Lalvani v. Cook County, IL

• Decision Date: 15 October 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-1603,00-1603
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2001) Prem Lalvani, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Cook County, Illinois, and Robert Coleman, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 785

269 F.3d 785 (7th Cir. 2001)

Prem Lalvani, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Cook County, Illinois, and Robert Coleman, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 00-1603

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit

Argued December 4, 2000

Decided October 15, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 98 C 2847--Ronald Guzman, Judge.

Before Flaum, Chief Judge, and Diane P. Wood and Williams, Circuit Judges.

Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge.

Prem Lalvani worked as a social worker for Cook County Hospital (CCH) from 1966 until 1996, when he lost his job as part of an overall reduction in force, or RIF. Believing he had been unfairly selected for termination, he fought back with a lawsuit against Cook County and the Director of the Social Work Department at CCH, Robert Coleman, charging unlawful discrimination, retaliation, and a variety of other federal and state claims. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on all of the federal claims and declined to retain jurisdiction over the remaining state law claims. Lalvani has appealed only the dismissal of his discrimination claims, his retaliation claim, and his due process claim. While we agree with the district court that the defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the discrimination and retaliation claims, we conclude that further proceedings are necessary on the due process claim, which we therefore remand.

I

When Lalvani, a man of Asian-Indian descent, began working as a social worker at CCH in 1966, the hospital was under the authority of Cook County. In 1969, control of the hospital was transferred to the Health and Hospitals Governing Commission (HHGC), pursuant to the County Hospitals Governing Commission Act, 1969 Ill. Laws 76-32, codified at Ill. Rev. Stat. ch. 34, ¶ ¶ 5011 et seq. Four years later, in 1973, while CCH was under HHGC control, CCH promoted Lalvani to the position of Medical Social Worker IV. Effective November 30, 1979, the HHGC was abolished by 1979 Ill. Laws 81-1197, at which time control over CCH was returned to Cook County. The latter statute contained a provision, now codified at 55 ILCS 5/5-37003, stipulating that the Cook County Board of Commissioners was to "have and exercise all rights, powers and duties heretofore exercised by the Commission [i.e., HHGC]. . . . All rights, duties, and obligations of the Commission shall become the rights, duties and obligations of the Board of Commissioners." Id. Since 1979, CCH has remained under the control of Cook County.

Between 1979 and his termination in 1996, Lalvani remained in his Social Worker IV position. In 1989, he applied for a promotion to a vacant Medical Social Worker V position, but he was unsuccessful. He believed the reason was that the selection committee had decided in advance to select an African-American for the position; this belief prompted him to file a grievance with CCH. CCH found no merit in the grievance, but Lalvani pursued it in a race discrimination complaint filed in 1989 with the Illinois Human Rights Commission (HRC). To put it mildly, the HRC took its time in processing the complaint. It was not until approximately six years later that the Commission at last scheduled a hearing on the complaint, which took place before an administrative law judge (ALJ) on May 12, 1995. The ALJ ruled in Lalvani's favor, finding that CCH's failure to promote him had been discriminatory. In the end, however, he did not prevail, as the Commission reversed the ALJ's ruling in January of 1998.

According to Lalvani's evidence, his relationship with management in the Social Work Department deteriorated markedly after he filed his complaint with the Commission. Prior to that time, he had been highly praised and had never been disciplined. Afterwards, between late 1989 and November 1993, he endured a long string of setbacks, including increased work assignments and disparate treatment with respect to matters such as discipline, time off, access to resources, and promotions. During this period, he filed several successful grievances against his immediate supervisors. The final incident during this period occurred in November 1993, when Coleman, who was Lalvani's direct supervisor, assigned him to a non- supervisory ward duty position typically assigned to a Social Worker I. This required Lalvani to perform functions normally assigned to employees three rank levels below his. As far as the record reveals, all was then quiet until July of 1995, when Coleman filed written complaints against Lalvani alleging that he was not satisfactorily performing his duties. Lalvani challenged the charges and, rather than pursuing them, Coleman dropped the matter.

