In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 00-4059

TYRONE J. GREER,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. 

BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO,

ILLINOIS, a municipal corporation of the

city of Chicago, formerly known as CHICAGO SCHOOL

REFORM BOARD OF TRUSTEES,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 99 C 7005--Charles P. Kocoras, Judge.

Argued APRIL 10, 2001--Decided October 3, 2001

 

 Before COFFEY, ROVNER and DIANE P. WOOD,

Circuit Judges.

 COFFEY, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff Tyrone Greer

is an African-American, who sued the Board of

Education of the City of Chicago ("the Board"),

alleging racial discrimination and

retaliation in violation of Title VII of

the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The

district court granted the Board’s motion

for summary judgment, and Greer appeals.

We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

 Greer was hired as a freshman and

sophomore English teacher at South Shore

High School in 1990. Chicago’s high

school principals have considerable

control over personnel matters, and in

July 1997, apparently due to

shiftingstudent enrollment patterns, the

principal of South Shore "closed" Greer’s

position. This meant that Greer’s

services were no longer needed at South

Shore, and that he was now subject to

reassignment anywhere within the

district.

 Greer then pursued three courses of

action. First, he filed a sex

discrimination charge with the EEOC,
alleging that the principal closed

Greer’s position because he is a male.

Second, he filed a grievance with his

union, alleging that the principal’s

decision was prohibited by the district’s

collective bargaining agreement. Third,

he contacted the Board’s human resources

department for assistance. The department

informed Greer that he would be

classified as a "reassigned teacher." He

would continue working as a part-time

substitute teacher and would receive his

full salary and benefits. However,

pursuant to Board policy, he would have

to actively seek appointment to another

position within the district, and he

would be terminated if he did not secure

a permanent position within ten months.

 In October 1997, officials at Collins

High School gave Greer a 60-day

probationary appointment, where he would

teach a curriculum titled "Options-ForKnowledge." Greer applied for a permanent

position at Collins shortly afterwards,

and he spoke with Rosa Vazquez, who is a

recruiter in the Board’s personnel

department. Vazquez conferred with

various officials and noted that Collins

had a disproportionate number of minority

teachers on staff. This was a problem

because, since 1980, the Chicago public

schools have operated under a federal

consent decree designed to achieve racial

integration among students and teachers.

Vazquez determined that Greer’s

employment at Collins would not advance

the goals of the consent decree. As a

result, the Board notified Greer that he

could not be permanently assigned to

Collins unless the school’s principal,

Clement Smith, submitted a waiver request

to the Faculty Integration Committee for

its approval.

 In January 1998, the Board’s director of

recruitment and staffing advised Smith

that he needed to apply for a waiver if

he wanted Greer to obtain the full-time

position. Smith never submitted the

request, stating that he did not want to

jeopardize the school’s attempts to

integrate the permanent faculty. As a

result, the Board rejected Greer’s

application, and he stopped working at

Collins in June 1998. Greer then filed a

second charge with the EEOC, alleging

that the Board had discriminated against

him on the basis of his race and age,

and, furthermore, had retaliated against
him for filing the previous sex

discrimination charge.

 The Board honorably terminated Greer in

January 1999 because he had failed to

secure permanent employment within the

school district./1 Two months later,

labor arbitrator Barry E. Simon found

merit in Greer’s grievance concerning the

South Shore position. Simon disagreed

with the Board’s argument that he lacked

jurisdiction over the grievance, and he

ordered the Board to reinstate Greer. The

Board continued to maintain that Illinois

law prohibits the arbitration of certain

disputes over classroom assignments and

schedules, and, in the end, the Board

refused to comply with Simon’s

ruling./2 Greer accepted a teaching

position at another Chicago public high

school in August 1999.

 The district court found that Greer’s

EEOC charge was limited to the denial of

employment at Collins High School, then

proceeded to grant the Board’s motion for

summary judgment on Greer’s Title VII and

Section 1981 claims of race

discrimination and retaliation./3 The

court found that Greer had failed to

raise an inference of discrimination and,

in any event, had not rebutted the

Board’s proffered race-neutral reasons

for its decision. The court also found no

merit in Greer’s claim of retaliation.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

 We review the district court’s grant of

summary judgment de novo. Kuemmerlein v.

