Tate v. Ancell

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit
• Decision Date: 17 January 2014
• Docket Number: No. 11-3252,No. 12-2694,11-3252,12-2694
• Citation: Tate v. Ancell, No. 11-3252, No. 12-2694 (7th Cir. Jan 17, 2014)
• Parties: EDGAR TATE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JO GULLEY ANCELL, et al., Defendants-Appellees. EDGAR TATE, Plaintiff, v. ADDUS HEALTHCARE, INC., et al., Defendants-Appellees. APPEAL OF: RICHARD S. FEDDER

EDGAR TATE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JO GULLEY ANCELL, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

EDGAR TATE, Plaintiff, v. ADDUS HEALTHCARE, INC., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

APPEAL OF: RICHARD S. FEDDER

No. 11-3252

No. 12-2694

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued June 5, 2012

Submitted January 2, 2013^*

Decided January 17, 2014

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

Before

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

Appeals from the United States District

Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:08-cv-00200-DRH-DGW

David R. Herndon,

Chief Judge.

ORDER

Edgar Tate sued the state agency for which he works along with one of the agency's private contractors, asserting that they joined forces in a conspiracy (thus far unsuccessful) to oust him from his job after he supported a coworker's charge of sexual harassment. He alleges that in furtherance of this conspiracy, the defendants subjected him to a series of disciplinary measures that constituted discrimination on the basis of his sleep disorder, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101, et seq. (the "ADA"), discrimination based on his national origin in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) ("Title VII), and retaliation for having opposed workplace sexual harassment, also in violation of Tile VII, § 2000e-3(a), as well as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983. The district court granted summary judgment in the defendants' favor on these and other claims not at issue in this appeal. In Appeal No. 11-3252, Tate contends that the district court overlooked evidence that supports his conspiracy theory and indicates that the defendants indeed did discriminate against him in a variety of ways. We disagree and affirm the district court's summary judgment ruling. Separately, in Appeal No. 12-2694, Tate's lawyer, Richard Fedder, has appealed the sanctions that the district court imposed against him pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1927 for unreasonably pursuing claims against Addus Healthcare, Inc. ("Addus"). Addus was the private contractor whose employees Tate alleges conspired with his employer to assemble a disciplinary record that would result in his dismissal; two of those employees are named as defendants in addition to Addus. We agree with the district court, however, that Tate's claims against Addus and its employees were frivolous. We therefore affirm the district court's order requiring Fedder to pay the Addus defendants' costs and fees.

I.

Tate has worked as a rehabilitation counselor at the Department of Human Services ("DHS"), Division of Rehabilitation Services ("DRS"), a public agency of the State of Illinois, since February of 1994. Tate is an Hispanic, Cuban-born male; he also suffers from sleep apnea. Tate alleges that after he lent his support to a coworker's sexual harassment complaint in 2003, DRS in 2006 and 2007 targeted him with a series of discriminatory disciplinary actions and conspired with its contractor, Addus, to build a case for Tate's eventual termination based on these disciplinary measures.

Tate's second amended complaint named as defendants DHS, along with current andformer DRS and DHS employees Jo Gulley Ancell, Jeff Standerfer, Al Farmer, and Eugene Davis, whom we shall refer to collectively as the "State defendants." Tate also named as defendants Addus, along with Addus employees Lorie Humphrey and Kim Evans, whom we shall refer to collectively as the "Addus defendants." As relevant to these appeals, Tate alleged that (1) DHS violated the ADA by failing to reasonably accommodate his sleep apnea and otherwise discriminating against him based on that condition; (2) DHS violated Title VII by creating a hostile work environment and otherwise discriminating against him because of his national origin and by retaliating against him for opposing the sexual harassment of a coworker; and (3) the individual State defendants and the Addus defendants violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (enforced via section 1983) and section 1981 by creating a hostile work environment and otherwise discriminating against him because of his national origin, as well as by retaliating against him for having opposed the sexual harassment of a coworker.

Tate began working for DRS as a trainee in February 1994 and is presently employed as a senior rehabilitation counselor at the Anna office of DRS in southern Illinois. DRS is a public agency of the State of Illinois which provides vocational, rehabilitation, and home services to eligible persons with disabilities. Co-defendant Addus, a private agency, contracted with DRS to provide office support personnel and Licensed Practical Nurses ("LPNs") for the DRS offices in Carbondale and Anna, Illinois.

