placed the court in counsel my name is john baker and i represent the app a lot christopher say mr c was employed by the only gaming board as a sworn law enforcement officer his responsibilities w he worked at a dock site for one of the used to be boats but one of the gaming sites in the state of illinois was a sworn officer as i mentioned christopher sci fi old a very lengthy grievance with his employer the grievance it's off was about sixty pages in length and it outlined a lot of concerns that he had cited to a lot of legal authority i'm not sure that it was all controlling legal authority but he did outline in his grievance he specifically said he was doing this is a citizen and pursuant to his job responsibilities but one of the things in the primary take away from that was he was concerned about corruption corruption between the only game board and the illinois state the illinois state police is very involved in the gaming they staff a good number of the people in the game board are actually employees of the only state police say he was concerned about this and thought that there was some corruption that was involved and cited to a history of things shortly after he filed that grievance he had a couple of conversations with an individual by the name of francisco spirit mistress to siri was a high ranking member of the gaming board ministration he was one of the top people he was also an illinois state police officer so mr perry how can i ask you jumping ahead in this sequence the defendants s the actions that they took which which were basically the fitness exam were taken not because of the complaint but because of behaviors that they were finding troubling as a concerns such as the ones they articulated and i guess you would have to show that they were pretextual somehow and i'm not sure how you would do that well thank you judge one and i agree particularly this court has i think world multiple times that there is a heightened standard there for a law enforcement officer and that employers do have a reason to be more concerned when it comes to that but what i would what i would say in establishing that it is pretextual and i disagree that that was the contention or that that was what they reached as a decision but even more importantly i believe that it creates a question of fact and not something that can be resolved through summary judgment and i suppose i judge that the most important thing to look at is the actual letter that was written that directed mr c to go on his administrative leave and to have his fitness for duty and it's about a paragraph but it says specifically you have expressed concern illinois state police may try and send someone to physically harm your family due to the filing of a grievance and mr c disputes that that ever happened he denied that that ever happened and so what we have here is we have this question of fact as to whether that is a good faith basis now yes i do get don't i recall from the record that mr c at some point does say you know given his background as i recall you know from the marines to various other law enforcement positions he wasn't personally frightened but he says i think my wife is concerned about the i use p this is something that i because i love my wife you know like it would these were bizarre kinds of things to say and might have made a rational person think let's just make sure he's ok which of course he turns out to be ok and they put him back on the job right well judge what i  i disagree with the assertion i think that yes there are legitimate reasons why they can inquire but the fact that chrissy's wife is concerned is in no way attributable to him you know that that that again that that requires him to be responsible for the feelings of his wife and so yes his wife does have some concerns and he did say yes my wife was concerned but that's not necessarily him i don't think that it is our current of his that the state of mind of the people who are is that he is in fact afraid that the eyes p might send someone to harm his family not not him in particular but most people care about their families and if that's a good faith concern on the part of the defendants then they can order the exam well i don't i don't think those are the facts i think the fact is that he said my wife is concerned about this he didn't say he personally was concerned about it so i think it's different he's not he's not saying i'm concerned that they're going to harm my wife you never suggested that what he said was my wife has expressed concern to me that they might harm her our family that's what he said which is which i think is a far cry from saying i am personally concerned but we also get back to the idea of a pretextual statement you know because again in the statement itself of why he is going to be placed on the leave the series specifically says he's been placed on leave because you said you were concerned for your asking objective lee was there reason to to order this exam and could a rational listener have drawn the inference that they drew well i i don't believe that they could but again i believe that that's a question for a jury i mean could a right sex is all the time says that the summary judgment stage in employment cases so we need a little bit more than that it's about pretext well i mean there's it's very clear th but for his actually preparing this memo this was this grievance that this never would have happened after he prepares a meeting there are a couple of conversations you express is that there is corruption and we can go through and we can eerie his saying about this and he says i know personally and it bothers was eerie that he said that he suggested that the illinois state police had some corruption that bothered siri so when you when you look at that we have to look at what is the question what motivates the finder of fact or excuse me what motivates the employer here and i think that there is plenty of evidence when we take a look at it just from the the timing