Opinion ID: 174315
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Reduced Hours

Text: First, Hill argues that Kavanaugh was responsible for placing her on light duty status and that Kavanaugh and Fuscaldo then systematically denied her a 40-hour work week. The district court found that Hill did not establish a prima facie case of retaliation based on reduced hours. The court concluded that Hill failed to show that she had applied for the overtime work, that she was qualified to do the overtime work, that the overtime was given to people in the same job position, or that the people who worked the overtime had never filed EEO complaints. On appeal, Hill argues that the district court misunderstood both the scope of her claim based on her reduced hours and also the role that the evidence of overtime hours played in her argument. The district court focused on the reduction of Hill's hours alone rather than the combination of Kavanaugh controverting her injury claim and the subsequent reduction in hours. To be sure, a reduction in hours could be an adverse action giving rise to liability. See O'Neal v. City of Chicago, 392 F.3d 909, 911-12 (7th Cir.2004). But when Hill was on light duty status, she was not guaranteed a 40-hour work week. Therefore, a reduction in her hours while on light duty status was not per se an adverse action. See Hancock v. Potter, 531 F.3d 474, 479 (7th Cir.2008). Seeking to bolster her claim that Kavanaugh and Fuscaldo reduced her hours for discriminatory reasons, Hill argues that Kavanaugh actually caused her to be placed on light duty status rather than on limited duty statusthe latter would have guaranteed that she would be paid for 40 hours of work a week, no matter how little she worked. The decision to place Hill on light duty status was made by the OWCP, an independent government office. However, Kavanaugh wrote a letter to Schultz, the person handling Hill's claim at OWCP, telling Schultz that Hill's claim was fabricated and asking that the claim be controverted. Hill argues that Kavanaugh's letter, the OWCP's decision to place her on light duty status, and the subsequent reduction in her hours constituted an adverse action sufficient to prove her prima facie case of discrimination. The decision of an independent decision-maker will not shield the employer from liability if the decision-maker was tainted or influenced by the employer's illegal motives such that the decision-maker acted as the conduit of [the employer's] prejudice. Shager v. Upjohn Co., 913 F.2d 398, 405 (7th Cir.1990). This rule, known as the cat's paw rule, provides that an employer cannot shield itself from liability for unlawful termination by using a purportedly independent person or committee as the decisionmaker where the decisionmaker merely serves as the conduit, vehicle, or rubber stamp by which another achieves his or her unlawful design. Dedmon v. Staley, 315 F.3d 948, 949 n. 2 (8th Cir.2003). Hill urges us to apply the cat's paw rule to find that Kavanaugh's alleged discriminatory motive tainted and influenced Schultz's decision to place her on light duty status. We find that the cat's paw theory has no application here. In other cases where we have applied the cat's paw theory, there was evidence from which we could reasonably infer that the employer's ill motives likely had an influence on the purportedly independent decisionmaker's thought process. For example, in Shager, the court noted that the prejudiced supervisor had set up the terminated employee for failure by assigning him an unproductive territory. 913 F.2d at 405. The supervisor then portrayed the employee's job performance in the worst possible light. Id. The committee making the decision only briefly considered the employee's case, and the court inferred from the evidence that the committee may well have relied on the supervisor's opinion in making its decision. Id. Likewise, in Phelan v. Cook County, 463 F.3d 773, 784 (7th Cir.2006), the court applied the cat's paw rule to find that an employer [cannot] escape the possibility of strict liability for supervisor harassment simply by scattering supervisory responsibilities amongst a number of individuals, creating a Title VII supervisory Hydra. The two individuals that were subject to the cat's paw theory in Phelan had significantly more influence over the final decision than did Kavanaugh here. One supervisor in Phelan triggered the termination hearing, selected the hearing officer, and provided information critical to the termination decision. Id. The other was the plaintiff's hearing officer and had the ultimate authority to fire the plaintiff. Id. Although Kavanaugh did write a letter to Schultz commenting on Hill's claim, there is no evidence from which we can reasonably infer that the letter had any let alone dispositiveinfluence in Schultz's decision-making process. First, OWCP enjoyed a level of independence from the Postal Service that neither the committee in Shager nor the hearing officer in Phelan had. In both of those cases, it appears that the individuals acting as the cat's paw were part of the same organization as the discriminating or harassing supervisor. Based on the record before us, it would be unreasonable to infer that Schultz simply acted as a rubber stamp of Kavanaugh's prejudice. Second, Hill did not produce any evidence that would suggest Schultz considered Kavanaugh's letter at all, much less to the exclusion of other evidence. Third, because our review is de novo, we refuse to read too much into the district court's statement that Schultz changed Hill from limited duty to light duty status as a result of Kavanaugh's letter. As we have just noted, there is simply no evidence supporting such a conclusion. Absent even a minimal showing that Kavanaugh's letter had at least some persuasive influence in Schultz's decision to place Hill on light duty status, we cannot consider Hill's placement on light duty status as part of an adverse employment action attributable to the Postal Service. We agree with the district court that Hill has failed to show that Kavanaugh and Fuscaldo sending her home without pay while she was on light duty status constitutes an adverse employment action. As noted earlier, the reduction of her hours is not per se an adverse action because she was not entitled to a 40-hour work week. Hill is correct that just because she is not entitled to the hours does not mean that the Postal Service can reduce her hours for a retaliatory purpose. Yet Hill produced no evidence that there was work available for her to perform within her limitations when she was sent home from work without pay. She suggested that other employees' 821 hours of overtime showed that there was plenty of work to do in the Hazel Crest Office. The district court concluded that her prima facie case failed because she did not show that she had applied for or was able to work those overtime hours. She argues on appeal that it is irrelevant that she did not apply for the overtime work because she was only trying to show that there was plenty of work to go around, and that Kavanaugh's and Fuscaldo's decision to send her home early without pay was therefore motivated by discrimination. We disagree that Hill's shortcomings regarding the overtime evidence are irrelevant. Hill was not entitled to 40 hours of work each week while on light duty status. Therefore, in order to show that she was improperly deprived of work hours and the resulting pay, she must show that she at least could have been assigned to work the hours that she was denied. If there was, in fact, no work that she was qualified to do (based on her light duty status), then she could not have been improperly sent home without pay. Although we will make all reasonable inferences on Hill's behalf, we will not simply accept Hill's assumptions as true absent at least some corroborating evidence. Hill fails to identify any evidence that she was qualified to do some of the work that was assigned to other employees when she was sent home without pay. Because we find that Hill has failed to show that she suffered an adverse employment action by having her hours reduced, Hill's retaliation claim based on the reduction of her hours fails.