N O N P R E C E D E N T I A L D I S P O S I T I O N
T o b e c i t e d o n l y i n a c c o r d a n c e w i t h F e d

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# United States Court of Appeals

F o r t h e S e v e n t h C i r c u i t C h i c a g o , I l l i n o i s 6 0 6 0 4 Submitted February 20, 2008 *

Decided February 21, 2008



### B e f o r e

F R A N K H. E A S T E R B R O O K , Chief Judge

R I C H A R D A. P O S N E R , Circuit Judge

D I A N E P. W O O D , Circ uit Judge

No. 07

- 2785

C E C I L I A V I L L A R R U E L , Plaintiff

- Appellant
,

v

. M I C H A E L B. M U K A S E Y , Attorney General of the United States, Defendant

- Appellee

. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 06 C 766 Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge

.

Order
Cecilia Villarruel, who is Hispanic, contends in this suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that her former employer discriminated on account of her ethnicity in declining to promote or transf er her, and in maintaining a hostile working enviro nment. The district court granted summary judgment for the Atto r ney General, who as head of the agency that includes Villarruel’s employer (the Drug Enforcement Admin istration) is the proper defendant unde r 42 U.S.C. §2000e

– 16(c).
Villarruel joined the DEA in 1992 as an office assistant and was promoted to supply technician in 2001. Her performance was rated “acceptable” from 2001 through 2005, though Linda Gonzalez, her direct superior, expressed concerns about the slow pace of Villarruel’s work and her backlog of unfinished assignments. In 2003 the DEA created a position as administrative

- support specialist; the occupant would supervise a multi

- million

- dollar procurement contract. Villarruel applied for th e job and was among four candidates interviewed, but the position went to Anita Mrock, who had experience in contract administration. Mrock also had r e ceived “outstanding” ratings in her current job. Villarruel charged the agency with discrimin a tion, obser ving that she has a college

* O n J a n u a r y 4
, 2 0 0 8
, w e g r a n t e d a p p e l l a n t ’ s m o t i o n t o w a i v e o r a l a r g u m e n t

.No. 07

- 2785 Page 2

degree (Mrock doesn’t) and is bilingual (Mrock isn’t); the EEOC found, however, that the DEA had not discriminated against Villarruel.
Dissatisfied with the lack of a promotion in 2003, Villarruel applied for a transfer to the D EA’s office in Laredo, Texas. She was not entitled to a “transfer” but was eligible to apply for vacant positions, which she did. The Laredo O f fice did not make Villarruel an offer; she blames Gonzalez and Gonzalez’s supervisor John Bagioni for her lack of

su c cess in obtaining employment in Laredo

— though the pe o ple hired for the positions in Laredo were themselves Hispanic..
Like the district court, we conclude that Villarruel has not produced evidence crea ting a material dispute of fact. Once the DEA expla ined its reasons for hiring Mrock (that Mrock had more relevant experience and better ratings), Villarruel needed to show that this explanation was a pretext for discrimination

— which is to say a lie d e signed to cover up a discriminatory truth. She argued, however, only that the agency should have pr e ferred someone with a college degree and language skills superior to Mrock’s. That may or may not be right as a matter of personnel administration but does nothing to suggest that the agency has been dishonest a bout its reasons for hiring Mrock.
As for the lack of employment in Laredo, which Villarruel characterizes as “retali ation” for the complaint she had filed with the EEOC about the administrative

- support position: the record does not contain any evidence th at would permit a reasonable pe rson to conclude that anyone who had not filed a charge of discrimination received be tter treatment than Villarruel did. She makes no effort to show that the hiring decisions in Laredo were anything other than normal, merit

- b ased civil

- service a p pointments. True, Thomas Hinojosa, the head of the Laredo office, turned down her application for transfer after learning that she had complained to the EEOC, but the DEA says that Vi llarruel was not eligible to transfer. If that’s rig ht, then the complaint to the EEOC could not have affected the decision. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is the name of a log i cal fallacy, not a means to prove a case under Title VII. See Stone v. Indianapolis Public Utilities Div ision , 281 F.3d 640, 644 (7th Ci r. 2002). Because Villarruel’s lawyer does not dispute the agency’s contention that transfer was impossible under governing rules, the decision cannot have been “retaliatory.”
Finally, the hostile

- environment claim requires only brief comment. Villarruel d oes not contend that working conditions at the DEA were worse for Hispanic employees than for others. She does point to statements that she does not like

— for example, Go nzalez once said that “[p]eople who are in America should speak English”

— but that state ment is neither an anti

- Hispanic comment nor something that would permit a re asonable trier of fact to conclude that working conditions for Hispanic employees were materially worse than those for employees of other ethnic backgrounds. The other events of w hich Villarruel complains, such as requests that she work faster and reduce her socia l izing on the job, are unrelated to race or national origin. Title VII is not a code of office civility, nor does it entitle employees to be free of demands that they acco mplish more during working hours.

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