Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03807/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03807-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jacquelyn M. Carlson
Appellant
Christian Brothers Services
Appellee
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Amicus Curiae

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-3807

JACQUELYN M. CARLSON,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CHRISTIAN BROTHERS SERVICES,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 15 C 1154 — John Robert Blakey, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 — DECIDED OCTOBER 27, 2016

____________________

Before POSNER, FLAUM, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff filed this suit against 

her former employer, defendant Christian Brothers Services

(the parties refer to it as CBS), charging disability discrimination. CBS is a religious organization headquartered near 

Chicago that provides health and a number of other services 

to the Roman Catholic community in Illinois, other parts of 

the United States, and Canada. See Christian Brothers Services, www.cbservices.org (visited Oct. 26, 2016, as were the 

Case: 15-3807 Document: 37 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 5
2 No. 15-3807

other websites cited in this opinion). The plaintiff, a senior 

customer service representative of the defendant, was in an 

automobile accident in March 2011 as a result of which she 

had to use a cane, and limped, and she was fired on February 1, 2012, because (she contends) of a perceived disability 

(mobility impairment) caused by the accident that had required her to take time off from work and to use her health 

insurance to pay the costs she’d incurred as a result of the 

accident. She argues that in these circumstances her employer’s firing her violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Act requires a complainant to submit a charge of discrimination to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) within a statutory deadline—here 300 days

from the alleged incident of discrimination—and to receive a 

right to sue notice from the EEOC, before suing. 42 U.S.C. 

§§ 2000e-5(e)(1), (f)(1). The district judge granted summary 

judgment for CBS on the ground that the plaintiff had failed 

to submit a charge in time and therefore could not maintain 

her suit.

Six months after being fired she filed with the Illinois 

Department of Human Rights (IDHR) (which administers 

the Illinois Human Rights Act, 775 ILCS 5/1 et seq., which 

like the ADA prohibits discrimination on grounds of disability) a “Complainant Information Sheet” (the parties call it a 

“CIS”), which asks the complainant for basic information 

about his or her claim. On the basis of the CIS IDHR decides 

whether it has jurisdiction and if it does it copies the information in the CIS on to an official charge form, which the 

filer can sign and submit. The CIS also asks the complainant 

to check a box if the employer has more than 15 employees 

in Illinois, and to check another box if the employer has 

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No. 15-3807 3

more than 15 employees in the United States; Carlson 

checked both boxes.

IDHR has a worksharing agreement with EEOC, whereby a charge filed with IDHR is automatically cross-filed with 

EEOC. But a complaint of discrimination—the document the 

plaintiff filed with IDHR—is not a charge. A charge is the 

administrative equivalent of a complaint filed in court; a CIS 

is not unless it asks for relief and thus functions as a charge.

Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki, 552 U.S. 389, 402 (2008). 

Without such a request the CIS is just a pre-charge screening 

form, which does not prompt IDHR to notify the employer, 

launch an investigation, or sponsor mediation between the 

parties—filing a charge form does. IDHR, “Charge Process,”

www.illinois.gov/dhr/FilingaCharge/Pages/Intake.aspx; 

IDHR, “Path of a Charge,” www.illinois.gov/dhr/Filinga

Charge/Pages/Path_of_a_Charge.aspx. But the CIS filer may 

believe that the filing will nudge the person or entity complained of to settle with the complainant on terms favorable 

to the latter, thus sparing the complainant the cost and time 

and anxiety of a contested proceeding.

There was no pre-charge settlement with CBS, however,

or so far as appears any negotiation. Carlson’s lawyer did 

contact IDHR in 2012 about the possibility of mediation, but 

nothing came of it. Instead on March 5, 2013, the plaintiff 

filed a Charge of Discrimination with IDHR, copy to EEOC. 

But that was 398 days after she’d been fired, and the deadline to file a charge with the EEOC when the complainant

had initially instituted a proceeding with a state or local

agency is 300 days. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–5(e)(1). Carlson thus 

had failed to exhaust her administrative remedies—a preCase: 15-3807 Document: 37 Filed: 10/27/2016 Pages: 5
4 No. 15-3807

requisite to suit—and so the district judge dismissed her suit 

as untimely.

She had filed the CIS within the deadline, however, and 

argues that it was a charge and therefore timely. And although her CIS states “THIS IS NOT A CHARGE,” the EEOC 

deems a charge sufficient when it is a “written statement sufficiently precise to identify the parties, and to describe generally the action or practice complained of,” 29 C.F.R.

§ 1601.12(b), and Carlson’s CIS meets those requirements. It 

identifies the parties—Carlson and Christian Brothers Services—and states that she was fired for “us[ing] a cane at 

work,” “walk[ing] with a limp,” and “taking time off from 

work and for using [her] health insurance to pay for the severe car accident [she had experienced] ... in March 2011.”

But the CIS did not request remedial action, and so was not a 

charge. Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki, supra, 552 U.S. at 

402.

The plaintiff contends that what nevertheless made the 

CIS a charge was the statement in it that it “authorize[s] 

EEOC to look into the discrimination alleged.” But that is a 

far cry from a “charge” as the word is ordinarily understood. 

Although the CIS form does say that IDHR will cross-file the 

complainant’s “charge of discrimination” with EEOC, it also 

says “THIS IS NOT A CHARGE,” followed immediately by 

the statement that “if IDHR accepts your claim, we will send 

you a charge form for signature.” And while it’s true that 29 

C.F.R. § 1601.12(b) states that “a charge may be amended to 

cure technical defects or omissions, including failure to verify the charge, or to clarify and amplify allegations made 

therein” and that “such amendments ... will relate back to 

the date the charge was first received,” her CIS contained 

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No. 15-3807 5

more than a technical defect if conceived of as a charge because it requested no relief and the statement on the form 

that we quoted above—“if IDHR accepts your claim, we will 

send you a charge form for signature”—makes clear that the 

claim was merely a prelude to a charge, and not the charge 

itself; and a prelude to what turned out to be nothing.

Despite all this, the EEOC has submitted an amicus curiae brief in which it argues that the plaintiff’s CIS was the 

equivalent of a charge—thus ignoring what the Supreme 

Court said in Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki, supra, 552 

U.S. at 402—that a charge must request relief, and the plaintiff’s CIS did not. The EEOC argues that by filing the CIS 

Carlson consented to the disclosure of her personal information to her employer, which shows she wanted remedial 

action. But the CIS says “if IDHR takes a charge based on the 

information provided, I consent for IDHR to disclose my 

identity and personal information” (emphasis added). It’s 

true that eventually the plaintiff filed a charge, but it was untimely. And she can’t plead ignorance of legal technicalities, 

because she was represented by counsel throughout.

The decision of the district court must therefore be, and 

it is, 

AFFIRMED.

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