Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02476/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02476-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 445
Nature of Suit: Americans with Disabilities Act - Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted February 17, 2015*

Decided February 18, 2015

Before

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

JOHN DANIEL TINDER, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 14‐2476

SHARON HOLYFIELD‐COOPER,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE

CITY OF CHICAGO,

Defendant‐Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Northern District of

Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 13 C 3625

Ronald A. Guzmán,

Judge.

O R D E R

Sharon Holyfield‐Cooper, a former Chicago public school teacher with hearing

loss, appeals the grant of summary judgment for the Board of Education in this suit

asserting claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, see 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). We

affirm.

                                                 

* After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral

argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.

See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 14‐2476    Page 2

Holyfield‐Cooper was hired in August 2008 by Katherine Tobias, the principal at

George Washington Carver Elementary School in Chicago, to become assistant principal.   

The two women soon thereafter attended a training session at which the Board’s

nepotism policy was discussed, and Holyfield‐Cooper says that she told Tobias at this

time about her hearing loss. (She wears hearing aids.) Several weeks later Tobias

removed Holyfield‐Cooper from her position after learning that Holyfield‐Cooper had a

cousin who worked at Carver and would be under her supervision, in violation of the

nepotism policy. At that time Holyfield‐Cooper accepted Tobias’s offer to take on

teaching duties.   

In December 2008 Holyfield‐Cooper met with Tobias, who raised certain

classroom‐management concerns, including complaints from students that

Holyfield‐Cooper sometimes could not hear them or would even ignore them. Tobias

asked Holyfield‐Cooper not to turn her hearing aids off or down while she was in the

classroom.

During the 2009–10 school year, Holyfield‐Cooper twice violated school policies.

First, Holyfield‐Cooper received a 5‐day suspension when she gave false statements

during an investigation of a report she filed against Assistant Principal Wanda Withers,

whom she accused of hitting a student, and after she left her students unattended in

violation of school policy. In the notice of pre‐discipline hearing, Tobias wrote, among

other things: “Per our conversation last year, you were asked to wear your hearing aid at

all times. Daily observations by administrators, staff members, and students continue to

prove that you refuse to wear your hearing aid and therefore are jeopardizing student’s

safety, education, and your job performance.” Holyfield‐Cooper violated school policy a

second time when she pushed an uncooperative student. After investigating the incident

by interviewing students, Withers reported Holyfield‐Cooper to the Department of

Child and Family Services.

In November 2009 Holyfield‐Cooper filed her first charge with the EEOC, claiming

that she was demoted in 2008 and suspended because Tobias was discriminating against

her on account of her hearing loss.

During the 2010‐2011 school year, Holyfield‐Cooper was suspended for 14 days

for failing to properly supervise students. In one incident Holyfield‐Cooper failed to

intervene when a fight in her classroom broke out and left a student with two black eyes

and a fractured nose. After this suspension (and on Tobias’s recommendation), the

Board warned Holyfield‐Cooper that she was at risk of dismissal if her performance did

not improve.   

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No. 14‐2476    Page 3

Holyfield‐Cooper filed an amended charge with the EEOC in July 2011, claiming

that administrators were retaliating against her for complaining of discrimination in 2009.

Holyfield‐Cooper resigned at the end of the 2012 school year, after Tobias had

lowered her “efficiency rating” from excellent to unsatisfactory. Tobias justified the

changed mark based on the two suspensions and an incident in October 2011 when

Holyfield‐Cooper failed to apprise the school of an upcoming absence. The lower rating

required Holyfield‐Cooper to engage in a remediation plan, but she instead stopped

coming to work in April and resigned ten days later.   

Holyfield‐Cooper then filed her third EEOC charge in January 2013 claiming that

Tobias suspended her the second time and marked her down because of her hearing loss.

Holyfield‐Cooper brought this suit under the ADA in May 2013, asserting that she

was constructively discharged, subjected to both discrimination and retaliation, and

exposed to a hostile work environment—all because of her disability. Holyfield‐Cooper

claimed that Tobias discriminated against her based on her disability when she

(1) transferred her to a teaching position soon after learning about her hearing loss and

(2) did not discipline similarly situated teachers who had classroom management

problems. Holyfield‐Cooper also asserted that she was retaliated against for

complaining of discrimination in 2009 when she was suspended twice, when Tobias

alleged that she was absent without approval and lowered her efficiency rating, and

when the Board failed to provide a remediation plan. Finally Holyfield‐Cooper asserted

that Tobias’s actions created a hostile work environment and constructively forced her to

resign her position.   

The district court granted the Board’s motion for summary judgment. Regarding

her claim of discrimination in connection with her August 2008 transfer, the court found

the claim untimely because she did not file her first EEOC charge until November 2009,

more than 300 days later. Holyfield‐Cooper also failed to establish a prima facie case of

discrimination based on her punishment for poor classroom management because she

produced no evidence showing that the teachers whom she identified as receiving better

treatment were similarly situated to her. Holyfield‐Cooper’s retaliation claim failed, the

court continued, because she presented no evidence of a causal connection between her

protected activity and the adverse employment actions. Finally, Holyfield‐Cooper’s

claims of hostile work environment and constructive discharge failed because she

produced no evidence that the actions were motivated by her hearing loss, or that the

alleged harassment was severe or pervasive.

