Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03812/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03812-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

---

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-3812

SUSAN A. KUTTNER,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JOHN ZARUBA, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 10 C 04290 — Edmond E. Chang, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED MAY 29, 2015 — DECIDED APRIL 14, 2016

____________________

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. Susan Kuttner was fired from her job 

as a DuPage County deputy sheriff after she wore her uniform and badge while trying to collect on a loan for a friend. 

She sued the sheriff alleging that she was fired because of 

her sex. There’s no direct evidence of sex discrimination, so 

Kuttner’s lawyer embarked on a protracted fishing expedition in search of possible comparators to try to mount a case 

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under the rubric of McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 

411 U.S. 792 (1973). Using an overbroad understanding of 

“similarly situated” employees, the lawyer sought the 

personnel files of more than 30 employees of the DuPage 

County Sheriff’s Office. In response to these and other 

inappropriate discovery requests, the district judge stepped

in and imposed some limits. In the end Kuttner failed to 

adduce evidence of sex discrimination, so the judge entered 

summary judgment for the sheriff.

On appeal Kuttner argues that the judge unduly restricted discovery and improperly granted summary judgment. 

We reject these arguments and affirm.

I. Background

Kuttner began working as a DuPage County deputy sheriff in 1998. In February 2010 she was fired by the Merit 

Commission, a unit of the sheriff’s department that handles 

hiring, promotions, and disciplinary matters. The Commission was acting on an October 2009 complaint by Sheriff 

John Zaruba regarding an incident that occurred several 

months earlier when Kuttner, while in uniform, paid a visit 

to the home of a person who owed money to her boyfriend. 

More specifically, Kuttner’s boyfriend Steve Cooper had 

loaned a sum of money to one Reginald Benjamin. Benjamin 

did not repay the loan. One afternoon in April or May 2009,

Kuttner—wearing her official sheriff’s uniform and badge—

visited Benjamin’s home in Hinsdale, Illinois, where he lived 

with his parents. Benjamin’s father came to the door and told 

Kuttner that his son was not home. Kuttner then left a 

business card listing her name and a company called “Team 

in Focus, DC International.”

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No. 14-3812 3

Sheriff Zaruba alleged in his disciplinary complaint that 

Kuttner’s conduct—attempting to collect on a personal loan

for a friend while in uniform—violated multiple departmental regulations. In what amounted to a plea deal, 

Kuttner stipulated to the facts we’ve just recounted and 

admitted to violating two rules: one prohibiting “conduct 

unbecoming” an officer and another prohibiting the improper wearing of the uniform. In exchange the other disciplinary 

charges were dropped. The Merit Commission determined 

that Kuttner’s conduct was serious enough to warrant 

discharge. She was fired on February 24, 2010.

Two weeks later Kuttner filed a complaint with the EEOC 

alleging that the sheriff had discriminated against her on the 

basis of her sex. After the agency declined action and gave 

her permission to sue, she brought this lawsuit against 

Sheriff Zaruba claiming sex discrimination in violation of 

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2 

et. seq.1 The complaint alleged that Kuttner was fired and 

denied a promotion because of her sex and that the sheriff’s 

policies regarding jail staffing discriminated against female 

employees.2

 

1 Kuttner also named the “DuPage County Sheriff’s Offices” and DuPage 

County as defendants. The former has no legal existence, and the County 

is in the suit only by virtue of its duty to pay any judgment against 

Sheriff Zaruba in his official capacity. We’ll refer to Sheriff Zaruba as the 

sole defendant.

2 Kuttner also alleged that Sheriff Zaruba retaliated against her for 

complaining about the jail-staffing policies and breached her employment contract by failing to give her sick-leave and adoption benefits after 

she was fired. The district court dismissed these claims as baseless, and

Kuttner does not challenge those rulings.

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Discovery did not go smoothly. Lacking any direct evidence of discrimination, Kuttner’s attorney cast a very wide 

discovery net in an effort to turn up male deputies who 

faced similar misconduct charges but suffered less drastic 

employment consequences. Among other things, Kuttner’s

lawyer sought the entire personnel files of more than 

30 employees of the Sheriff’s Office—including, baselessly,

documents relating to Sheriff Zaruba’s wife. The sheriff 

objected, and when the parties couldn’t resolve the dispute, 

they sought the court’s assistance. Prompted by the judge, 

Kuttner’s lawyer admitted that his request for documents 

about the sheriff’s wife’s file was just “a fishing expedition.” 

