United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted October 15, 2020*

Decided November 19, 2020 

Before 

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge 

No. 20-1397 

VINCENZA PRESTI, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

CHAD F. WOLF, Acting Secretary of the 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 

 Defendant-Appellee.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 18 C 1710 

Virginia M. Kendall, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Vincenza Presti, an immigration officer at the United States Citizenship and 

Immigration Services, believes that she was demoted and given negative feedback on 

her job performance based on her Italian descent and in retaliation for complaints she 

had filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She sued the Secretary 

*

 We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 20-1397 Page 2 

of Homeland Security under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e2. The district court entered summary judgment for the defendant, concluding that no 

reasonable jury could find that USCIS’s employment decisions were discriminatory or 

retaliatory. We affirm. 

Presti joined USCIS in 2002 as an immigration officer. Over the next eleven years, 

she filed two complaints with the EEOC about discrimination on the job. In her first 

complaint, in 2008, she stated that she had been passed over for a role because of her 

Italian heritage. The EEOC made a finding of discrimination, and USCIS offered her the 

job she sought. The second, in 2013, concerned feedback in her annual review. That 

complaint was settled through mediation. 

In 2015, Presti’s supervisor gave her some more negative feedback in an 

otherwise positive annual performance review. He wrote that Presti came across as 

confrontational and demanding and needed to work on her communication, but he also 

favorably graded her overall score as 4.4 out of a possible 5 points, placing her in the 

category of “exceeding expectations.” Presti objected to the comments about her 

communication style, which she defended as “open,” “direct,” and rooted in her Italian 

background and culture. Management edited the written feedback so that she and the 

supervisor approved of it. 

Around this time, Presti applied for a promotion to Level III Immigration Officer. 

Applicants were scored based on their interview performance and references, and the 

two applicants with the highest scores were promoted. Presti’s total score was the fifth 

highest of the seven candidates. 

Presti then filed a new EEOC complaint stating that she received negative 

feedback and was passed over for promotion based on her Italian descent. The EEOC 

found the charges unsupported. 

 In March 2018, Presti applied to be a Supervisory Immigration Services Officer. 

At the time, she already was serving as a supervisor in a temporary capacity. She 

interviewed for the position, received the highest score in the selection process, and was 

offered the job. 

In the meantime, Presti sued the Secretary of Homeland Security under Title VII 

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2, alleging that the two episodes from 
No. 20-1397 Page 3 

2015—receiving negative feedback and being passed over for promotion—reflected 

discrimination based on her national origin and retaliation for her earlier EEOC activity. 

 After she assumed the supervisory position, Presti’s performance declined. An 

early, first review garnered positive feedback, but complaints about her work followed. 

Presti’s supervisor noted that Presti micromanaged her team’s work product and 

struggled to build relationships, and Presti’s coworkers complained about her treatment 

of the team. At Presti’s mid-year review, her supervisor noted that her communication 

style was overly direct and unpleasant, that she continued to micromanage her team’s 

work product, and that her lack of familiarity with the computer systems and relevant 

law impeded her ability to assist her team and adjudicate cases. Even after this review, 

Presti’s supervisor noted no change in her performance. 

In September, USCIS demoted Presti for poor performance. In a demotion letter, 

her supervisor explained that Presti had failed to improve in her performance or to 

meet the job’s expectations, despite receiving mentorship and ongoing feedback. 

 Presti then amended her complaint to allege that the agency had demoted her in 

retaliation for her earlier EEOC filings. 

 During the discovery that ensued, Presti twice filed motions to compel the 

agency to produce documents she regarded as critical to her 2015 non-promotion claim. 

She first sought resumes and demographical data for positions to which she had not 

applied between 2016 and 2018. After hearing argument from Presti on the motion, the 

magistrate judge presiding over discovery denied the request as irrelevant because 

Presti was not challenging those selection decisions. Presti later sought the resumes of 

candidates whom USCIS had selected for promotion between 2014 and 2016, the same 

period during which she was denied a promotion. The magistrate judge held another 

hearing on the request before granting it in part, ordering USCIS to turn over the 

resumes of candidates for any position to which Presti had applied. 

