Brewer v. Board of Trustees of University of Il

• Decision Date: 21 March 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-1259.,06-1259.
• Citation: 479 F.3d 908
• Parties: Lonnell BREWER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

479 F.3d 908

Lonnell BREWER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v.BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 06-1259.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued September 21, 2006.

Decided March 21, 2007.

Joanna C. Fryer(argued), Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

James C. Kearns, Monica HershKhetarpal Sholar(argued), Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen, Urbana, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before BAUER, CUDAHY, and WOOD, Circuit Judges.

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge.

This case concerns the corrupt, Machiavellian world of permit parking at the University of Illinois's Urbana-Champaign campus, and the ill fortune of a student who became involved in it.Lonnell Brewer claims that he was fired from his student job at a University personnel office and subsequently booted from a master's degree program because one of his supervisors at the personnel office, Kerrin Thompson, failed to tell her supervisor that she had given Brewer permission to park his car in a certain University parking lot.Thompson kept silent about this, says Brewer, because Brewer is black and she wanted him fired, putting the University in violation of Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The University admits that Brewer was fired for modifying a University parking tag, but claims that his termination from the master's program was only for his poor academic performance and denies that any decision attributable to it was motivated by race.The district court granted the University summary judgment on Brewer's claims.Brewer appeals.We affirm.

I.Background

We begin by recounting Lonnell Brewer's strange tale of intrigue; because he appeals from a grant of summary judgment we resolve all conflicts in the evidence and draw all permissible inferences in his favor.Berger v. AXA Network LLC,459 F.3d 804, 806(7th Cir.2006).Brewer's career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign started well enough.Already armed with a bachelor's degree in psychology, he enrolled in the University's psychology Ph. D. program in the fall of 1995.After completing two years of study he decided not to pursue the Ph. D. and instead to transfer to the master's degree program at the University's Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations (ILIR).Upon transferring he received merit-based financial aid and also an ILIR research assistantship under which he would receive a stipend for working ten hours each week at the University Personnel Services Office(PSO).

Brewer alleges a complicated trail of causation that leads back and forth between actors and events at these two institutions.Consequently, our tale must jump back and forth between the PSO and the ILIR to follow his story.

A. Brewer's Work at the PSO in Early Fall 1997

Brewer claims that his troubles began at the PSO with one of his supervisors, Kerrin Thompson, assistant to PSO Director Denise Hendricks(both of whom are white).In early September, on the first day of his research assistantship, Brewer met with Thompson and learned that he would be working on part of a large survey.They discussed the requirements of the assistantship, among them the time and dress expected (flexible hours to allow Brewer to schedule interviews with prospective employers; casual dress, with jeans specifically acceptable).Thompson also explained where Brewer could park when working at the PSO, a topic of eventual great importance.Brewer says that Thompson gave him a temporary University parking tag and

kind of gestured you can park here (indicating), park there (indicating), and, you know, I was in her office so I wasn't really oriented as to where that meant, but basically she pointed to all the different spots in the building, so it was almost a 360 degree kind of gesture, indicating to me that I could pretty much park anywhere at the PSO as long as I had my tag on my mirror.(Brewer Dep.at 66.)

Trouble began to develop between Thompson and Brewer on October 8 or 9, 1997, ostensibly when Thompson learned that Brewer's fiancee was white.From that point on, Thompson's "posture became noticeably and increasingly hostile"(Brewer Dep. Ex. 14at 5), and she did things to embarrass Brewer and make working at the PSO difficult for him.For instance, she would sometimes go around the office asking if anyone knew where Brewer was, even on days when he was not supposed to be in the office, and she refused to let Brewer work off-site to take advantage of software for the blind and dyslexic that reads words aloud.¹

On October 13 or 14, Brewer received a warning from Elyne Cole, the PSO's Director of Employment Services (who is black),² about a "person who you think is your friend" who was in fact an enemy.(Brewer Dep. Ex. 14at 5.)Brewer pressed for more information.While she was reluctant to talk at first, Cole eventually revealed that Thompson was a racist and that Cole had overheard Thompson saying disparaging things about Brewer, such as that he lacked urgency about his work.Cole warned Brewer that Thompson had a lot of influence with Hendricks and urged Brewer to start recording the times he was present and working at the PSO, even though there was no formal requirement that he do so.Brewer followed her advice, having a secretary verify and sign his record.³