Following a hearing, the judge concluded that Kuttner’s 

discovery requests were overly broad and unduly burdensome because they lacked any time limitation and were 

based on “an overbroad definition of ‘similarity’ of misconduct.” The judge curtailed the scope of discoverable personnel documents to those arising after January 1, 2006, and

pertaining to employees who were alleged to have engaged 

in “similar misconduct as [Kuttner] (abuse of authority) or 

sufficiently serious misconduct.” In addition to issuing these 

general limitations, the judge resolved some specific disputes about the disclosure of personnel files of particular

employees.

Discovery proceeded for several months under these restrictions. More than three months later, however, Kuttner

moved for reconsideration. The judge was not impressed

with the belated motion, which came just a few weeks before 

the deadline to complete discovery (already twice extended). 

The judge reiterated his view that “[f]rom the start of discovery, Plaintiff (actually, her counsel) has made overly 

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No. 14-3812 5

broad and unduly burdensome discovery requests, some of 

which were unwarranted fishing expeditions bordering on 

harassment.” As the judge saw it, Kuttner’s counsel was 

again “over-reaching” and had shown “no solid factual basis 

for believing” that relevant evidence would be uncovered if 

the discovery restrictions were lifted. The judge declined to 

revisit his earlier order.

It was not long before Kuttner’s lawyer again butted 

heads with the judge—this time during the next-to-last 

round of depositions. Deposing Deputy Tara Campbell, 

Kuttner’s counsel asked the witness whether she had ever

heard or seen any deputy violate any Sheriff’s Office policy 

or procedure. Predictably, this expansive inquiry drew an 

objection, and a call to the judge’s chambers followed. The

judge had twice sustained objections to similarly overbroad 

inquiries by Kuttner’s counsel earlier in this contentious 

discovery process. The judge did so again and restricted the 

inquiry to questions about the witness’s “personal 

knowledge of abuse of authority committed by other deputies (i.e., no more hearsay in the hope of leading to admissible evidence concerning abuse of authority).”

After discovery closed Sheriff Zaruba moved for summary judgment. Kuttner responded by proffering four male 

comparators that she claimed had also abused their positions but were not fired. The judge rejected all four because 

their misconduct was too dissimilar to make them suitable 

for comparison under the McDonnell Douglas indirect method of proof. Kuttner offered no other evidence that she was 

fired because of her sex, so the judge entered summary 

judgment for the sheriff on this claim. The judge also rejected Kuttner’s failure-to-promote claim because she had never 

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sought a promotion, nor had she alleged that a less qualified 

male employee was promoted over her within the 300-day 

limitations period. Finally, the judge concluded that material 

factual disputes necessitated a trial on Kuttner’s claim about 

the sheriff’s jail-staffing policies.

A different judge presided at trial. Sheriff Zaruba prevailed.

II. Discussion

Kuttner apparently accepts the outcome of the trial; on 

appeal she does not seek to revive her jail-staffing claim. 

Rather, she challenges only the judge’s discovery limitations 

and his summary-judgment rulings rejecting her claims that 

she was fired and denied a promotion because of her sex.

A. Discovery Limitations

District judges have broad discretion over discovery matters, so we review discovery rulings deferentially, only for

abuse of discretion. Spitz v. Proven Winners N. Am., LLC, 

759 F.3d 724, 733 (7th Cir. 2014). This standard requires us to 

affirm unless the judge’s ruling lacks a basis in law or fact or 

clearly appears to be arbitrary. e360 Insight, Inc. v. Spamhaus 

Project, 658 F.3d 637, 644 (7th Cir. 2011). If we do find an 

abuse of discretion, “we will not grant any relief ‘absent a 

clear showing that the denial of discovery resulted in actual 

and substantial prejudice.’” Id. (quoting Searls v. Glasser, 

64 F.3d 1061, 1068 (7th Cir. 1995)).

Kuttner argues that the judge’s temporal limitation on 

discovery—the January 1, 2006 outer boundary for personnel 

records—was arbitrary. Any temporal limit on discovery is in 

some sense artificial, and it’s true that the January 1, 2006

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No. 14-3812 7

date isn’t keyed to any specific facts in the case. But our

abuse-of-discretion standard of review requires a deferential 

and contextualized approach. To that end, the proper inquiry in this case is two-fold: (1) was some time limit warranted here, and (2) was this time limit reasonable, i.e., did it 

allow Kuttner a meaningful opportunity for discovery? The 

answer to both questions is “yes.”

