Gorence et al v. Eagle Food Centers

• Citation: 242 F.3d 759
• Decision Date: 08 March 2001
• Docket Number: No. 99-2102,99-2102
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2001) ROGENE GORENCE, JAN WOLF, and CARY BRUCE, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. EAGLE FOOD CENTERS, INCORPORATED, a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Appellee
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 759

242 F.3d 759 (7th Cir. 2001)

ROGENE GORENCE, JAN WOLF, and CARY BRUCE, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. EAGLE FOOD CENTERS, INCORPORATED, a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 99-2102

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued January 17, 2001

Decided March 8, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 93 C 4862--Blanche M. Manning, Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before EASTERBROOK, EVANS, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

EVANS, Circuit Judge.

Three employees of the Eagle Food Center, having a boatload of complaints against Eagle, have brought a hodge- podge of unrelated employment discrimination claims which the district judge dismissed on summary judgment in three separate, lengthy decisions of 28, 33, and 40 pages. Upon reconsideration, the judge once again found that the cases should be dismissed. The unhappy employees appeal.

Cary Bruce was hired as a store clerk in 1958 and eventually became the manager of several different stores. In 1990, when he was 47, he was made a district manager, in charge of 17 suburban Chicago stores. In June 1990 new personnel arriving on the scene demoted him. He was replaced by a 56-year-old man. Bruce became the manager of a store in Libertyville, Illinois.

In 1991 one of the district managers resigned. Bruce applied for the position but did not get that one or other positions he applied for. Instead, he was transferred from Libertyville to a store in Round Lake Beach and then in 1993 to a store in Belvidere. In January 1996 he was suspended from the Belvidere position because, according to Eagle, he had an inappropriate personal relationship with the wife of another employee. After his reinstatement, Bruce was transferred to a store in McHenry, Illinois. He claims that Eagle discriminated against him because of his age and in retaliation for his filing a charge of discrimination.

Jan Wolf began working for Eagle as a cashier in April 1976. She was promoted to personnel specialist at corporate headquarters in December 1985. In December 1987 she was promoted to training manager, but at a lower salary than the person she replaced. Wolf did not get promotions she sought for positions as an industrial engineering manager or a director of human resources. After a reorganization in 1995, Wolf became a human resources specialist. Her claims are that the company engaged in sex discrimination and violated the Equal Pay Act.

Rogene Gorence began working for Eagle as a cashier in March 1965. In 1973 she became a personnel specialist at corporate headquarters. In 1975 Eagle expanded her duties to include interpreting and administering labor agreements and processing union grievances, but she did not like negotiating and, in fact, has not negotiated a labor contract since 1984. Eagle hired two lawyers to negotiate, arbitrate, and handle labor and employment matters. Gorence was paid less than one of the attorneys, and she contends this is gender discrimination.

In 1991 Gorence applied to be an assistant warehouse manager; she was not hired. Then in 1992 she applied to be human resources manager, another position she did not get. She became Eagle's labor relations manager in 1993, but her position was eliminated in 1995, and she, like Wolf, became a human resources specialist. Her allegations include sex and age discrimination.

The plaintiffs' primary gripe on this appeal is that their claims were analyzed under the framework set out in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), that is, by employing an indirect method of proof when they should have been analyzed under the direct method of proof. They claim that the McDonnell Douglas formula puts too heavy a burden on them. However, in what might be an abundance of caution, the three plaintiffs also contend that they survive summary judgment under McDonnell Douglas.

In Troupe v. May Department Stores, 20 F.3d 734 (7th Cir. 1994), we said that under the direct method of proof a plaintiff must show either an acknowledgment of discriminatory intent by the defendant or circumstantial evidence that provides the basis for an inference of intentional discrimination. That evidence can be (1) suspicious timing, ambiguous statements, etc., (2) evidence that similarly situated employees were treated differently, or (3) evidence that the employee was qualified and passed over for the job and the employer's reason for the difference in treatment is a pretext for discrimination. In Huff v. Uarco, 122 F.3d 374 (1997), we noted that the third type of circumstantial evidence in a direct case is substantially the same as the evidence required under McDonnell Douglas.

