In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-3111 

TODD KURTZHALS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

COUNTY OF DUNN, 

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Western District of Wisconsin. 

No. 18 C 247 — James D. Peterson, Chief Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED MAY 28, 2020 — DECIDED AUGUST 10, 2020 

____________________ 

Before MANION, KANNE, and WOOD, Circuit Judges. 

WOOD, Circuit Judge. Sergeant Todd Kurtzhals worked for 

the Sheriff’s Office of Dunn County, Wisconsin. After he 

threatened physical violence against one of his fellow officers, 

Deputy Dennis Rhead, the Office put him on temporary paid 

administrative leave and ordered him to undergo a fitnessfor-duty evaluation. Kurtzhals was convinced that his supervisors took this course of action because they knew that 

Kurtzhals has a history of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 
2 No. 19-3111 

(PTSD), not because his conduct violated the County’s Workplace Violence Policy and implicated public safety. 

Acting on that conviction, Kurtzhals sued Dunn County 

for employment discrimination in violation of the Americans 

with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12112. The district 

court concluded that no reasonable jury could find that 

Kurtzhals’s PTSD was the “but for” cause of the County’s action or that it was plainly unreasonable for Kurtzhals’s superiors to believe that a fitness-for-duty examination was warranted, and so it granted summary judgment to the County. 

We agree with that assessment and affirm. 

I 

We assess the district court’s grant of summary judgment 

de novo. Hackett v. City of South Bend, 956 F.3d 504, 507 (7th Cir. 

2020). Summary judgment is appropriate where “the movant 

shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact 

and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” 

FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). “In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we construe all facts, and draw all reasonable inferences from those facts, in favor of the nonmoving party,” in 

this case Kurtzhals. Hackett, 956 F.3d at 507 (internal quotation 

marks omitted). We do not “make credibility determinations, 

weigh the evidence, or decide which inferences to draw from 

the facts.” Id. We will “affirm the district court only when no 

reasonable jury could have found for the plaintiffs.” Id. at 507–

08. 

The account of the facts that follows adopts that well-established perspective. On April 1, 2016, Kurtzhals was sitting 

at his desk when Rhead entered his office, aggressively 

moved towards Kurtzhals, yelled at him, and called him a liar. 
No. 19-3111 3 

Kurtzhals ordered Rhead to get out of his office. When Rhead 

did not leave immediately, Kurtzhals said something to the 

effect of, “if you call me a liar again, we are going to take it 

outside,” implying a possible physical altercation. Several 

witnesses in the workplace at the time corroborated 

Kurtzhals’s words. This implied threat violated the Dunn 

County Workplace Violence Policy. 

Following the incident, Sheriff Dennis Smith decided to 

put Kurtzhals on paid administrative leave and ordered him 

to undergo a fitness-for-duty evaluation. Smith made this decision after consulting with Chief Deputy Marshall Multhauf, 

the Corporation Counsel, the Human Resources Manager, the 

County Manager, and Dr. Thomas Campion, a psychologist 

who specializes in law-enforcement psychological evaluations and has worked with the Dunn County Sheriff’s Office 

in the past. Sheriff Smith also hired an outside employmentlaw attorney, Mindy Dale, to conduct an investigation and 

provide recommendations. Dale did so and concluded that 

Kurtzhals had violated the Workplace Violence Policy and 

should receive some sort of reprimand. She nonetheless offered the opinion that a fitness-for-duty evaluation was premature and an overreaction to the single incident. Smith chose 

to order the evaluation anyway. In contrast, Smith did not 

place Rhead on leave, require him to submit to a fitness-forduty evaluation, or otherwise punish him for his role in the 

altercation with Kurtzhals. 

Kurtzhals has a history of PTSD stemming from his service 

in the military. When Kurtzhals returned to the Sheriff’s Office in 2014 following a combat deployment, he informed two 

of his supervisors, then-Chief Deputy Paul Gunness and thenCaptain Kevin Bygd, that he had been diagnosed with PTSD 
4 No. 19-3111 

and received counseling. Gunness and Bygd told Kurtzhals 

that they would pass that information on to Sheriff Smith. The 

record does not reveal whether they ever did so. After the incident with Rhead, when Smith and Multhauf told Kurtzhals 

that they were placing him on administrative leave and ordering a fitness-for-duty evaluation, Kurtzhals asked if their decision had anything to do with his PTSD. Smith and Multhauf 

said nothing in response. They both deny that they knew 

about Kurtzhals’s PTSD diagnosis prior to deciding how to 

address his misconduct. We return to this question below. 