To the first question, the judge’s reason for imposing the 

time limit was to rein in Kuttner’s “overly broad and unduly 

burdensome” discovery expedition, perhaps exemplified 

most starkly by the request for the personnel records of 

Sheriff Zaruba’s wife, who could not possibly have served as 

a legitimate comparator and was presumably targeted solely 

for harassment and humiliation. The judge reasonably 

concluded that this litigation conduct by Kuttner’s counsel 

justified placing some limits on discovery so that it would

focus only on capturing information reasonably calculated to 

lead to relevant evidence.

Recency is one component of relevance. Valid comparators for a plaintiff proceeding under the McDonnell Douglas 

indirect method of proof are “employees [who] dealt with 

the same supervisor, were subject to the same standards, and 

had engaged in similar conduct without such differentiating 

or mitigating circumstances as would distinguish their 

conduct or the employer’s treatment of them.” Radue v. 

Kimberly-Clark Corp., 219 F.3d 612, 617–18 (7th Cir. 2000).

Here, restricting the time period wasn’t just about preempting a fishing expedition; it also served to hone in on possible 

comparators who were reasonably likely to have been 

subject to the same rules, supervisors, and decision-making

process as Kuttner. Cf. Balderston v. Fairbanks Morse Engine 

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8 No. 14-3812

Div. of Coltec Indus., 328 F.3d 309, 322 (7th Cir. 2003) (affirming the district court’s restriction of discovery in an ADEA 

case to only those employees who, inter alia, “obtained [their] 

desired positions around the same time” as the particular 

round of workforce reduction affecting the plaintiff).

We’re confident as well that the authorized window was 

adequate for Kuttner to engage in meaningful discovery. 

Kuttner doesn’t attack the judge’s original order limiting 

discovery; rather, she takes aim at the denial of her reconsideration motion. Recall that more than three months elapsed 

between the original order and Kuttner’s reconsideration 

motion. While this delay is not dispositive, there’s no question that it threatened to impose a massive new burden on 

the defendants with only a few weeks remaining until the 

discovery cutoff. Indeed, the judge relied on the delay as one

reason for declining to reopen the matter. That was clearly a 

valid consideration.

The judge also noted that the discovery deadline had already been extended several times, yet Kuttner had “fail[ed]

to advance the actually-authorized discovery so far.” Kuttner 

can’t complain that she was hamstrung by the temporal 

limitation when she didn’t make an adequate or appropriate 

effort to exhaust the avenues that were left open to her

under the court’s earlier orders.3

 

3 Our dissenting colleague faults us for relying in part on the burdens 

created by Kuttner’s tardy reconsideration motion. See Dissent at p. 18.

As we’ve noted, however, Kuttner’s attorney waited three months before 

asking the judge to reconsider the discovery limitations, and he filed his 

reconsideration motion only a few weeks before the discovery deadline, 

which had already been extended several times. It was not unreasonable 

for the judge to take the delay into account and also to consider the 

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No. 14-3812 9

Finally, Kuttner points to the fact that the judge who presided at trial “allowed testimony and evidence on all matters, including those between 1998 and 2006.” But the issue 

at trial was whether the sheriff’s policies governing jail 

staffing were discriminatory. That claim rested on an entirely 

different evidentiary basis than Kuttner’s claim that she was 

fired because of her sex. The scope of the evidence at trial is 

irrelevant here.

Kuttner also complains about the court’s directive prohibiting “any hearsay questions during depositions.” But this 

mischaracterizes the judge’s ruling. During Deputy Campbell’s deposition, Kuttner’s counsel asked the witness whether she had ever heard or seen any deputy violate any departmental policy or rule. That question was obviously 

overbroad; the judge had previously ruled similar questions 

out of bounds (twice!) and did so again when he was called 

during Deputy Campbell’s deposition. To curtail further 

abuses, the judge directed Kuttner’s counsel to stick to 

questions about the witness’s “personal knowledge of abuse 

of authority committed by other deputies (i.e., no more 

hearsay in the hope of leading to admissible evidence concerning abuse of authority).” Understood in proper context, 

this wasn’t a ban on “any hearsay questions,” as Kuttner 

now contends.