No application of law to facts, however, is ever quite so simple as setting out principles of law. After over three and a half decades of laws prohibiting employment discrimination in one form or another, employers are fairly unlikely to be caught making statements such as, "I fired Judy because she was an old woman." Workplaces remain, though, places filled with persons who express thoughts which often reveal bias or ignorance. Those persons can be caught saying, for example, something like, "Old women are hard to deal with." The first statement proves intentional discrimination; the second, without more, does not. Inevitably, in cases we see, we deal with what falls in between.

The second hypothetical statement we just used might be bigoted. But we have said that bigotry, per se, is not actionable. It is actionable only if it results in injury to a plaintiff; there must be a real link between the bigotry and an adverse employment action. Miller v. American Family Mut. Ins. Co., 203 F.3d 997 (7th Cir. 2000). The comment would more than likely be what we label a "stray" remark--a remark which fails to show discrimination unless it is related to the employment decision. Cianci v. Pettibone Corp., 152 F.3d 723 (7th Cir. 1998); Fuka v. Thomson Consumer Elec., 82 F.3d 1397 (7th Cir. 1996). We cautioned in Hunt v. City of Markham, Ill., 219 F.3d 649 (7th Cir. 2000), that our cases should not be overread to mean that "stray remarks" of a derogatory character are never evidence of discrimination. What our cases hold, we said, is that if someone not involved in the decisionmaking in a plaintiff's case expressed discriminatory feelings, that is not evidence that the decision was discriminatory. It is different, we said,

when the decision makers themselves, or those who provide input into the decision, express such feelings (1) around the time of, and (2) in reference to, the adverse employment action complained of.

At 652. It might be, in fact, that remarks meeting these criteria are not "stray" at all. Finally, evidence of inappropriate remarks not shown to be directly related to the employment decision may not support a direct-method-of-proof case, but, in connection with other evidence, might support a case under McDonnell Douglas.

Another principle could emerge from this particular case; that is, that an amorphous litany of complaints about a myriad of workplace decisions regarding promotions, salary, etc. does not necessarily meet a plaintiff's burden of proof. In this case, we have been buried in details about employment decisions, some of which are, and some of which are not, really involved in this case. For instance, Bruce's 1990 demotion is now admitted to be outside the time limits for this action. Nevertheless, it occupies pages and pages in this record. Little has been done, particularly by the three plaintiffs, to make slogging through the record here either more efficient or more pleasant. And it is simply not true, we want to emphasize, that if a litigant presents an overload of irrelevant or nonprobative facts, somehow the irrelevancies will add up to relevant evidence of discriminatory intent. They do not; zero plus zero is zero.

To bring some order to the chaos we find in this record, we tether our analysis to the claims set out in the second amended complaint and the charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Particularly in employment discrimination cases, we cannot range far and wide looking for any bad acts ever committed by an employer and then conclude that because the employer is bad, it must have discriminated against a particular plaintiff. Title VII, the ADEA, and other discrimination statutes require more focus than that. They require that a plaintiff's claims first be presented to the agency. 29 U.S.C. sec. 626(d); 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e-5(f). Although we read charges of discrimination liberally in order to allow a claim of discrimination that is reasonably related to the allegations in the charge, it is the claims presented to the agency and claims reasonably related to those in the charge which form the basis for a federal court lawsuit. Bielfeldt v. Commissioner, 231 F.3d 1035 (7th Cir. 2000). In turn, a federal court complaint needs to give notice of what the claims are. Cheek v. Peabody Coal Co., 97 F.3d 200 (7th Cir. 1996). As an aside, we also note that although we have managed to find in the record all but one of the administrative charges filed by these plaintiffs, finding them has not been very easy.

Gorence's charge before the EEOC, filed May 26, 1992, stated that she did not receive the title of manager in 1992 (manager of what she doesn't say) and that she was denied promotion to warehouse and distribution center manager in August 1991. She also claimed she was retaliated against and that males were treated more favorably. In her second amended complaint in the district court, Gorence states claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. sec. 621 et seq., and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e et seq. In count I she contends that she was denied a promotion (in 1991) to the position of assistant warehouse and...