II 

Kurtzhals asserts two claims under the ADA: first, he alleges that the County discriminated against him on the basis 

of a disability, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a), when it 

placed him on paid administrative leave; and second, he contends that the County required him to take a fitness-for-duty 

examination that was not “job-related and consistent with 

business necessity,” in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(4)(A). 

A 

Section 12112(a) of the ADA prohibits employers from discriminating “against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges 

of employment.” 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). Subsection (b) outlines 

various ways in which an employer might discriminate 

against an employee, including by “limiting, segregating, or 

classifying ... [an] employee in a way that adversely affects 

the opportunities or status of such ... employee because of the 

disability of such ... employee,” and by “utilizing standards, 
No. 19-3111 5 

criteria, or methods of administration ... that have the effect 

of discrimination on the basis of disability.” Id. §§ 12112(b)(1), 

(3)(A). 

To prove a violation of section 12112(a), a plaintiff must 

show that: 1) he is disabled; 2) he is otherwise qualified to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation; 3) he suffered an adverse employment 

action; and 4) the adverse action was caused by his disability. 

Roberts v. City of Chicago, 817 F.3d 561, 565 (7th Cir. 2016). It is 

essential for the plaintiff to link the adverse action with his 

disability. In order to do so, we have held that “a plaintiff

must show a genuine issue of material fact exists regarding 

whether his disability was the but for’ reason for the adverse 

action.” Monroe v. Ind. Dep’t of Transp., 871 F.3d 495, 504 (7th 

Cir. 2017). We note for completeness that the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 changed the language of the statute from 

prohibiting discrimination “because of” a disability to prohibiting discrimination “on the basis of” a disability. See Pub. L. 

No. 110-325, § 5(a)(1) (Sept. 25, 2008). Nearly 12 years later, it 

remains an open question in this circuit whether that change 

affects the “but for” causation standard we apply in these 

cases. Monroe, 871 F.3d at 504 (citing Serwatka v. Rockwell Automation, Inc., 591 F.3d 957, 961 n.1 (7th Cir. 2010); Roberts, 817 

F.3d at 565 n.1; Hooper v. Proctor Health Care, Inc., 804 F.3d 846, 

853 n.2 (7th Cir. 2015)). Kurtzhals has not complained about 

the use of the “but for” standard, however, and so we will apply it here. 

Our de novo review of the record satisfies us that a trier of 

fact could find that Kurtzhals has a history of PTSD, and that 

his symptoms, when they flare up, include insomnia, flashbacks, and loss of appetite. He does not need to establish that 
6 No. 19-3111 

his symptoms interfered with his ability to work; it is enough 

that they substantially interfered with any major life activity, 

and we can accept that they did. Second, there is little dispute 

that Kurtzhals is qualified to perform the essential functions 

of his job as a police officer. He fulfilled his duties seemingly 

without incident from the time he returned from active military duty in 2014 through March 2016 and was given the position of investigation sergeant in 2015. Although his behavior 

on April 1, 2016, did not meet his employer’s legitimate expectations for employee conduct, that does not render him 

unqualified for his job. There is no suggestion that his PTSD 

made him unable to control his behavior or caused him to lash 

out at Rhead. 

That brings us to the question whether Kurtzhals’s evidence, if believed by the trier of fact, suffices to show that he 

suffered an adverse employment action. Kurtzhals was placed 

on paid administrative leave for approximately three months. 

During that time, he received his base salary plus pay for 27 

hours of overtime. The County calculated the overtime figure 

by counting the number of extra shifts he might have been 

able to take during his leave period. Kurtzhals returned to 

work in the same position he had before, and he faced no further consequence other than an oral reprimand. This was not 

enough, however, in his view: he asserts that he was harmed 

by not being able to earn even more overtime pay for which 

he would have been eligible by coming in early or leaving late 

on his regular shifts. 

A plaintiff must show that he suffered a “materially adverse employment action,” not merely a minor or even trivial 

one. O’Neal v. City of Chicago, 392 F.3d 909, 911 (7th Cir. 2004). 