B. Brewer's Studies at the ILIR in Early Fall 1999

Meanwhile, Brewer was beginning a very ambitious program of study at the ILIR.Normally, students would complete the ILIR program in three semesters; Brewer hoped to complete the program more quickly through a combination of an unusually demanding schedule, a waiver of one requirement and summer courses.A student could not enroll in more than four courses per semester without an advisor's permission, but Brewer persuaded his advisor, Prof. Michael LeRoy, to permit him to enroll in five courses for the Fall 1997 semester.Another one of Brewer's professors, Wallace Hendricks(husband to PSO Director Denise Hendricks), urged Brewer not to do this, saying that such a hectic schedule would not allow Brewer to take full advantage of the program, especially in light of the time he was scheduled to work at the PSO.

Brewer's research assistantship at the PSO was awarded and sponsored by the ILIR, and throughout the fall semester there were signs that the ILIR faculty was aware of Brewer's performance in the assistantship, and more specifically Thompson's opinion of it.For instance, Professor Wallace Hendricks once told Brewer that Thompson thought Brewer had missed a day of work and that he should stop wearing jeans at work.

C.Blown PSO Deadline in Late Fall 1997

Prof. Wallace Hendricks's warning against the five-course schedule turned out to be well-grounded.When the Fall 1997 semester neared its end, the combination of five classes, the PSO assistantship and additional extracurricular activity worked Brewer to the bone, and the time constraints he faced proved too demanding.When asked early in the semester to pick a deadline for his portion of the survey at the PSO, Brewer had chosen the final Friday before finals week.He had thought that by completing the project on that day he would be free to devote himself to studying before and during his finals.But the deadline came and his project was not quite ready.After speaking with his project supervisor, Judy Baker, he agreed to complete the project over the weekend and submit it on Monday.

That same Friday, Thompson and Hendricks separately spoke to Brewer about the missed deadline and what they believed were other performance problems.Thompson told Brewer that he lacked "initiative and motivation" and had not been working enough; Brewer argued with her, showing her his unofficial timesheet and saying he missed the deadline because she did not let him use the off-site dyslexia software.(Brewer Dep. Ex 14at 6-7.)Later, Brewer met with Hendricks, who said that she had talked with ILIR Director Peter Feuille and was considering terminating Brewer's assistantship with Feuille's support.She considered the blown deadline serious and further reported that Thompson thought Brewer wasn't working his ten hours a week.Brewer offered to show Hendricks his unofficial timesheet but she declined to view it.She stated that she had been excited to have a minority working at the PSO, but was "disappointed [by the blown deadline] because the first thing I thought when Kerrin [Thompson] told me was what a waste."(Brewer Dep. Ex. 14at 7.)

On Monday, Brewer submitted his portion of the survey to Baker as arranged.When Hendricks saw the project she was pleased with it and decided to keep Brewer on, saying that she had suspected the project was in worse shape than it was and acted hastily.

D. ILIR Finals in Late Fall 1997

Brewer's end-of-semester time crunch was not yet over; indeed, Brewer had been forced to split his focus between studying and the PSO situation in the days before finals.He had to ask Prof. LeRoy for extensions on take-home papers in two different classes; LeRoy assigned penalties on each paper.Brewer also received an extension without penalty in a class under Professor Joseph Martoccio.All of Brewer's final exam grades were quite poor (for instance, he wrote the lowest-graded exam in Prof. Wallace Hendricks's Quantitative Methods course).His overall semester grades took a nosedive.

But inadequate preparation time wasn't Brewer's only problem; he received word that his professors graded him down because of his troubles at the PSO.One of Prof. Wallace Hendricks's TA's informed Brewer that Hendricks had "insisted on giving [Brewer] a C+ because of what happened" there (Brewer Dep. Ex. 14at 11), and Prof. LeRoy told Brewer that his late-penalty was more severe than normal in part because "your performance at the PSO has somewhat called into question your credibility"(Brewer Dep. Ex. 14at 9).

Brewer finished the Fall 1997 semester with a GPA of 2.866.The minimum cumulative GPA...