In short, the judge’s discovery limitations were entirely 

reasonable responses to the litigation conduct of Kuttner’s 

counsel. We find no abuse of discretion.

 

burdens that would necessarily flow from opening eight additional years 

of personnel records to discovery so late in the litigation.

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10 No. 14-3812

B. Summary Judgment

We review the judge’s summary-judgment ruling de novo, giving Kuttner the benefit of all reasonable inferences. 

Huang v. Cont’l Cas. Co., 754 F.3d 447, 450 (7th Cir. 2014). 

Kuttner never specifically articulated which evidentiary path 

she was pursuing to support her claims that she was fired 

and denied a promotion on account of her sex. It’s clear, 

however, that she has no direct proof of discrimination. See 

Collins v. Am. Red Cross, 715 F.3d 994, 999 (7th Cir. 2013) (The 

“direct” method of proof requires that the plaintiff “provide 

either direct or circumstantial evidence that the employer 

had a discriminatory motivation.”). The default method of 

proving discrimination is the burden-shifting approach of

McDonnell Douglas, which requires the plaintiff to first make 

a prima facie showing that “(1) she is a member of a protected class; (2) she met her employer’s legitimate job expectations; (3) she suffered an adverse employment action; and 

(4) similarly situated employees outside of the protected 

class received more favorable treatment.” Keeton v. Morningstar, Inc., 667 F.3d 877, 884 (7th Cir. 2012).

The district judge concluded that Kuttner failed to satisfy 

the prima facie requirements because she did not identify 

any similarly situated male employee who received more

favorable treatment. That conclusion was sound. Kuttner 

proposed four comparators—Richard Morgan, Philip Lynch, 

Joseph Zbilski, and Edmund Moore—but their misconduct 

wasn’t similar enough to Kuttner’s to make them suitable for 

comparison under the indirect method of proof.

Deputy Morgan received a written reprimand for making 

two personal visits to a female inmate in the jail while in 

uniform. Sergeant Lynch and Deputy Zbilski both distributCase: 14-3812 Document: 28 Filed: 04/14/2016 Pages: 20
No. 14-3812 11

ed expired commissary food to an indigent female inmate; 

Lynch was instructed by a supervisor to discontinue the 

practice, but no discipline followed for either officer.

Sergeant Moore held night employment as a bouncer at a 

bar; he was issued a written reprimand and instructed to 

quit his second job.

On appeal Kuttner points to additional alleged misconduct by Morgan, Zbilski, and Moore. She says that Deputy 

Morgan allowed his girlfriend to dress up in his uniform for 

Halloween; for this he was referred to the Merit Commission, but he was not fired. Kuttner also claims that Deputy 

Zbilski hired an ineligible inmate to operate the commissary,

but no charges were ever brought for this misconduct. 

Finally, she says that Deputy Moore had a romantic relationship with a domestic-violence victim but was not referred to 

the Merit Commission or otherwise reprimanded.

Kuttner’s prima facie case requires a showing of sufficiently analogous misconduct by male officers to support an 

inference that she was treated more harshly because of her 

sex. As the district judge correctly noted, the gravamen of 

the misconduct for which Kuttner was fired was “us[ing her] 

uniform to convey the impression that [she] was acting on 

the authority of the Sheriff’s Office, but was not.” It’s not just 

that Kuttner wore her uniform while off duty or even for 

unofficial purposes; the material point is how the uniform 

was being used—for the improper projection of coercive 

police authority in service of a personal end. That’s what 

differentiates Kuttner’s misconduct from, for example, 

Deputy Morgan’s allowing his girlfriend to wear his uniform 

to a Halloween party or making two personal visits to a 

female inmate in the jail. In Deputy Morgan’s case, there 

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were no allegations of coercion by the use or appearance of 

legal authority.

The remaining instances of misconduct by the male comparators are not remotely analogous to Kuttner’s coercive 

misuse of her uniform. Probably the closest call is Sergeant 

Moore’s night employment providing security at a bar. But 

he was not accused of wearing his uniform at this second 

job, so there was no improper coercion.