“While adverse employment actions extend beyond readily 
No. 19-3111 7 

quantifiable losses, not everything that makes an employee 

unhappy is an actionable adverse action.” Id. (quoting Conley 

v. Vill. of Bedford Park, 215 F.3d 703, 712 (7th Cir. 2000)). Materially adverse employment actions include “cases in which 

the employee’s compensation, fringe benefits, or other financial terms of employment are diminished.” Id. “When overtime pay or premium pay is a significant and expected part of 

an employee’s annual earnings, denial of such pay may constitute an adverse employment action.” Formella v. Brennan, 

817 F.3d 503, 511 (7th Cir. 2016). 

Because Kurtzhals received his full base pay and some 

overtime pay, the question here is whether the loss of potential additional overtime pay for which he was eligible was materially adverse. The policy on his eligibility for overtime remained consistent, i.e. if he worked the overtime, he would be 

paid for it. His ability to earn overtime was not speculative or 

conditional. Kurtzhals provided evidence that during 2015 

and 2016 (when he was not on administrative leave) he averaged between 4.7 and 6.3 hours per week of overtime. Applying that average to the 11.5 weeks he was on administrative 

leave, Kurtzhals could have expected to work between 54 and 

72 hours of overtime—twice as much or more as the 27 hours 

for which the County paid him. This is enough at the summary judgment stage to show that he suffered from an adverse employment action. 

That leaves causation, often the most difficult element. 

And here Kurtzhals has not met his burden to raise a genuine 

dispute over the question whether unlawful discrimination 

on the basis of his PTSD was the “but for” cause of the adverse 

employment action. In other words, could a reasonable juror 

conclude that he would not have suffered the same adverse 
8 No. 19-3111 

employment action if he were not disabled and everything 

else had remained the same? Graham v. Arctic Zone Iceplex, 

LLC, 930 F.3d 926, 929 (7th Cir. 2019) (quoting Ortiz v. Werner 

Enters., Inc., 834 F.3d 760, 764 (7th Cir. 2016)). 

Sheriff Smith’s stated reasons for placing Kurtzhals on administrative leave and ordering a fitness-for-duty evaluation 

were that Kurtzhals violated the County’s Workplace Violence Policy when he threatened Rhead with physical violence; that Kurtzhals previously had reacted angrily to being 

passed over for a promotion; and that Kurtzhals might pose a 

threat to his colleagues or members of the public. None of 

these reasons explicitly mentions PTSD. Instead, the focus is 

on Kurtzhals’s unprofessional conduct. 

Kurtzhals asserts that these reasons are all pretextual and 

are intended to hide Smith’s true motivation for ordering the 

fitness-for-duty evaluation: Kurtzhals’s PTSD. “In evaluating 

pretext, the question is not whether the employer’s stated reason was inaccurate or unfair, but whether the employer honestly believed the reason it has offered to explain the [action].” 

Graham, 930 F.3d at 929 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Kurtzhals says that Smith and Multhauf are lying when they 

deny that they knew about Kurtzhals’s PTSD when they decided to put him on administrative leave. Further, he finds it 

telling that they were silent when he asked if his PTSD was a 

motivating factor (they dispute that he asked this). He also argues that their decision not to discipline Rhead shows that 

they did not truly think a mild violation of the Workplace Violence Policy necessitated a fitness-for-duty evaluation. 

The problem for Kurtzhals is that he did not offer any evidence to support his claim of pretext. There is no competent 

evidence that Smith and Multhauf knew about Kurtzhals’s 
No. 19-3111 9 

PTSD; we have only Kurtzhals’s statement that two other officers, Gunness and Bygd, told him that they would tell Smith 

about his condition. This is too remote. In addition, assuming 

for summary judgment purposes that Kurtzhals did ask Smith 

and Multhauf if their decision was based in part on his PTSD, 

their silence falls well short of an affirmative “yes.” And even 

if we infer from their silence that they both knew about 

Kurtzhals’s PTSD and took it into account, Kurtzhals still does 

not meet the “but for” causation standard. Contrary to 

Kurtzhals’s argument that he and Rhead acted in a comparable fashion and should have been treated similarly, the record 

reflects that only Kurtzhals explicitly threatened physical violence. Rhead may have behaved in an intimidating fashion towards Kurtzhals, but their behavior was not identical. There 

is no evidence to suggest that Smith did not genuinely and 

reasonably see a difference between the two. 