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Holyfield‐Cooper moved for reconsideration, arguing that the district court did not

consider all of the exhibits that she had attached to her summary judgment motion, and

in particular a student letter that, she says, corroborates her report about Withers hitting

a student. The court had stricken the exhibits from her submissions at summary

judgment because they contained unredacted students’ names. Although the redacted

versions of those same exhibits already were attached to her complaint, the district court

invited Holyfield‐Cooper to file the exhibits a second time within 21 days if she had the

names redacted. Thirteen days later, however, the court granted summary judgment for

the Board. In denying the motion to reconsider, the district court stated tersely that it

had “considered all relevant documents in ruling on the defendant’s motion for

summary judgment.”

On appeal, Holyfield‐Cooper maintains that the district court did not consider the

exhibits that were stricken from her submissions at summary judgment. It is true that the

district court did not elaborate what conclusions it may have drawn from the stricken

documents, but the court already had access to a redacted version of the exhibits and

emphasized that it had considered all relevant documents. Further, even if the judge had

not considered these documents, Holyfield‐Cooper has not shown that she could have

been prejudiced by the judge’s failure to do so.

Holyfield‐Cooper next invokes equitable tolling as a ground to challenge the

determination that the claim based on her job transfer was time‐barred. She maintains

that the 300‐day deadline should be tolled because she did not discover that the transfer

was related to her hearing loss until some unidentified later date. But equitable tolling

does not apply because Holyfield‐Cooper had the information necessary to realize that

any possible claim arose in August 2008, when she was transferred to a teaching position

(and by which time Tobias had already become aware of her hearing loss). See Jones v.

Res‐Care, Inc., 613 F.3d 665, 670 (7th Cir. 2010); Beamon v. Marshall & Ilsley Trust Co., 411

F.3d 854, 860–61 (7th Cir. 2005).

Holyfield‐Cooper disputes the conclusion that she failed to establish a prima facie

case of discrimination by not identifying similarly situated teachers who had been

treated better than she. Holyfield‐Cooper states that Tobias and three veteran teachers

received better treatment when: (1) between 1989 and 2004 Tobias and her sister were

allowed to work at Carver together, which violated the nepotism policy; and (2) the

three teachers had difficulty supervising students and were not reprimanded. But as the

district court rightly concluded, Holyfield‐Cooper presented no evidence to show that

these persons were “directly comparable to [her] in all material respects,” by, for

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example, demonstrating that they “held the same position, had the same supervisor,

[were] subject to the same standards, and engaged in similar conduct.” Alexander v.

Casino Queen, Inc., 739 F.3d 972, 981 (7th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks omitted);

see Cung Hnin v. TOA (USA), LLC, 751 F.3d 499, 504–05 (7th Cir. 2014).

Holyfield‐Cooper next challenges the court’s rejection of her retaliation claim and

points to evidence that Tobias reacted to her EEOC charge by unfairly evaluating her

and failing to give her a remediation plan. But notably, as the district court explained,

Holyfield‐Cooper did not offer evidence that Tobias or the Board retaliated against her

because she complained of discrimination. See Hancock v. Potter, 531 F.3d 474, 479 (7th Cir.

2008). Instead, Holyfield‐Cooper relies only on the timing of her EEOC filing and the

subsequent discipline. But suspicious timing alone is not enough to support a finding of

causation. See Cung Hnin, 751 F.3d at 508; Henry v. Milwaukee County, 539 F.3d 573,

587 & n.11 (7th Cir. 2008).

Finally, Holyfield‐Cooper renews her argument that the disciplinary actions taken

against her created a hostile work environment and constituted a constructive discharge.

Even if we assume that she could bring a hostile work environment claim under the

ADA, see Lloyd v. Swifty Transp., Inc., 552 F.3d 594, 603 (7th Cir. 2009) (declining to decide

whether hostile work environment claim is actionable under the ADA),

Holyfield‐Cooper did not offer evidence that hostility toward her disability motivated

the disciplinary actions taken against her. See Beamon v. Marshall Ilsley Trust Co., 411 F.3d

854, 863–64 (7th Cir. 2005); Kersting v. Wal‐Mart Stores, Inc., 250 F.3d 1109, 1115 (7th Cir.

2001). Nor did she offer evidence that these events (or warnings not to turn off her

hearing aids in the classroom) were sufficiently egregious to support claims of hostile

environment or constructive discharge. See Chapin v. Fort‐Rohr Motors, Inc., 621 F.3d 673,

679 (7th Cir. 2010) (stating that work environment must be unendurable to support a

constructive discharge claim); Bennington v. Caterpillar, Inc., 275 F.3d 654, 660 (7th Cir.

2001) (noting that work environment must be objectively and subjectively hostile and

abusive to support claim of harassment).

AFFIRMED.

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