Rudin v. Lincoln Land Community College

• Decision Date: 25 August 2005
• Docket Number: No. 04-3711.,04-3711.
• Citation: 420 F.3d 712
• Parties: Janine RUDIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LINCOLN LAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

420 F.3d 712

Janine RUDIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LINCOLN LAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 04-3711.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 11, 2005.

Decided August 25, 2005.

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John A. Baker (argued), Baker, Baker & Krajewski, Springfield, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Lorilea Buerkett (argued), Brown, Hay & Stephens, Springfield, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before POSNER, RIPPLE and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Janine Rudin brought this action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., against her employer, Lincoln Land Community College ("LLCC"), for alleged race and sex discrimination. The district court granted summary judgment to LLCC on both claims. Ms. Rudin timely appealed. For the reasons set forth in the following opinion, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.

I BACKGROUND

A. Facts

LLCC is a community college located in Springfield, Illinois. In early 2002, LLCC announced its plan to fill a vacancy for a Business Administration instructor ("the position"), a full-time, tenure-track position in LLCC's Department of Business and Public Services ("the Department"). Over one hundred individuals applied for the position.

Ms. Rudin, who is a Caucasian female, submitted an application for the position. Since 1993, Ms. Rudin had been an adjunct instructor in the Department. According to Ms. Rudin's resume, she possesses a bachelor's degree in management and a master's degree in public administration, both earned from Sangamon State University.

Hiring for the position was governed by LLCC's "Screening and Interviewing Committee Processes and Guidelines" (the "Guidelines"). R.22, Tab 18 at 1. Pursuant to the Guidelines, a screening committee (the "Screening Committee" or "Committee") was convened to review the applications for the position. Richard Bowen, chair of the Department, was the chair of the Screening Committee. According to the procedures set out in the Guidelines, nine other individuals (including Department faculty members, faculty from other departments and LLCC staff members) served on the Screening Committee. The parties agree that the Committee's members did not all participate equally in the hiring process.

The Screening Committee completed the process identified in the Guidelines as "Candidate Screening," in order to "reach a consensus on those candidates" who were acceptable or suitable for an interview. R.22, Tab 18 at 2. Ms. Rudin was among those selected for an interview by this process.

Following the Screening Committee's review of the candidates, the list of those selected for an interview was sent, pursuant to the Guidelines, to Nicole Ralph, LLCC's Equal Opportunity Compliance Officer, for her review. According to the Guidelines, this review could result in: "(a) proceed[ing] with candidates selected by the committee, (b) add[ing] minority candidates to the pool to be interviewed, or (c) . . . halt[ing] the screening process." R.22, Tab 18 at 3. Ralph testified at her deposition that her role in reviewing the list of interviewees was to "determin[e] if there was sufficient diversity among the interviewees." R.18, Tab H at 2.

It was at this point that Paul Hudson, an African-American male who had applied for the position but who had not been selected for an interview in the Candidate Screening process, was added to the interview pool. Ralph described her rationale for adding Hudson to the list of interviewees: "I saw Hudson's resume and after looking at it, I saw that he was comparable to the other candidates. . . ." R.18, Tab H at 80. She reviewed her selection of Hudson with Bowen, and Hudson was included on the list of candidates to be interviewed. During the Candidate Screening process, Bowen had been the only Committee member to recommend Hudson for an interview.

According to Hudson's resume, he had a bachelor's degree in business administration from Western Michigan University, a master's degree in management from Nazareth College and a master's degree from Western Michigan University in an unspecified field. Hudson had previous teaching experience; according to his resume, he had worked as an instructor teaching business-related courses at seven colleges including LLCC, where he taught a marketing course in 1999.

Once the list of candidates to be interviewed had been finalized by adding Hudson's name, interviews for the position were conducted. Not all members of the Committee interviewed all candidates.

Following the candidate interviews, Bowen scheduled a meeting of the Screening Committee at which the Committee would make its recommendation for the position. However, only Bowen and Screening Committee member Arthur Meyer, Jr. attended that meeting. The parties agree that no Committee-wide discussion of the candidates took place.

Despite the fact that Bowen never met with the rest of the members of the Screening Committee, it is clear that, at some point following the interviews, Committee member Meyer compiled rankings of the interview candidates from the rest of the Committee. The Committee members were allowed to cast votes only for candidates they had interviewed. Ms. Rudin was rated second-highest in these rankings. Hudson was ranked second from the bottom.

