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Parties Involved:
Green Bay Area Public School District
Appellee
Nora E. Robles
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted April 14, 2015*

Decided April 14, 2015

Before

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

No. 14‐2091

NORA E. ROBLES,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

GREEN BAY AREA PUBLIC  

SCHOOL DISTRICT,

Defendant‐Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 12‐C‐1172

William C. Griesbach,

Chief Judge.

O R D E R

Nora Robles, an uncertified teacher, was hired by the Green Bay Area Public School

District to teach a bilingual kindergarten class at Howe Elementary School for one

academic year (2009 to 2010). This was Robles’s first year of teaching, and after just six

months the school district changed her position to that of substitute teacher, citing poor

performance. Robles was fired one month later. She sued under Title VII of the Civil

                                                 

* 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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. 14‐2091    Page 2

Rights Act of 1964, see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e‐2(a), claiming that the school district had

discriminated against her because she is Hispanic. The district court granted summary

judgment for the school district, and Robles appeals. We affirm the judgment.

The school district moved for summary judgment on the ground that the only

conclusion reasonably to be drawn from the uncontested evidence is that Robles first

was relegated to a substitute‐teaching position and then fired not because she is

Hispanic but because she had failed to meet the school district’s legitimate performance

expectations. As evidence, the school district submitted (1) declarations from the

principal of Howe Elementary, the district’s assistant superintendent of human

resources, the associate director of the district’s English Language Learner Program, and

a principal from a neighboring school who had been consulted about Robles’s job

performance; (2) notes taken by these declarants while meeting with Robles and

observing her in the classroom; (3) excerpts from Robles’s deposition; and

(4) employment agreements signed by Robles.  

The school district’s evidence describes problems with Robles from the get‐go.

The school principal states in her declaration that she had received complaints early in

the year from teachers and staff that Robles was violating school policy by leaving the

building without signing out, that she was late to parent‐teacher conferences, that she

was bringing her children to the school during working hours, and that she was walking

around barefoot in the halls. Over the following months, the principal along with the

associate director of the language program and the principal of the neighboring school

observed Robles’s classroom performance at various times and expressed concerns to

her during meetings. All three administrators agreed that Robles’s performance was

unsatisfactory. The associate director’s declaration, for example, describes Robles’s

classroom as “chaotic.” And the declarations of both principals state that Robles

appeared to have no lesson plans. In the opinion of the second principal—who had nine

years’ experience teaching bilingual classes and regularly provided support to bilingual

educators in the school district—Robles’s “performance was still lacking” five months

into the school year, as she had “poor classroom management and poor lesson planning

and instruction.”  

The assistant superintendent of human resources explains in his declaration that

Robles, because of her poor performance, was reassigned to the position of substitute

teacher, though retaining the same salary. If on a particular day no assignment as a

substitute teacher was available, Robles was to report to the school district’s offices to be

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given other tasks. The week after her reassignment, Robles violated school district policy

by missing work two days in a row without reporting her absences. When Robles

returned to work, the assistant superintendent says, they met to discuss the absences,

which Robles attributed to illness. The assistant superintendent did not believe her (a

colleague had told him that Robles was visiting her union’s lawyer). After this, the

declaration continues, Robles left the meeting during a break and never returned. Two

weeks later, the assistant superintendent notified Robles in writing that she was being

fired for, among other reasons, “failing to report an absence,” “lying during an

employment investigation,” and leaving the meeting during working hours without

permission.

Robles conceded that she lacks direct evidence of discrimination but maintained

that her evidence establishes a prima facie case of employment discrimination under the

indirect method of proof recognized in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792

(1973). But the only evidence submitted by Robles—who was represented by a lawyer

throughout the proceedings in district court—is her own declaration. In that declaration

Robles disagrees with the school district’s contention that her performance as a teacher

was subpar. Teachers who are not Hispanic, she insists, were scrutinized less and, unlike

her, permitted to roam the school barefoot and bring their children to work. Robles did

not dispute, however, the principal’s sworn statement that she was unaware of similar

transgressions by other teachers. Nor did Robles contend that the school district had

relegated her to substitute teaching or fired her because she had walked around barefoot

or because she had brought her kids to school. Based on her declaration alone, Robles

insisted that the employment expectations set by the school district were not legitimate.

She also argued that the declarations submitted by the school district should be

discounted as “self‐serving.”  

In granting summary judgment for the defendant, the district judge reasoned that

Robles had not made a prima facie case of discrimination because she lacks evidence that

she was satisfying the school district’s legitimate job expectations. The judge explained

that maintaining order in the classroom and executing lesson plans are legitimate

expectations and noted that “there was unanimity among the observers that Robles was

unable or unwilling” to improve her performance to meet these expectations. Moreover,

the judge continued, the observers—particularly the second principal, who is

Hispanic—could not “be expected to have any kind of anti‐Hispanic animus.”

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On appeal Robles (now pro se) repeats that, unlike her, other teachers who are not

Hispanic also brought their children to work and walked barefoot around the school.

These teachers were not disciplined, which in Robles’s view shows that the school

district discriminated against her because she is Hispanic. This contention is a red

herring. Robles was not removed from the classroom or fired for walking barefoot or for

bringing her children to work. Rather, the school district presented undisputed evidence

that she was consigned to substitute teaching because her performance—her lesson

planning and classroom management—was not in line with the school district’s

legitimate expectations.  

Robles’s only reply to the evidence of her performance issues is that she “worked

to the best of her abilities to comply with the . . . school district’s expectations.” We grant

that she did, but Robles’s opinion that her best efforts should have satisfied her

employer does not get her past summary judgment. See Sklyarsky v. Means‐Knaus

Partners, L.P., 777 F.3d 892, 897 (7th Cir. 2015); Sublett v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 463 F.3d

731, 740 (7th Cir. 2006). And Robles offered no evidence from which a jury could infer

that the school district demanded that Hispanic teachers perform better in the classroom

than other teachers. See Montgomery v. American Airlines, Inc., 626 F.3d 382, 394 (7th Cir.

2010); Peele v. Country Mut. Ins. Co., 288 F.3d 319, 331 (7th Cir. 2002).

In closing, we comment briefly on the district judge’s statement that the Hispanic

principal of the neighboring school could not “be expected to have any kind of

anti‐Hispanic animus.” One might read this as a suggestion that it would be impossible

for the principal to discriminate against Robles because they are both Hispanic—a

suggestion that is incorrect. See Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 78

(1998); Williams v. Wendler, 530 F.3d 584, 587 (7th Cir. 2008); Bibby v. Philadelphia Coca Cola

Bottling Co., 260 F.3d 257, 261–62 (3d Cir. 2001). We do not, however, read the judge’s

statement to be implying the impossibility of discrimination among members of the

same group. And in any event, the judge was correct to conclude that there is no

evidence that the school district’s adverse employment actions against Robles were

motivated by her being Hispanic.

AFFIRMED.  

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