Summary judgment is appropriate when the distinctions 

between the plaintiff and the proposed comparators “are so 

significant that they render the comparison effectively 

useless.” See Humphries v. CBOCS W., Inc., 474 F.3d 387, 405 

(7th Cir. 2007). That is the case here. The judge correctly 

granted summary judgment for the sheriff on Kuttner’s 

claim that she was fired because of her sex.

Finally, Kuttner argues that her failure-to-promote claim

should have survived the summary-judgment motion. We 

don’t see how; she never applied for a promotion, nor did 

she allege that a less qualified male officer was promoted

over her during the 300-day limitations period preceding her 

complaint. Rather than contesting this line of reasoning 

directly, Kuttner shifts gears and argues that she “may 

establish a prima facie case using statistical evidence instead 

of comparative evidence pertaining to each class member.” 

There are two glaring problems with this argument: This 

isn’t a class action, and Kuttner hasn’t adduced a shred of 

statistical evidence to support the claim.

AFFIRMED.

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No. 14-3812 13

POSNER, Circuit Judge, dissenting. The plaintiff, a former 

deputy sheriff of DuPage County, Illinois, charges the sheriff

with having filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Merit Commission that led the Commission to fire the plaintiff for an

offense that was almost always less serious, rarely as serious, 

and never more serious than offenses committed by male 

deputy sheriffs that elicited either no punishment or a slap 

on the wrist. If the plaintiff could prove these allegations she 

would be well on her way to proving sex discrimination in 

violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She was 

prevented from proving them by an arbitrary discovery cutoff date of January 1, 2006, imposed by the district judge.

(Other allegations that she made were properly rejected by 

the district court, however.)

She was fired for violating two departmental regulations: 

“Conduct Unbecoming,” and “Wearing of the Uniform” 

when not on duty. Knowing that her partner in a real estate 

brokerage business had lent money that had not been repaid 

when due, she went to the borrower’s home dressed at least 

partially in uniform (a potentially significant qualification 

ignored in the majority opinion, as by the district judge—

one would like to know whether she was wearing enough of 

her deputy sheriff’s uniform to appear to be on duty). Upon 

learning that he was not at home, she left a business card in 

the names of “Susan A. McKinley” and “Team in Focus, DC 

International,” names she uses in her off-duty business activities. She had no financial interest in the repayment of the 

loan, which was unrelated to the partnership.

The Commission’s decision to fire her was based not just

on the incident just described but also on her failing to notify

the sheriff’s department that she had engaged in off-duty 

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14 No. 14-3812

business activity while in uniform, though this may have 

been a common practice of other deputy sheriffs who engage, as a number appear to do, in off-duty business activities. The majority opinion’s description of her wearing her 

uniform (or part of it) off duty as “the improper projection of 

coercive police authority” and “coercive misuse of her uniform” is, however, unsubstantiated. The borrower whom 

she tried to visit was not at home, and so he didn’t see her in 

uniform. His father opened the door to her and told her that 

his son wasn’t at home, but he has not complained that he 

felt intimidated by her visiting in uniform. (For all we know,

father and son knew she was a police officer and expected

her to be wearing a uniform.) If a police officer drops into 

Starbucks in uniform, the uniform does not intimidate the 

barista. So far as appears, no one has complained of being intimidated by the plaintiff. There is no suggestion that she 

ever revisited the borrower’s home.

She’d been hired by the sheriff’s department in 1998; she 

filed this suit in 2010. Because of the January 1, 2006, discovery cut-off date, she was unable to conduct discovery regarding a series of suspected offenses by male sheriff’s deputies committed between her hiring date and the end of 

