Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-09-03626/USCOURTS-ca7-09-03626-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
City of Chicago
Appellee
Gregory Stinnett
Appellant

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 09-3626

GREGORY STINNETT,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 08 C 709—Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.

ARGUED NOVEMBER 9, 2010—DECIDED JANUARY 4, 2011

Before POSNER, TINDER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Gregory Stinnett, an Ambulance

Commander in the Chicago Fire Department, brought

suit against the City, charging that its failure to promote

him to Field Officer in the department’s emergency

medical services division discriminated against him

because of his race (he is black), in violation of Title

VII. The district judge granted summary judgment for

the City.

Case: 09-3626 Document: 27 Filed: 01/04/2011 Pages: 9
2 No. 09-3626

Stinnett had taken the Field Officer promotional exam

in 2000. An applicant’s score on the exam, together with

his seniority, determined his ranking on the 2000 Field

Officer eligibility list. On the basis of his score and his

seniority Stinnett was ranked 32. Two white Ambulance

Commanders, Byrne and Kaveney, were ranked 29 and

31 respectively. Actually all three had identical scores on

the exam, but Byrne and Kaveney had more seniority

than Stinnett, which is why their composite scores exceeded his and thus propelled them above him on

the eligibility list.

The number of names on the list exceeded the number

of vacancies in the ranks of Field Officers. The fire department went to the list eight times to fill vacancies.

The last time—February 16, 2007—the department promoted Byrne and Kaveney (number 30 on the list,

having retired in the interim, was not promoted, making

way for Byrne, number 29). Stinnett was next in line

for promotion but the department made no more promotions from the 2000 list.

In December 2006, shortly before those promotions,

the department had announced that there would be a

new exam for promotion to Field Officer and that it

would be given on March 23, 2007, five weeks after the

last promotions (those of Byrne and Kaveney) from the

old list. Stinnett took the new exam, and his score on

it, combined with his seniority, placed him 48th on the

2007 Field Officer eligibility list. When he brought suit

on February 1, 2008, he had not yet been promoted; and

as far as we know, he still has not been. The month

after he sued, the fire department promoted eleven AmCase: 09-3626 Document: 27 Filed: 01/04/2011 Pages: 9
No. 09-3626 3

bulance Commanders on the new eligibility list to Field

Officer but not Stinnett, who was far down on the list.

Those were the first promotions from the new list.

McDonnell Douglas entitles a plaintiff in a Title VII case

to a trial if (so far as pertains to this case) he can show

that he was qualified for a promotion but was denied

it and instead a member of a different race who was

“similarly situated” to him got the promotion, unless

the defendant articulates (and the plaintiff fails to rebut)

a nondiscriminatory reason for promoting that other

person. The district judge cut off Stinnett at the threshold, ruling that Byrne and Kaveney were not similarly

situated to Stinnett because they ranked higher than he

on the 2000 eligibility list, and that the eleven Ambulance Commanders promoted ahead of him in 2008

(some of whom were white) were not similarly situated

to him either, because they ranked higher than he on the

2007 eligibility list.

The precise meaning of “similarly situated” is critical

in many employment discrimination cases in which the

plaintiff is relying on the approach authorized by

McDonnell Douglas, because if the term is defined too

narrowly discrimination will go unremedied and if too

broadly plaintiffs will be able to avoid summary judgment in the defendant’s favor too easily. This case illustrates both dangers. The second involves Stinnett’s effort

to compare himself to all the whites promoted ahead

of him. If everyone who qualifies for promotion to a

particular position is deemed by virtue of that fact similarly situated to everyone else, then two requirements

of the prima facie case authorized by McDonnell Douglas—

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4 No. 09-3626

proof that the plaintiff was qualified for the position

he sought and proof that he was similarly situated to

the person who got the position in his place—collapse

into one. The fact that Stinnett was not promoted

even though he had done well enough on the exam to

get on the 2000 eligibility list thus does not show that

those promoted ahead of him were similarly situated to

him, Grayson v. City of Chicago, 317 F.3d 745, 749 (7th

Cir. 2003); White v. Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, 429 F.3d 232, 243 (6th Cir. 2005), especially since all

of them ranked above him on the promotional lists. This

could be compelling evidence that he was not similarly

situated to them, Jones v. City of Springfield, 554 F.3d 669,

671-72 (7th Cir. 2009), though that would depend on how

rigidly the employer was committed to hiring on the

basis of an employee’s position on the list, since other

qualifications might outweigh a lower ranking. Torgerson

v. City of Rochester, 605 F.3d 584, 596 (8th Cir. 2010). Still,

it is at least clear that Stinnett was not entitled to be promoted ahead of competitors for promotion who ranked

higher than he.

It would be different had he presented evidence that

the promotional exams were biased in favor of whites,

42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(k)(1)(A)(i); Adams v. City of Chicago,

469 F.3d 609, 613 (7th Cir. 2006), or that the scores on

the exams had been altered, or the exams deliberately

manipulated in some other way, to favor whites. Brown

v. Alabama Dep’t of Transportation, 597 F.3d 1160, 1176-77

(11th Cir. 2010). Such evidence would provide a route

alternative to that of McDonnell Douglas to establishing

a prima facie case of discrimination. Stinnett presented

no such evidence.

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No. 09-3626 5

But with respect to the promotion of Byrne and

Kaveney—that is, comparing Stinnett only to those two

and not to them plus whites promoted, also ahead of

him, from the subsequent list—his case is different. There

were vacancies in the ranks of the Field Officers when

the fire department stopped filling vacancies from the

2000 list after promoting Byrne and Kaveney. Stinnett,

the black man, was the next on the list. Had the department filled just one more vacancy from that list he

would be a Field Officer today.