Board of Educ. of Madison, 894 F.2d 257,

261 (7th Cir. 1990). We affirm if there

is no more than some "metaphysical doubt"

whether there is a genuine dispute of

material fact for trial. Matsushita Elec.

Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475

U.S. 574, 586 (1986).

 Greer was not represented by counsel,

and as a threshold matter, we address his

repeated insinuation that the district

court did not afford him the liberal

construction of pleadings that is due to

a pro se plaintiff. As the district court

noted, the Board submitted a proposed

list of 72 undisputed material facts,

supported by citation to the record,

along with its motion for summary

judgment. For at least two reasons,

Greer’s response miserably failed to
comply with Local Rule 56.1,/4 which

requires the non-moving party to admit or

deny each factual statement proffered by

the defendant and to designate with

specificity and particularity those

material facts believed to establish a

genuine dispute for trial./5 First,

Greer’s ostensible rebuttal of the

Board’s evidence consisted only of

reproducing the Board’s list of

undisputed facts, circling those that he

contested, and stating without further

discussion that "Plaintiff disagrees with

the below numbered statements/paragraphs"

because they were "vague," "not fully

stated or explained," and "lacking other

relevant information" or "simply not

true." Second, although Greer offered

five proposed "undisputed facts" of his

own, he did not cite any evidence in

support of his pleadings. Furthermore, at

least two of those five submissions were

generalized self-serving legal

conclusions, rather than particularized

statements of fact./6 Greer then used a

16-page brief as a veritable catapult to

hurl a jumbled mass of information (none

of which was referenced in his Rule 56.1

statement) at the Board and the district

court in the hope of avoiding summary

judgment./7 

 Greer correctly notes that we liberally

construe the pleadings of individuals who

proceed pro se. "The essence of liberal

construction is to give a pro se

plaintiff a break when, although he

stumbles on a technicality, his pleading

is otherwise understandable." Hudson v.

McHugh, 148 F.3d 859, 864 (7th Cir.

1998). However, a lawsuit is not a game

of hunt the peanut. Employment

discrimination cases are extremely factintensive, and neither appellate courts

nor district courts are "obliged in our

adversary system to scour the record

looking for factual disputes. . . ."

Waldridge v. American Hoechst Corp., 24

F.3d 918, 921-22 (7th Cir. 1993).

 Greer’s pleadings have obfuscated the

true issues at stake and have served only

to further burden an already burdened

judicial system and to frustrate the

Board’s attempts to marshal its resources

in a targeted defense against his

allegations. Although the district court

would have been within its discretion to

grant the Board’s motion for summary

judgment on this basis alone, it
charitably parsed the record for evidence

of discrimination or retaliation. We

agree with the district court’s finding

that no rational jury could find in

Greer’s favor.

III. DISCUSSION

 We first consider Greer’s claim of

discrimination. This case is somewhat

unusual because it involves a school dis

trict’s reliance upon a consent decree,

which was designed to eliminate vestiges

of discrimination and to promote equal

opportunity for minority teachers and

students, as the basis for denying an

African-American a teaching position at

one particular school. Nevertheless,

nothing prevented Greer from obtaining

work at other schools in the district,

and he has not brought a collateral

attack on the decree itself. Based upon

the record before us, the Board seems to

be administering the decree in good

faith, and it is well-settled that a

valid conciliation agreement and consent

decree cannot form the basis of a Title

VII action. See, e.g., Grann v. City of

Madison, 738 F.2d 786, 794-95 (7th Cir.

1984) ("[a] state agency’s order that

rectifies discrimination should no more

be the basis for a Title VII suit than a

consent decree entered into during a

Title VII suit.") Id. at 795.

