Opinion ID: 742998
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Work Assignments

Text: 34 Mungin's next complaint is that the firm discriminated against him by providing him with unchallenging work on the basis of his race. Katten conceded that Mungin received routine bankruptcy work, and not the more sophisticated work for which he was hired. Brief for the Appellant, Final Version, at 26. But the firm showed that after the D.C. office's bankruptcy work dried up, causing Sherman and Soberman to depart in February 1993, it was left with no other bankruptcy lawyers in the D.C. office except Mungin, and with little bankruptcy work. 35 Mungin tells us that to show pretext, he presented evidence of numerous occasions where complex bankruptcy work originated from Katten's D.C. office only to be assigned to other Katten offices around the country. Supplemental Final Brief of the Appellee at 22. No such evidence exists. Mungin only introduced proof of one assignment rerouted from D.C. to Chicago--a matter in Chicago bankruptcy court handled by a partner and associate in Chicago who already had successfully handled a major, similar matter for the same client. Trial Transcript at 600-01, 808-09. This single instance is grossly insufficient to constitute a plausible discrimination claim. In an analogous context, we recently noted that the factfinder may not 'second-guess an employer's personnel decision absent demonstrably discriminatory motive.'  Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183 (quoting Milton v. Weinberger, 696 F.2d at 100). Thus, when an employer makes a hiring decision, [s]hort of finding that the employer's stated reason was indeed a pretext ... the court must respect the employer's unfettered discretion to choose among qualified candidates. Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183. The same standard holds true when an employer decides which of several qualified employees will work on a particular assignment. Perhaps in recognition of the judicial micromanagement of business practices that would result if we ruled otherwise, other circuits have held that changes in assignments or work-related duties do not ordinarily constitute adverse employment decisions if unaccompanied by a decrease in salary or work hour changes. See, e.g., Kocsis v. Multi-Care Mgmt., 97 F.3d 876, 886-87 (6th Cir.1996); Crady v. Liberty Nat'l Bank & Trust Co., 993 F.2d 132, 136 (7th Cir.1993); see also Williams v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 85 F.3d 270, 274 (7th Cir.1996). An employer has discretion to assign work to equally qualified employees so long as the decision is not based upon unlawful criteria. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 259, 101 S.Ct. at 1097. The jury had no basis for thinking the Chicago attorneys who staffed the one matter Mungin identified were any less qualified than he, or that race played a factor in the firm's decision to staff the Chicago bankruptcy matter with attorneys in Chicago.