz v. Orr, 200 F.3d 291 (expert exclusion where failure to consider alternative variables undermined analysis)
Tagatz v. Marquette Univ., 861 F.2d 1040 (failure to control for explanatory variables weakens expert evidence)