The district judge’s ruling that Stinnett was not

similarly situated to Byrne and Kaveney and therefore

his case fails at the threshold takes too narrow a view of

what it means to be similarly situated. Stinnett is not

arguing that he should have been promoted ahead of

Byrne or Kaveney; he does not question the legitimacy

of a ranking system that placed him below them. His

argument is that the department should not have

stopped filling vacancies from the 2000 list when it

reached his name. The employer had a well-established

practice of filling a vacancy for Field Officer by

promoting the highest-ranking person on the current

eligibility list. This made Stinnett similarly situated to

Byrne and Kaveney because the relevant similarity was

the similarity of persons eligible for the next promotion.

All three were eligible; all three would have been promoted had the department not stopped filling vacancies

from the 2000 list the day they promoted Byrne and

Kaveney. Indeed, Stinnett would have been promoted

had the department filled one more vacancy from the

2000 list even if Byrne and Kaveney had been vastly

Case: 09-3626 Document: 27 Filed: 01/04/2011 Pages: 9
6 No. 09-3626

more qualified than he—of which there is no evidence;

their higher positions on the list were due solely to

their greater seniority and the record does not reveal

how much greater that was; if they were more senior

by just a few days or weeks that would not be evidence

that they were better qualified for promotion than Stinnett.

Since, despite being similarly situated to Byrne and

Kaveney, Stinnett was treated worse than either of

them, and he is black and they are white, it behooved

the City to give a reason or reasons for the difference

in treatment. The reason it gave is that like other employers it does not use the same eligibility list till the

end of time, for then new employees would never be

eligible for promotion. Employers therefore update

their eligibility lists from time to time. There is nothing

invidious about such updating. Deveraux v. City of

Chicago, 14 F.3d 328, 331 (7th Cir. 1994). It has no

tendency to favor one racial or other protected group

over another, though when an employer updates an

eligibility list the ranking a person had on the previous

list may change. By the end of 2006 the fire department’s

2000 list was obsolete. The department wanted to change

to a system in which a new exam would be given, and a

new eligibility list compiled, every three years. Because of

the time it would take, beginning in 2006, to design and

administer a new exam, score the results, and compile a

new eligibility list, promotions from a new list would not

be made (as it turned out) until 2008. It thus was past time,

in 2006 when the decision was made to create a new

list, and February 2007, when the last promotions from

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No. 09-3626 7

the old list were made, for a new list to be created

from which to make all further promotions.

A black employee was next on the list to be promoted

when the old list was shelved. But given the racial composition of that list, the fact that he was black and the

two officers who were promoted just before the door

slammed shut were white could easily have been due

to chance. Of the 54 persons on the 2000 eligibility list,

only 11 percent were black; the race of 2 percent is undisclosed, so the minimum percentage of nonblacks was 87

percent (87 percent + 2 percent + 11 percent = 100 percent)

and the maximum percentage of blacks was 13 percent.

This made the probability that two persons in a row who

were promoted (Byrne and Kaveney) were not black at

least 76 percent (.87 × .87), and the probability that the

next person on the list was black at most 13 percent.

These probabilities do not support an inference of deliberately stopping short to prevent a black person from

being promoted; in the terminology of McDonnell

Douglas they do not show that the decision to make

further promotions from a new list was a pretext (a lie)

designed to conceal racial discrimination.

And because Byrne and Kaveney ranked above

Stinnett on an eligibility list not contended to be

racially biased, their being promoted ahead of him was

not a suspicious circumstance either. It would be suspicious if when they were promoted there had been an

additional vacancy that could have been filled at that time.

But when Byrne and Kaveney were promoted there

was final budgetary approval for only two promotions.

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8 No. 09-3626

Later, money for additional ones became available, but

later was after the deadline for registering to take the

new exam, and all promotions were suspended until the

exam was graded and a new eligibility list prepared.

Although Byrne and Kaveney were promoted after

it was decided to create a new eligibility list, the department had submitted a request for approval of two promotions to Field Officer before the decision to create a new

list was made.

The new exam was administered in March 2007 and

the last promotions (Byrne and Kaveney) from the old

list were made in February. It would have been odd,

given the new exam, to have continued filling vacancies

from the old eligibility list, especially since the City’s

practice had been to promote Ambulance Commanders

from the 2000 list only once each year and the promotions

for 2007 had already been made. No additional promotions

were made until the following March, when the new

list was available.

The clincher is that Deputy Fire Commissioner Noy,

who made the decision to stop promoting from

the 2000 list in February 2007, testified that he

hadn’t yet been informed who was on the list, and so

couldn’t have known that the next person on the list

was black. There was no credible evidence contradicting

his testimony. The absence of such evidence is crucial

because we give no weight to remarks by the district

court and by the City in its brief that Noy is himself

black, the suggestion being that a black supervisor

should be presumed not to discriminate against a black

Case: 09-3626 Document: 27 Filed: 01/04/2011 Pages: 9
No. 09-3626 9

underling. That is not a proper presumption. Castaneda v.

Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 499 (1977); Haywood v. Lucent Technologies, Inc., 323 F.3d 524, 530 (7th Cir. 2003); see also

Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 78-

79 (1998). A black supervisor might well yield to pressure to promote a white over a black, just as a male

supervisor might well yield to pressure to increase the

percentage of women in his division. Nevertheless, for

the reasons we've explained, the judgment in favor of

the employer must be

AFFIRMED.

1-4-11

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