Salas v. Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections
| Decision Date | 18 July 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. 06-2483.,06-2483. |
| Citation | 493 F.3d 913 |
| Parties | Francisco SALAS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Richard F. Raemisch, William A. Grosshans, Denise A. Symdon, and Leann Moberly, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
David E. Lasker (argued), Lasker Law Offices, Madison, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Jennifer Sloan Lattia (argued), Richard Briles Moriarty, Office of the Attorney General, Wisconsin Department of Justice, Madison, WI, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and RIPPLE, Circuit Judges.
On March 19, 2004, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections ("DOC") terminated Francisco Salas, an eighteen-year employee. Claiming that his termination was motivated by discriminatory and retaliatory motives, Salas filed suit against the DOC and several individual defendants alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 & e-3, as well as 42 U.S.C. § 1983. On April 25, 2006, the district court granted the defendants summary judgment, holding that Salas could not bring his Title VII claims because he did not timely file them with the EEOC and that no reasonable jury could find that the DOC had violated the Constitution by firing him. Salas appeals. For the following reasons, we affirm.
Francisco Salas, a Hispanic male, began working at the DOC on January 27, 1986. From 1995 until he was terminated, Salas served as a senior probation and parole agent. Prior to his discharge, he was never disciplined and received various promotions. On March 19, 2004, the DOC terminated Salas for allegedly falsifying documents and failing to supervise an offender named Kevin Hageman. At the time of his termination, Salas was the only Hispanic male working in the DOC's Madison, Wisconsin office.
A. The DOC's Decision to Terminate Salas
In order to understand the events that led to Salas' firing, some background on the operation of the department's probation program is necessary. Until the summer of 2002, the DOC contracted with a Colorado-based company called BI Corporation to supervise certain low-risk, non-violent offenders, like Hageman, by telephone ("the BI program"). The BI program required offenders to make scheduled phone calls to an answering service and respond to recorded questions. To participate in the BI program, offenders had to be in compliance with the terms of their probation or supervision. When an offender failed to call in as required, the BI program notified the DOC, and the DOC's computer system automatically generated a warning letter to the offender bearing the name and telephone number of his assigned agent. Hageman was in the program to insure that he paid court-ordered restitution. On February 22, 2001, Hageman stopped making restitution payments.
In October 2001, Salas transferred to the Madison office of the Division of Community Corrections and assumed responsibility for a caseload that included approximately 350 BI program offenders, including Hageman. On June 30, 2002, the DOC's contract with BI Corporation expired, and the program ended. The DOC sent letters to the program's participants directing them to report to their agents. Around that time, the DOC's Madison office divided local BI program participants among the agents in Salas' unit, with each agent receiving about ten cases. Salas began entering the new cases into his computer and tried to obtain some information from the BI program's electronic filing system. His efforts to obtain the information were unsuccessful because the electronic files had been destroyed when the contract expired. On October 28, 2002, someone completed a DOC-506 form (a form used to reassess the risks associated with an offender), reclassifying Hageman to medium-risk.1
Salas and other agents kept apprised of their caseload using a computer program known as the Offender Activity Tracking System ("OATS"). The program included a "reminders list" that tracked reports and forms that either were overdue or needed to be completed within the next forty-five days, including DOC-506 forms. The OATS program never prompted Salas to complete or submit any forms related to Hageman, nor was he alerted to any incomplete work on Hageman's case when he met with a supervisor in April 2003 to review his caseload.
In September 2003, Hageman's father called Wesley Ray, Salas' supervisor, and told him that Hageman was in the hospital suffering from a serious medical problem. On September 23, 2003, Ray questioned Salas about Hageman, and Salas told Ray that he had no knowledge of Hageman.2 As a result, the DOC assigned Hageman's file to a new agent and began investigating whether Salas had failed to supervise the offender. Defendant Denise Symdon coordinated the investigation, and she assigned Leann Moberly, another defendant, to interview Salas. On November 17, 2003, Moberly interviewed Salas, who was accompanied by a union representative. Salas acknowledged that he had neither met with Hageman nor issued an apprehension report for him. However, Salas said that he could not have known that he was required to take action with respect to Hageman because OATS never displayed any notices about the offender. Based on the interview, Moberly recommended Salas' termination.
On December 4, 2003, Marie Finley, the Assistant Regional Chief of the DOC, conducted a pre-disciplinary meeting with Salas.3 She concluded that Salas was responsible for supervising Hageman from Fall 2001 through September 23, 2003 and that Salas had not completed required offender report forms or chronological log entries during that time period.4 Finley also questioned Salas about the DOC-506 form in Hageman's file that reclassified him from minimum to medium risk.
On February 3, 2004, Symdon met with Salas to review Hageman's file. She asked Salas to show her what file information he had used to complete the DOC-506 reclassification form. Salas asked to see the form, but Symdon told him that the form was unavailable. Because she believed that Salas had no way of knowing the information contained in the DOC-506 form, she concluded that Salas had used false information to complete it. Symdon also concluded that Salas should have issued an apprehension request for Hageman. Accordingly, Symdon recommended Salas' termination. Other DOC officials approved the recommendation, including the Human Resources Coordinator, the Division Administrator, the Office of Diversity, and the Department Deputy Secretary.
On March 19, 2004, the DOC terminated Salas for alleged violations of Work Rules 2, 4, and 6. Rule 2 requires employees to follow departmental policies and procedures, and Rule 4 prohibits negligence in the performance of assigned duties. Rule 6 prohibits falsifying records or providing false information.
No department employee other than Salas has ever been terminated for falsifying a DOC-506 form. Indeed, numerous employees charged with similar or more egregious offenses received lesser punishments than Salas. The following table documents the punishments of several other DOC employees who committed similar infractions:
B. Darren Rogers' EEOC Charge
In July 2003, approximately eight months before Salas was terminated, a corrections agent named Darren Rogers, an African-American, filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC alleging that the DOC discriminated against him because of his...
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