Opinion ID: 3001776
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: “Similarly Situated” Younger Employees

Text: Even so, did it apply the standard correctly? The parties agree that (1) Filar was over forty in September 1999; (2) she was meeting the school’s legitimate employment expectations; and (3) she suffered an adverse employment action—three of the four elements of her prima facie case. But the parties dispute whether Filar presented a “similarly situated” younger employee who was treated more favorably. The district court rejected each of Filar’s proposed comparators because, prior to Filar’s displacement, each was a tenure-track teacher, not a full-time substitute like Filar. Because tenure-track teachers do not compete with full-time substitutes in terms of seniority, the court reasoned, Filar could not point to them as “similarly situated” younger employees and thus could not establish her prima facie case. We disagree. Whether two employees are “similarly situated” is a common sense inquiry that depends on the employment context. Radue, 219 F.3d at 618. The purpose of the prima facie case is to ensure that there is enough evidence to raise the specter of discrimination, justifying judgment for the plaintiff if the employer does not provide a legitimate business reason for its action. See Collier v. Budd Co., 66 F.3d 886, 890 (7th Cir. 1995). All things being equal, if an employer takes an action against one employee in a protected class but not another outside that No. 07-1275 13 class, one can infer discrimination. See Humphries v. CBOCS West, Inc., 474 F.3d 387, 405 (7th Cir. 2007). The “similarly situated” prong establishes whether all things are in fact equal. Id. To make this showing, a plaintiff need not present a doppelganger who differs only by having remained in the employer’s good graces. But the comparator must still be similar enough “to eliminate confounding variables, such as differing roles, performance histories, or decision-making personnel, [so as to] isolate the critical independent variable: complaints about discrimination.” Id. Two of the comparators offered by Filar—Rydberg, 42, and Monaco, 39—were “similarly situated” younger employees for purposes of her prima facie case. All three had taught at Foreman for roughly the same period of time. Dr. Garvey hired Filar in 1992 and he hired both Rydberg and Monaco soon thereafter while Filar was grieving her original displacement. All three were properly certified, and by all measures their duties were the same. To the extent that their certifications differed at the time that Dr. Garvey displaced Filar, it was because Filar had received her Type 09 teaching certificate in 1997 whereas Rydberg and Monaco had only attained it in 1999. In addition, Filar’s Type 09 certificate had the bilingual approval whereas neither Rydberg’s nor Monaco’s did. Dr. Garvey supervised all three teachers, and, as far as the record shows, none had any disciplinary or performance issues at the time of Filar’s displacement. Dr. Garvey considered Filar to be a good teacher; he had consistently rated Filar’s performance evaluations as “Superior” or “Excellent” from 1994 through 1999. The record does not indicate what scores Rydberg and Monaco received, but given Filar’s high marks we can assume 14 No. 07-1275 for present purposes they were similar in this regard as well. Despite these similarities, the district court considered their differences in seniority to be fatal to any showing of similarity. As the court correctly noted, full-time substitutes were less senior to tenure-track teachers for purposes of displacement. And, unlike Filar, both comparators were tenure-track teachers. In some circumstances, differences in seniority will preclude a showing that two employees are “similarly situated” or of age discrimination more generally. To the extent that seniority is a simple proxy for something like the length of employment and is something that an employer must credit when making employment decisions, differences in seniority will tend to make two employees dissimilar for purposes of the plaintiff’s prima facie case. See, e.g., Doe v. First Nat. Bank of Chicago, 865 F.2d 864, 877 (7th Cir. 1989) (crediting comparator’s “long tenure” in denying that she was “similarly situated”). This is because, in making the employment decision, the employer had to credit a factor over which it had no control, and thus a finding of intentional age discrimination would be implausible given that the employer’s “intent”—discriminatory or otherwise—was largely irrelevant to the decision. Had this been the case at Foreman, the district court would have been right to conclude that Filar was not “similarly situated” to tenure-track teachers. But where seniority is unmoored from everything but the discretion of the employer, the simple fact that the comparator is more senior to the plaintiff may not be dispositive, even where the employer must credit seniority in employment decisions. An employer could exercise its discretion in conferring seniority in a discriminatory fashion, making an immediately subsequent employment No. 07-1275 15 action based on seniority discriminatory as well. In a related context, we have held that an “employer cannot frustrate the statute merely by assigning every employee a different job title.” Bellaver v. Quanex Corp., 200 F.3d 485, 494 (7th Cir. 2000). Similarly, an employer cannot defeat a claim of discrimination by giving younger employees greater seniority rights immediately before displacing an older, but less senior, employee. This is not to say that Dr. Garvey and the Board have done so in this case. But the district court concluded that the differences in seniority alone were sufficient to defeat a finding that Filar’s comparators were “similarly situated.” Given the manipulability of seniority at Foreman, this was error. Although seniority had some bite to it when a principal had to displace teachers—by rule, less senior teachers went before more senior—the conferral of seniority itself consisted of nothing more than a mine-run, discretionary personnel decision made by the principal. But see Adelman-Reyes v. Saint Xavier University, 500 F.3d 662, 667 (7th Cir. 2007) (discussing reluctance of court to get involved in tenure decisions where accompanied by “multiple layers of independent review”). In addition, as seen above, a teacher that a principal moved to a tenure-track position did not thereby obtain greater duties. Nor did the principal necessarily make the decision solely on the basis of some difference in the teachers’ respective qualifications—something that might otherwise preclude a showing of “similarly situated.” Whether on the tenure track or a full-time substitute, all three were teachers with, as far as the evidence shows, nearly identical responsibilities and qualifications. See Bellaver, 200 F.3d at 494 (stating that comparators and plaintiff “had the ability to perform each other’s tasks, even though 16 No. 07-1275 they had different titles and specific responsibilities”). In short, although principals are free to make seniority decisions as they see fit—just as any employer can move an employee from one job to the next—the differences in seniority here were not inconsistent with intentional discrimination, as the district court implied. As a result, in light of the other factors listed above, Filar has pointed to two “similarly situated” younger employees to establish her prima facie case.