The parties dispute whether the Committee's rankings were made available to Bowen before he recommended to his superiors that Hudson be hired for the position. Although LLCC contends that Bowen did not have the Committee's rankings as of the day he made his recommendation, Committee member Meyer testified at his deposition that he had forwarded the Committee's rankings of candidates to Bowen before Bowen recommended Hudson.

On April 8, 2002, Bowen recommended Hudson to Eileen Tepatti, LLCC's Assistant Vice President of Instruction. The parties do not dispute that Bowen made the recommendation without the input of the Selection Committee. Also on April 8, 2002, Tepatti recommended Hudson to Dana Grove, LLCC's Vice President of Academic Affairs. On the same day, Grove passed on his recommendation of Hudson to Dr. James Howard, who was then President of LLCC.

Bowen informed Ms. Rudin in a telephone call of April 12, 2002, that she would not be hired for the position. According to Ms. Rudin, Bowen told her that he had been under "administrative pressure" with respect to the hiring decision and that he "had nothing to do with the decision." R.21, Tab 7 at 126. Ms. Rudin also recalled that Bowen told her that the person who had been hired was not more qualified than she was and had not been teaching at LLCC longer than she had. Bowen did not tell Ms. Rudin that Hudson had been hired.

At some point after learning that she would not be hired for the position, Ms. Rudin contacted and subsequently met with several members of LLCC's Board of Trustees ("the Board") regarding her belief that she should have been hired. It is not clear how many of the seven members of the Board agreed to meet with Ms. Rudin. In her deposition, she testified that she met with four members of the Board. In notes taken around the time of the meeting, she identified five members of the Board with whom she had met.

Around the same time, Ms. Rudin made an appointment to meet with Dr. Howard.¹ At that meeting, Ms. Rudin recalled in her deposition, Dr. Howard told her that "Rich Bowen [was] lying" about the existence of administrative pressure to make a hiring decision. R.21, Tab 7 at 42. He also said, "I had nothing to do with who gets hired so there is no administrative pressure." Id. Ms. Rudin also recalled that Dr. Howard told her that "there was a problem with the process, the way the hiring was done." Id.

On April 24, 2002, Dr. Howard recommended Hudson to the Board, the body that had the ultimate authority to make the hiring decision. The Board did not reach a decision on whether to hire Hudson at that time. Around the time that Dr. Howard recommended Hudson to the Board, he requested that Tepatti document the decision to recommend Hudson. Tepatti prepared two memoranda, dated April 22 and April 29.

Tepatti's April 22 memorandum described the hiring process. It explained that Bowen "considered Paul Hudson qualified and a very successful LLCC adjunct with excellent student evaluations. . . . Given all of this as well as the college's focus on minority hiring, [Bowen] selected him for the position." R.18, Tab G at 9-10. The April 22 memorandum also stated that "the committee was very upset with [Bowen]—Janine was too." R.18, Tab G at 10. Tepatti attributed some of the Committee's reaction to the fact that "some members of the [Department of Business and Public Services] have a problem with the focus on minority hiring goals at the college." Id. She also noted that Ms. Rudin had made it clear in the past that she would want the position when it became vacant and suggested that Ms. Rudin had "developed an entitlement attitude in the past couple of years." Id.

Tepatti's April 29 memorandum also reviewed the process by which Hudson became the recommended candidate for the job. The April 29 memorandum discussed the process by which Hudson was added to the interview pool, the manner in which the interviewed candidates were evaluated and Bowen's ultimate decision to recommend Hudson. In the memo, Tepatti stated that she "asked [Bowen] point blank about [Ms. Rudin's] assertions [that Bowen had been pressured to hire Hudson]. Emphatically and without hesitation, [Bowen] responded that he did not tell [Ms. Rudin] or anyone else that `higher ups' had forced him or put pressure on him to hire Paul Hudson." R.18, Tab D at 15. In her April 29 memorandum, Tepatti endorsed hiring Hudson.

Dr. Howard prepared a memorandum, dated April 30, 2002, again recommending approval of Hudson for the position. Howard's April 30 memorandum further explained that,...