In November or December of 2003, Veronica Green, Tate's rehabilitation case coordinator, complained that Al Farmer, Tate's supervisor at the time, had sexually harassed her. With Tate's assistance, Vicky Tuttle, another DRS employee, prepared an internal, third-party sexual harassment charge reporting Farmer's sexual harassment of Green. The charge was submitted to Farmer's supervisor, Jerry Jimenez, who passed it on to the DHS administration. During the investigation of the charge, Farmer was removed from his supervisory position, and the Anna office allegedly split into two factions—those supporting Farmer and those supporting Tate and his associates. Tate never spoke with Farmer about the charge.

Tate maintains that because of his support for the sexual harassment charge, certain of his colleagues at both DRS and Addus implemented a campaign to harass him and ultimately to have him terminated. Although he is still working for DRS, he alleges that various actions taken against him, including a number of suspensions imposed in 2006 and 2007 demonstrate retaliation and discrimination based on national origin and/or disability. His theory that the sexual harassment charge against Farmer spawned a concerted effort to penalize and ultimately get rid of him is based in large part on a May 2004 email that Farmer sent to Jeff Standerfer, the DHS assistant bureau chief for southern Illinois, in which Farmer discussed an email from Green which mentioned the sexual harassment charge. Inthe email, Farmer wrote that "Veronica Green's name is on the E-mail, but the words are Edgar Tate's." He described Tate as a "destructive" force in the Anna office who was manipulating Green and suggested that Standerfer "break up that destructive Home Service Cli[que] that is responsible for the majority of the problems in the Anna Office." R. 103-24. Tate sees this document as direct evidence that Standerfer and Farmer wanted revenge for Tate's support of the sexual harassment charge and became allies in a greater plan to purge Tate and his supporters from DRS's Anna office.

Late in 2004, Farmer retired from DRS; and in January 2005, defendant Ancell, who had been in charge of DRS's Carbondale office for a year, was directed by Standerfer to assume oversight of the Anna office as well, thereby replacing Farmer as Tate's supervisor. Ancell was the proponent of a series of disciplinary measures that were subsequently taken against Tate for purported work rule infractions. Tate views these disciplinary measures as acts in furtherance of the alleged scheme to punish and ultimately oust him from the office.

On or about March 8, 2006, Tate received an oral reprimand after he telephoned a client to discuss an issue rather than contacting the client in writing as he had been directed by Ancell.

In January of 2007, Ancell suspended Tate for three additional infractions that had taken place later in 2006. First, in September 2006, Tate failed to provide a written "Summary of Evidence" (setting forth the reasons why DRS had taken the adverse action being appealed by a client) to a hearing officer three working days in advance of a scheduled appeal hearing, as required by Illinois administrative code section 510.105(d) and as directed by Ancell. (Tate instead had mailed the statement three days prior to the hearing, so that the hearing officer did not receive it until the day of the hearing.) Tate had also failed to appear telephonically and represent DRS at that hearing, and this failure to appear resulted in a default ruling forcing the agency to provided thousands of dollars' worth of services to a client DRS had determined to be ineligible for those services. Second, on November 15, 2006, while the decision over whether and how to discipline Tate for this incident was still pending, Tate failed to submit a Summary of Evidence for another appeal hearing. The client in that case agreed to continue the hearing, sparing DRS another default judgment. Third, on November 13, Ancell instructed Tate to collaborate with a coworker to prepare a Summary of Evidence for yet another appeal hearing. Tate failed to meet with the coworker as planned and later gave Ancell a one-page narrative omitting the nine pages of facts that the coworker had prepared and faxed to him.

As a result of these incidents, Ancell charged Tate with the failure to follow supervisory instructions and negligence in performing his job duties. Ancell recommended that Tatebe suspended for five days, which recommendation was approved by both her supervisor and Laurie Tappenbeck of the DHS Bureau of Labor Relations. As a result of a union grievance, Tate was instead suspended for two days.

Tate was again suspended after he twice fell asleep during mandatory training sessions in February of 2007. (On both occasions, Tate was snoring and had to be nudged awake.) He was subsequently charged with violating a provision of the DHS employee handbook which proscribed sleeping while on duty. At the hearing on this charge, multiple written witness statements were presented confirming that Tate was sleeping during...