In sum, Kurtzhals has not provided enough evidence to 

allow a reasonable juror to conclude that his PTSD was the 

“but for” cause of Smith’s decision to put him on administrative leave and order a fitness-for-duty evaluation. The district 

court thus correctly granted summary judgment to the 

County on this count. 

B 

Section 12112(d)(4)(A) of the ADA says that an employer 

“shall not require a medical examination and shall not make 

inquiries of an employee as to whether such employee is an 

individual with a disability or as to the nature or severity of 

the disability, unless such examination or inquiry is shown to 

be job-related and consistent with business necessity.” 

42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(4)(A). This provision applies to all employees, with or without an actual or perceived disability. 
10 No. 19-3111 

An “examination is job-related and consistent with business necessity when an employer has a reasonable belief 

based on objective evidence that a medical condition will impair an employee’s ability to perform essential job functions 

or that the employee will pose a threat due to a medical condition.” Coffman v. Indianapolis Fire Dep’t, 578 F.3d 559, 565 

(7th Cir. 2009). “[I]nquiries into an employee’s psychiatric 

health may be permissible when they reflect concern for the 

safety of employees and the public at large.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Because Kurtzhals was a police officer and responsible for 

public safety, his “well-being was essential not only to [his] 

safety but to the public at large; thus, the Department had a 

particularly compelling interest in assuring that [he] was both 

physically and mentally fit to perform [his] duties.” Id. This 

“special work environment” necessitates greater leeway for 

supervisors to order job-related fitness-for-duty evaluations. 

Id.; see also Krocka v. City of Chicago, 203 F.3d 507, 515 (7th Cir. 

2000) (“It was entirely reasonable, and even responsible, for 

[the police department] to evaluate [the officer’s] fitness for 

duty once it learned that he was experiencing difficulties with 

his mental health.”); Watson v. City of Miami Beach, 177 F.3d 

932, 935 (11th Cir. 1999) (“In any case where a police department reasonably perceives an officer to be even mildly paranoid, hostile, or oppositional, a fitness for duty examination 

is job related and consistent with business necessity.”). 

Kurtzhals argues that a fitness-for-duty evaluation was 

not consistent with business necessity in his case because 

“heated exchanges with voices raised and the use of swear 

words were not unusual in the department,” and other employees had committed worse misconduct in the past and not 
No. 19-3111 11 

been ordered to get an evaluation. The Office did not have a 

normal practice of ordering fitness-for-duty evaluations for 

current employees and, in Kurtzhals’s view, his conduct was 

far from egregious enough to warrant one. He also emphasizes that Smith did not order Rhead to get an evaluation and 

that Dale, the outside attorney, thought a fitness-for-duty 

evaluation for Kurtzhals was an overreaction. But there was 

no one right answer in this situation. Kurtzhals has no way of 

showing that Sheriff Smith did not genuinely believe that 

Kurtzhals’s conduct was more problematic than Rhead’s. And 

Dale’s recommendations were just that—advice that the Sheriff was not obliged to accept. Further, the Office’s past practice 

of not asking for psychological evaluations when they might 

have been warranted did not preclude Smith from ordering 

an evaluation in Kurtzhals’s case. There is no dispute that 

Kurtzhals threatened Rhead and in so doing violated the 

Workplace Violence Policy. A reasonable person could see 

this as evidence that Kurtzhals had a short fuse and might lash 

out again at a colleague or a member of the public. 

Sheriff Smith was responsible for addressing the fallout 

from the altercation between Kurtzhals and Rhead. He might 

have chosen to let well enough alone, and that too might have 

been a reasonable response. But he chose to draw a line between physical threats and verbal abuse and to call for a fitness examination only for the former. Nothing in the ADA 

forbids this line, and so summary judgment was proper on 

this count as well. 

III 

Kurtzhals implicitly threatened physical violence against 

a colleague in violation of Dunn County’s Workplace Violence Policy. There is no evidence that his PTSD, rather than 
12 No. 19-3111 

his inappropriate conduct, was the “but for” cause of Sheriff

Smith’s decision to place him on administrative leave and order a fitness-for-duty evaluation. This decision was reasonable and consistent with business necessity. We therefore 

AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the 

County.