In 1996, Cook County engaged in a substantial reduction in force under which it eventually laid off 500 employees county-wide, some of whom worked at CCH. CCH department heads such as Coleman were given strict payroll bud get limits to observe and were instructed to reorganize staffing as necessary to meet their departmental service requirements. Coleman decided to eliminate the only two Social Worker IV positions in his department, along with an Administrative Assistant IV position. At the same time, he chose to retain four vacant Social Worker II positions, and he created a new Assistant Director position for the Department. This reorganization did not reduce the Social Work Department's total salary expenditures, but it obviously reshuffled the content of the jobs. Asked to explain the reorganization at his deposition, Coleman said, "I went by what type of organizational structure do we need in place to best be able to meet our obligation to patient care."

After Coleman and the other department heads made their decisions, letters went out informing the unlucky employees who had been targeted to lose their jobs. On December 7, 1996, the 30-year veteran Lalvani received a letter from Barbara Penn, the CCH Director of Human Resources, bluntly telling him that his position had been eliminated "due to a decrease in budgeted funds for certain departments." The letter went on to say that if his position was Civil Service certified he might be entitled to certain bumping and recall rights and that he should direct any questions to the Department of Human Resources. Lalvani followed that advice and sent a letter requesting clarification of his rights. Penn responded in a return letter that "[y]our position, a Medical Social Worker IV, was not covered by a collective bargaining agreement with the County or Civil Service Certified. Therefore, you do not have . . . bumping rights to the next lower grade nor recall rights. In addition there were no other employees least [sic] senior to you in your job classification that were not affected in the reduction in force."

Lalvani was sure that Coleman had manipulated the reorganization of the Department so that he could rid himself of Lalvani. His suspicions were reinforced when Marcia Saliga, the other Social Worker IV who lost her job in the reorganization, told him that Coleman approached her shortly after the layoff letters went out and apologetically explained that her position had to be eliminated because otherwise CCH could not have terminated Lalvani. Under Illinois law, had a Social Worker IV position remained, Lalvani would have been entitled to bump Saliga because he was the more senior of the Social Worker IV employees. See 55 ILCS 5/3-14024.

In the litigation that followed, Lalvani asserted three theories that are relevant to this appeal. First, he claimed that his termination in December of 1996 was discriminatory, in violation of 42 U.S.C § § 1981 and 1983 and Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. Second, he asserted that he was selected for the RIF as a means of retaliating against him for his filing the discrimination complaint in 1989, in violation of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). Finally, he asserted that the County authorities violated his due process rights when they dismissed him, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

II

Because the district court dismissed all of the claims at issue in this appeal on summary judgment, our review is de novo, and we take the facts and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986). We affirm if the record, taken in that light, shows that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

A. Ethnicity Discrimination

Lalvani's claim here is straightforward: he contends that Coleman fired him (by eliminating his Social Worker IV position) because of his Asian-Indian ethnicity. He has no direct evidence to back up this assertion, and thus, like many others, he must use the burden-shifting method first articulated in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). A prima facie case of race or ethnicity discrimination under § 1981 is predicated on the same elements as an ethnicity discrimination claim under Title VII, and we thus analyze these two aspects of his case together. As plaintiff, Lalvani had to produce evidence that: (1) he was a member of a protected class; (2) he was qualified for the job in question or was meeting his employer's legitimate performance expectations; (3) he suffered an adverse employment action; and (4) the employer treated similarly situated persons not in the protected class more favorably. Taylor v. Canteen Corp., 69 F.3d 773, 779 (7th Cir. 1995).

The district court found that Lalvani satisfied the first three elements of the prima facie case but failed to provide any evidence under the fourth part that similarly situated persons not in his protected class were treated more favorably. We agree. Lalvani did not identify a single CCH employee (Social Worker IV or otherwise) who was in a similar position and was not terminated during the RIF. Because he has not even...