 We see no direct evidence of racial

animus, and so we analyze Greer’s claim

using the McDonnell Douglas framework./8

Under this burden-shifting approach,

Greer must first raise an inference of

discrimination by showing that: (1) he is

a member of a protected class; (2) he was

qualified for the teaching position at

Collins; (3) he suffered an adverse

employment action; and (4) the Board

treated similarly-situated employees

outside his class more favorably. Foster

v. Arthur Andersen, 168 F.3d 1029, 1035

(7th Cir. 1998). "[W]e do not reach the

question of an employer’s reasoning for

an adverse employment action until there

is a rebuttable presumption of

discrimination, that is, after the

employee establishes a prima facie case

of discrimination." Payne v. Milwaukee

County, 146 F.3d 430, 434 (7th Cir.

1998).

 To satisfy the fourth element, Greer

must identify a comparator who is
similarly situated to him in all material

respects. Because the Board’s hiring

practices are governed by the federal

consent decree’s faculty integration

guidelines, Greer was required to show,

at minimum, that the Board allowed

teachers of another race to work at

schools even if their presence would have

contributed to a racial imbalance among

that school’s faculty. Greer testified

that he was unaware of anybody who was

allowed to teach without a waiver at a

school that was not meeting the racial

goals of the consent decree. He also was

unaware of any white teacher who had ever

obtained such a waiver. On these facts,

we hold that Greer failed to demonstrate

that the Board treated him differently

from other similarly situated employees

of another race. See Oest v. Illinois

Dep’t of Corr., 240 F.3d 605, 614 (7th

Cir. 2001).

 We also affirm the trial court’s grant

of summary judgment on Greer’s claim that

the Board retaliated by not hiring him to

teach at Collins High School. The

undisputed evidence demonstrated that

Greer did not receive the position due to

the strictures of the consent decree and

the faculty integration plan. Greer

asserts that Options-For-Knowledge

teachers and formerly "closed" teachers

are exempt from the provisions of the

decree. However, the decree does not

readily admit of such an interpretation,

and Greer has not shown that the Board’s

administrators shared his views of their

obligations with respect to personnel

matters. Greer’s argument is supported

only with his subjective opinion and his

reading of a pamphlet that discusses

seniority issues but says nothing about

the district’s desegregative duties.

Because a party cannot defeat summary

judgment by relying on unsubstantiated

assertions, we find Greer’s evidence

wholly unpersuasive. See Hardin v. S.C.

Johnson & Sons, Inc., 167 F.3d 340, 346

(7th Cir. 1999).

 Similarly, we do not believe a jury

could infer retaliatory animus from the

Board’s repeated statements during the

arbitration process that it would not

reinstate Greer at South Shore High

School. Greer’s non-hiring at Collins

occurred several months before the Board

first adopted and articulated this

position. As a result, we see no causal
relationship between these two events.

Furthermore, to the extent that the

Board’s decision affected Greer’s employ

ment at South Shore, Greer does not

challenge on appeal the district court’s

finding that a claim in this respect is

beyond the scope of his EEOC charge.

Therefore, we deem any such claim to be

waived. Robin v. Espo Eng’g Corp., 200

F.3d 1081, 1088 (7th Cir. 2000). Greer’s

remaining arguments are without merit.

 The judgment of the district court is

AFFIRMED.

FOOTNOTES

/1 The Board retained Greer for seventeen months

while he searched for a permanent position,

despite the fact that Board policy permits reassigned teachers to be terminated after only ten

months.

/2 At oral argument, the Board stated that it is

appealing the arbitrator’s decision to a state

administrative review board. The record reveals

nothing more about this standoff.

/3 Greer voluntarily dismissed his claim of age

discrimination.

/4 Northern District of Illinois Local Rule 56.1 has

replaced former Local Rule 12.

/5 The district court made Greer fully aware of the

requirements of Rule 56.1. Indeed, Greer moved to

strike the Board’s pleading on the grounds that

it did not comply with the same. The court denied

the motion.

/6 These included conclusions such as: "The Board is

guilty of race discrimination in the Plaintiff’s

case and situation for the above captioned case,"

and "The Board is guilty of retaliation discrimination in the Plaintiff’s case and situation for

the above captioned case."

/7 Greer’s appellate brief similarly failed to point

us to the specific portions of the voluminous

record that supposedly support his arguments.

/8 See Texas Dep’t of Community Affairs v. Burdine,

450 U.S. 248 (1981); McDonnell Douglas Corp. v.

Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973).