2005. She listed 21 suspected offenses that she believed had 

been committed by male deputies during that period, including a uniformed officer’s having sex in his squad car 

with the wife of a man whom the officer had arrested for 

domestic battery (she was the victim of the battery); an officer’s dressing his girlfriend in his uniform and parading 

her in a bar, where the couple was seen by other officers

who had been summoned because a fight had broken out; an 

officer who groped and harassed a teenage girl whose mother complained to no avail, and who, while in uniform, reCase: 14-3812 Document: 28 Filed: 04/14/2016 Pages: 20
No. 14-3812 15

fused to pay the full price of or the tax on an item on the 

ground that he was a sheriff’s deputy, and who hired a prostitute for himself and his wife, refused to pay her, and arrested her when she kept insisting on being paid; an officer, 

again in uniform, who demanded a “police price discount” 

and launched an investigation to determine whether a hot

dog that had made him ill had been deliberately tampered 

with because he was an officer; an officer arrested for driving under the influence; an officer who in and out of uniform 

repeatedly beat up his girlfriends and was arrested twice for 

driving under the influence and on one of those occasions 

was found to have cocaine in his car; an officer who while in 

uniform frequented a massage parlor suspected of being a 

brothel and who when he discovered that the sheriff’s office 

was beginning to investigate the parlor is believed to have 

tipped it off; an officer repeatedly accused of sexual harassment and caught viewing pornography on a county computer while on duty and in uniform; another officer who was 

the subject of repeated complaints of sexual harassment; an 

officer who dated a female deputy sheriff who accused him 

of having broken into her apartment after they broke up and 

having on that occasion masturbated on the pillow of her 

bed, all while in uniform; an officer who while in uniform 

hired an ineligible inmate who happened to be a friend of 

the officer’s family to operate the commissary in the sheriff’s 

office; an officer who was caught on a videotape stealing 

from a record store—in uniform.

I’ll spare the reader the other 10 alleged incidents. In 

none of the 21 incidents were the perpetrators fired and 

many were later promoted. Yet every one of the incidents, if 

they were as described in the plaintiff’s allegations—and it’s 

hard to imagine them as sheer fabrications—were either as 

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16 No. 14-3812

serious as, or (more often) considerably more serious than,

the plaintiff’s visit to the home of her partner’s debtor. Indeed, since the person she was trying to visit was not at 

home, he can’t have been intimidated by her uniform (unless 

perhaps his father was—of which there is no indication).

Although the other ground of her being fired was wearing 

her uniform while engaged in business activities, there is no 

indication that her wearing the uniform ever intimidated anyone.

I don’t see how the judges in the majority can say with 

straight faces that the plaintiff “did not identify any similarly 

situated male employee who received more favorable treatment.” She identified more than 21 such favored males (for 

some of the incidents involved more than one officer). 

Granted, these were accusations (though given what we 

know of police behavior, not unbelievable ones), but she was 

given no opportunity to prove them. I also don’t see the relevance of the majority opinion‘s saying, about the deputy 

sheriff who hired an ineligible inmate to operate the sheriff’s

office commissary, that “no charges were ever brought for 

this misconduct”—as if failure to bring charges excused, rather than exacerbated, the misconduct.

The plaintiff’s lawyer was prevented from trying to establish the truth of the accusations against the male deputy 

sheriffs because he was barred by the January 1, 2006, cut-off

date from conducting any discovery relating to the incidents

in question, all of which had occurred before that date. He 

wasn’t even allowed to conduct discovery of just the most 

egregious violations by the male deputy sheriffs, violations

that despite their egregiousness had led to no one’s being

fired and few being punished in any way. At oral argument I 

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No. 14-3812 17

asked the sheriff’s lawyer whether there had been any

changes in the department’s disciplinary standards or procedures, effective at the beginning of 2006, that might have 

made the earlier incidents ancient history; for had the sheriff’s office cleaned up its act by January 1 of that year the 

discovery limit would have been defensible. He replied that 

there had been no such changes. The majority opinion misses this point when it says that the cut-off date “served to 

hone in on possible comparators [awful word] who were 

reasonably likely to have been subject to the same rules, supervisors, and decision-making process as” the plaintiff. 

There is, to repeat, no evidence of a change of rules, supervisors, or the department’s decision-making process in 2006.

The majority opinion approves the January 1, 2006, cutoff date for discovery but gives no reason for its approval, 

though the logical cut-off date would have been when the 

plaintiff was hired in 1998. The cut-off date imposed by the 

district judge and now ratified by this court killed the plaintiff’s case because she was able to identify only four incidents of misconduct by male sheriff’s deputies in the four 

years after the cut-off date, none of which was comparable to 

her misconduct, compared to the 21 incidents that she had 

learned about that had occurred in the eight preceding years 

(1998–2006). Those incidents, summarized earlier in this 

opinion, involved worse misconduct than hers—indeed 

there’s no indication that the plaintiff’s misconduct caused 

harm to anyone or even minor embarrassment to the sheriff’s department.