the fact that the evidence in my view does not support what spitzer he says is the basis for why he is doing this that continually saying look i am concerned that he is talking about corruption and so that is the concern and i and i do believe that you know that is sufficient from which a jury this is presented to make a decision not something that should be decided in summary judgment now if a jury decided that way certainly they would be able to draw those inferences but i think they could look at the palette of the evidence that we've outlined and draw exactly the opposite that that was the and again you know and even if we were to go back and say my family's concerned that's a that's that's a very very minimal statement and i think the concern that i have with that is any time an employer you're  centrally taking the standard of what is necessary to seek out a fitness for duty evaluation and not just a fitness for duty evaluation a psychiatric fitness for duty evaluation something that you know it's stands with you not only was it a fitness for duty evaluation but he had to disclose all of his medical records to the psychiatrist it was clear that all of that information was to be shared with the department so all of that information this wasn't just a yes or no thumbs up thumbs down sort of thing from the psychiatrist and so all of you have that power to say well we think you might be crazy we're going to send you there's there's just not sufficient evidence to show that there's a business necessity and i do understand that there is a lower threshold when it comes to law enforcement in there should be i'm not disputing that at all but that doesn't mean that as to whether there is that business necessity and that's what i think is very important here and that's why we're asking the court reversed this so that a jury can make that determination and i think a jury is perfectly reasonable that perfectly reasonable project to be able to make that decision to listen to what disease he says and say it's zero he is really saying the truth because if not an employer can come up with almost any justification in order to support their decision that they're going to send somebody for a psychiatric evaluation and and you know clearly that was not a concern i mean it was the psychiatrist report was very clear there were not these issues and it does create a significant issue i do notice that my less than twenty four hour period of time he expressed escalating concerns and bizarre is bizarre allegations of unspecified retaliation corruption and other issues in defense what really required to wait and see what happened before sending him to evaluation e mails and this court doesn't nd guess that sort of business judgment about whether somebody needs to have their mental health assessed specially in the context of who allegedly was spreading these rumors pictures of dead bodies in his office and had been bragging about his profession as a chicago police officer all these noting that mr c was afraid that mr gets us he might do something came after the decision was made to put him on leave and i just like to know that if you read francisco's zeerust deposition it's clear that she knew of those comments by mr c's colleagues before the decision was made before august th and so with that in his mind there's this background of conflict between mr seen his colleagues and these concerning comments and then mr c shows up unannounced to the casino while he's an examination yes your honor it's not as though defendants can simply disclose that information to anyone i'm not sure exactly what those privacy protections are in detail nor are they in the record but oppositional and here again mr mr c is an armed gang special agent he plainly exhibited some paranoid thoughts and hostility towards his colleagues specifically colleagues employed by the illinois state police and so again defendants were required to wait and see if mr c actually acted out or there was an escalation of that conflicts before ensuring that he could safely perform his duties so is it yourself mission that the that the genesis of all of this the corruption allegations are just place mr seale you know he clarified that revisits are common in fact grievous and grievances on this issue of favoring illinois state police troopers were common and that didn't concern him he was concerned i'd like to know that there is evidence in the record that mr busier e looked into those allegations after mr c returned from leave specifically there was an e mail discussing an interview between mr c and some other special generally of an individual speaking in the context of being a union representative like mr c that speech would be protected and we thought you know given the record before us the legitimate justification offered by defendants as well as the fact that mr you see didn't really suffer any everest consequences as a result of his being sent for a finish for duty examination but those were sufficient bases to the from the district court's judgment you c somehow showed up at work when he was on vacation in this instigated it just simply isn't true the decision had been made so to place mr c on leave of absence before that ever occurred factually so that's that's just not there the key there is you know we asked we have specifically over and over what were the concerns what were the concerns missouri could never point to any specific concerns so this is this is a factual issue the other thing that i want to point out the suggestion siri was not concerned about the suggestion of corruption at the i s p is certainly belied by his own testimony i so i asked him when he made that comment that there was corruption did that offend you he said it was concerning to me answer why was that concerning answer because it didn't make sense with what i believed and what i knew and he went on to say i know there is no corruption of the i asked i look at these and i say a jury can make a reasonable conclusion that