 The district court ultimately entered summary judgment for USCIS. Based on the 

evidence presented, the court explained, no reasonable jury could conclude that Presti 

suffered an adverse employment action in 2015 upon receiving negative feedback—

feedback that later was changed to her liking—or that any discriminatory or retaliatory 

motive influenced her non-promotion in 2015 or her demotion in 2018. 
No. 20-1397 Page 4 

 On appeal, Presti first challenges the district court’s denials of her motions to 

compel. In her view, she needed the requested resumes to identify possible comparators 

to prove discrimination regarding the 2015 non-promotion. 

The district court acted within its discretion to deny both motions. When 

deciding motions to compel the production of personnel files, courts have “broad 

discretion to limit a request ... in order to prevent the dissemination of personal or 

confidential information about employees.” Brunker v. Schwan's Home Serv., Inc.,

583 F.3d 1004, 1010 (7th Cir. 2009). This discretion extends to limiting discovery over 

similarly situated comparators in discrimination cases. See id.; Balderston v. Fairbanks 

Morse Engine, 328 F.3d 309, 320 (7th Cir. 2003). Here, the district court properly found 

irrelevant Presti’s first discovery request regarding selection decisions for jobs for which 

she had never applied. See Balderston, 328 F.3d at 320. Further, the court appropriately 

denied in part her request for resumes of successful candidates for promotion from 2014 

to 2016 because she sought resumes of applicants for jobs different from the one to 

which she had applied, and there is no evidence that selection decisions in those cases 

were made by the same decision-makers or using the same standards. See Brunker, 

583 F.3d at 1010. 

Presti next challenges the entry of summary judgment on her claims arising from 

the negative feedback she received on her 2015 annual review. We understand her to 

argue that the district court did not view the record in a light favorable to her when it 

concluded that the negative feedback—which criticized her communication style and 

postdated her EEOC complaints—was not discriminatory or retaliatory. 

This challenge is unpersuasive. To stave off summary judgment, Presti had to 

produce evidence to suggest that she suffered an adverse employment action because of 

her national origin or in retaliation for her earlier, protected EEOC activity. 

See McDaniel v. Progress Rail Locomotive, Inc., 940 F.3d 360, 367, 370–71 (7th Cir. 2019). 

But, as the district court concluded, no reasonable juror could conclude that the 

negative feedback amounted to an adverse action (i.e., one that resulted in a significant 

change in an employment condition, such as income or career prospects, see Boss 

v. Castro, 816 F.3d 910, 917 (7th Cir. 2016)). She received an overall score that “exceeded 

expectations,” the negative feedback was revised to meet her approval, and she offers 

no evidence that the feedback affected her pay or job trajectory. And even if negative 

criticism on an otherwise strong evaluation could constitute an adverse employment 

action, Presti offered no evidence that USCIS’s proffered rationale for the feedback—
No. 20-1397 Page 5 

that her communication style was impeding her ability to work with others and 

perform her job effectively—was pretextual. See id. at 916–18. 

Presti relatedly challenges the district court’s ruling that she lacked evidence 

from which a jury could infer that she was demoted in 2018 in retaliation for her EEOC 

complaints. She maintains that the court overlooked material evidence, namely the 

positive feedback accompanying her early reviews in that job. But this argument misses 

the court’s broader point that her evidence was insufficient to persuade a reasonable 

juror that protected activity was the but-for cause of her demotion. See Abrego v. Wilkie, 

907 F.3d 1004, 1014 (7th Cir. 2018). The undisputed record shows that USCIS demoted 

her after several months of recorded poor performance, including struggles with 

managing her team, building relationships, and accessing the systems necessary to do 

the job. 

We have considered Presti’s other arguments, and none has merit. 

AFFIRMED