Had the department cleaned up its act by 2006, the judge 

would have been right to exclude evidence pertaining to earlier misconduct, because the incident that appears to have 

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18 No. 14-3812

triggered the plaintiff’s discharge—the visit to the home of 

the person who owed her partner money—came later. But, 

to repeat, the sheriff’s lawyer acknowledged that nothing 

had changed in 2006, and so there was no reason to ignore 

the earlier misconduct, which was the critical evidence of 

discriminatory treatment of the plaintiff. The majority opinion concedes that the “January 1, 2006 [cut-off] date isn’t 

keyed to any specific facts in the case.” Very odd is the further statement that granting the plaintiff’s motion to reconsider the cut-off date “threatened to impose a massive new 

burden on the defendants with only a few weeks remaining 

until the discovery cutoff.” If the department needed more 

time, the judge could have extended the cut-off date. In the 

unlikely event that discovery regarding all 21 incidents 

would have placed a crushing burden on the sheriff’s office 

(more likely it would have led the office to clean out the Augean stables at last), the judge could have limited the discovery, at least to begin with, to the most serious of the 21 incidents.

One of the pre-2006 incidents that the plaintiff wanted to 

explore involved the officer who had dressed his girlfriend 

in his uniform and paraded her in a bar. His only post-cutoff offense (2008), or at least the only offense of which he 

was accused, was making personal visits to a female detainee in the county jail, in uniform of course. For this misconduct he was issued a written reprimand, even though the 

misconduct was styled “abuse of position.” It is hard to 

square his written reprimand with the plaintiff’s being fired 

for a less serious offense, especially since he was a recidivist 

and she a first offender, who could expect to be treated more 

leniently. As for the three other incidents of misbehavior by 

male deputy sheriffs after the 2006 cut-off date, one led to a 

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No. 14-3812 19

written reprimand, another to no disciplinary action, and the 

third to a mere admonition to the deputy sheriff to desist

from repeating the infractions.

The arbitrary discovery cut-off date was the district 

court’s worst mistake, but there were two other serious mistakes as well, both ignored in the majority opinion. One was 

to base the cut-off date on annoyance at what the judge 

deemed abuses by the plaintiff’s lawyer—and there were a 

few, such as asking to see the personnel file of the sheriff’s 

wife. But the proper response to those abuses would have 

been to order the lawyer to shape up, and if necessary to fine 

him for his contumacy; the tight cut-off date arbitrarily punished his client. Second, the judge refused to allow the lawyer to ask any questions intended to elicit hearsay testimony.

The lawyer wanted to ask members of the sheriff’s department whether they’d heard mention of misconduct committed by other members. An answer to such a question would 

be hearsay. But as the district judge seems to have overlooked, the version of Fed. R. Civ. P. 26 in force during the 

district court proceedings permitted hearsay in discovery if 

it held reasonable prospects of leading to admissible evidence. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) (the rule was changed effective December 1, 2015, but final judgment in the district 

court in the present case had been entered on December 4, 

2014, and anyway the new rule provides that “discovery 

need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable”);

Northwestern Memorial Hospital v. Ashcroft, 362 F.3d 923, 930 

(7th Cir. 2004); Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 

340, 350–51 (1978). Given the difficulty of discovering misconduct that does not give rise to a written report, the judge 

should have allowed inquiry into the knowledge possessed 

Case: 14-3812 Document: 28 Filed: 04/14/2016 Pages: 20
20 No. 14-3812

by witnesses concerning possible misconduct by sheriff’s 

deputies.

The combination of the arbitrary cut-off date and the discovery hearsay bar was fatal to a promising case of disparate 

treatment based on gender. And “promising” is an understatement. It is a virtual certainty that the plaintiff was disciplined far more harshly than male counterparts who engaged in far more egregious conduct—far more harshly because she’s a woman. The DuPage County Sheriff’s Office is 

or at least was a boy’s club.

We should be reversing and remanding to permit further 

discovery, not affirming.

Case: 14-3812 Document: 28 Filed: 04/14/2016 Pages: 20