Venturelli v. Arc Community Services, Inc.
| Decision Date | 26 November 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-2294.,02-2294. |
| Parties | Celena VENTURELLI, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ARC COMMUNITY SERVICES, INC., Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
T. Christopher Kelly (argued), Kelly & Habermehl, Madison, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Amy O. Bruchs (argued), Michael Best & Friedrich, Madison, WI, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before EASTERBROOK, MANION, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.
Celena Venturelli, who was several months pregnant, worked for a temporary employment agency and was assigned to work for ARC Community Services, a social services agency principally devoted to helping women with various problems. Venturelli performed very well and ARC hoped to hire her full time for a vacant administrative assistant position. But when one of her supervisors discussed the job with her, she was left with the impression that ARC would not hire her while she was pregnant, and she quickly lost interest in the job. She completed her predesignated term as a temporary employee and departed, but she did not return ARC's calls after she left to have her baby. ARC eventually hired someone else. Venturelli then sued ARC for unlawful discrimination in violation of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). The district court granted ARC's motion for summary judgment. Venturelli appeals, and we affirm.
ARC Community Services, Incorporated (ARC) is a not-for-profit corporation that serves women involved with the criminal justice system, women who have drug problems, and women who are pregnant. In October 1999, the Adecco Employment Agency assigned Celena Venturelli, who was visibly pregnant and due to deliver in March 2000, to work at ARC as a receptionist. Adecco had an agreement with its clients, including ARC, that a temporarily assigned employee ("temp") like Venturelli would have to work at least 520 hours before the employer could hire that person permanently. Violation of this agreement would subject the employer to a monetary penalty.
Venturelli arrived at ARC at a busy time. ARC was in the process of preparing two important grants that were essential for funding for the following year. Venturelli worked closely with Assistant Director Judy Baldwin in preparing one of those grants. Baldwin was very impressed with Venturelli's performance and suggested to Executive Director Karen Kinsey that Venturelli would be an excellent candidate for the administrative assistant position that ARC was attempting to fill. At a meeting in January 2000 with Baldwin and Michael Collins, the ARC services comptroller, Kinsey concluded that they should offer Venturelli the position. Since Collins was the person who was in charge of monitoring the temporary employees and keeping track of their time, Kinsey told Collins to meet with Venturelli and discuss the possibility of Venturelli taking the job.1
That turned out to be an unfortunate assignment. On two occasions, one shortly before and one shortly after the Martin Luther King holiday in January 2000, Collins met with Venturelli in his office. Instead of simply offering her the job, Collins went into a detailed discussion about Venturelli's pregnancy and how she would deal with it in the event she took a permanent position with ARC. He made comments about how some women change their mind once they have the child in their arms. As he contends in his deposition, he was attempting to let Venturelli know that there would be no rush to come back to the job on a permanent basis. Instead, she would be able to take the time she thought was necessary to stay at home with her child. Collins may have thought he was being magnanimous when he suggested that Venturelli could change her mind about when and if she wanted to come to work full time after she had the baby, but Venturelli was taken aback by this discussion. She interpreted Collins' comments about women and babies as an indication that ARC did not want to hire pregnant women. Although Venturelli was "shocked" by this conversation, she remained stoic and did not raise any objections to these references that she perceived as stereotyping working mothers.
A few days later, at the direction of Kinsey, Baldwin spoke with Venturelli, and she also stated that ARC was interested in hiring Venturelli for the job of administrative assistant. Venturelli responded to that overture by saying that she wanted to think about the matter and talk some more about it. Baldwin assumed she wanted to talk it over with her husband and did not pursue the issue further. Venturelli did not get back to Baldwin with her response, and when Kinsey learned of this she simply assumed that they could not force Venturelli to take the job. Venturelli did not mention her concern about Collins' statements when she met with Baldwin, nor did she make any contact with Kinsey with the same complaints.
During Venturelli's meeting with Baldwin, they discussed insurance and whether pregnancy would be a preexisting condition under ARC's policy. Baldwin did not know, so she called ARC's insurance carrier while Venturelli was in the room. After attempting to contact two people who turned out not to be available, Baldwin talked with a third person at the insurance company, whom Baldwin cannot identify. That person informed Baldwin, it turns out incorrectly, that pregnancy was a preexisting condition. Baldwin passed on the information to Venturelli, thus implying that, if Venturelli were immediately to begin working for ARC full time, her pregnancy would not be covered. As it was, Venturelli's husband was employed and she was then receiving benefits on his employer's medical plan. And, as Kinsey later acknowledged, putting Venturelli on ARC's medical plan would have had no impact on the organization's premiums.
After this conversation, Venturelli continued the remaining time at ARC in her temporary status. Her last day of work was February 24, a date she had set early on in anticipation of her March 12 due date. The office workers gave her a baby shower on that day, and then she left, never to return.
After Venturelli's departure, ARC officials made several attempts to contact her, but no one was able to reach her personally and so they simply left voicemail messages. Venturelli purposely did not return those calls because, at that point, she had decided that she did not want to return to ARC. After remaining at home with her baby for about five months, Venturelli applied for, and obtained, employment with a different employer.
In the meantime, in hopes that Venturelli would accept the full-time administrative assistant position, ARC hired in succession two temporary employees to perform the job. However, after ARC finally did not hear back from Venturelli, it hired another person, Laura Schleif, for the full-time position. Schleif was pregnant at the time ARC expressed interest in hiring her, and ARC told her that she could begin the job after she delivered her baby. That is what Schleif did, even though she had left to have her baby before completing the 520-hour requirement. Schleif's hiring occurred at approximately the same time that Venturelli took a new job with a different corporation. As it turned out, Venturelli herself had met the 520-hour requirement on February 14, approximately ten days before her last day at ARC. The record does not show how much Venturelli would have been paid had she been given a full-time position sometime between February 14 and February 24. Nor is there any indication, had she taken a full-time position and had the expenses for the delivery of her child placed on ARC's medical plan, whether there would have been any difference in coverage of expenses from her husband's employer's medical plan.
Venturelli eventually filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and then sued under Title VII, accusing ARC of refusing to hire her because she was pregnant. The district court granted ARC's motion for summary judgment and Venturelli appeals.
This court reviews the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, construing all facts in favor of Venturelli, the nonmoving party. Rogers v. City of Chicago, 320 F.3d 748, 752 (7th Cir.2003). Summary judgment is proper when the "pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Thus, "[s]ummary judgment is appropriate if, on the record as a whole, a rational trier of fact could not find for the non-moving party." Rogers, 320 F.3d at 752.
Under Title VII, it is unlawful for most employers "to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to ... compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's... sex...." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). The phrase "because of sex" has been defined by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), through which Congress amended Title VII in 1978, to mean "because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). Venturelli's complaint is that ARC violated Title VII when it failed to hire her in January or February 2000 because of her pregnancy. As it is undisputed that ARC is an employer subject to Title VII, the question on appeal is whether a reasonable jury could conclude that ARC failed to hire Venturelli at some point because she was pregnant. She has available the direct method or the indirect method to prove her case. Troupe v. May Dep't Stores Co., 20 F.3d 734, 736 (7th Cir.1994).
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