Opinion ID: 752547
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Prior Resort to Administrative Remedies

Text: 33 Ms. Benedict's federal complaint enumerated a range of charges. Other than the claims discussed above, however, her allegations were not properly before the district court and thus, are not properly before this court. 34 As a general rule, an employee who files a discrimination complaint in federal court cannot raise claims that were not included in her administrative charges. See Cheek v. Western & Southern Life Ins. Co., 31 F.3d 497, 500 (7th Cir.1994). An employee filing an administrative charge need not allege with relentless specificity every fact or claim that forms the basis for her complaint, see Taylor v. Western & Southern Life Ins. Co., 966 F.2d 1188, 1195 (7th Cir.1992), in part because filing a charge of discrimination with the EEOC is not a jurisdictional prerequisite, see Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 393, 102 S.Ct. 1127, 71 L.Ed.2d 234 (1982); Cheek, 31 F.3d at 500. Nonetheless, an allegation raised in a federal discrimination complaint must be like or reasonably related to the allegations raised in the charges: that is, there must be a reasonable relationship between them, such that the claim in the complaint can reasonably be expected to grow out of the subsequent EEOC investigation. Id .; see also Oates v. Discovery Zone, 116 F.3d 1161, 1168 n. 7 (7th Cir.1997); McKenzie, 92 F.3d at 481-82; Harper v. Godfrey Co., 45 F.3d 143, 147-48 (7th Cir.1995); Weiss v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 990 F.2d 333, 337 (7th Cir.1993). At a minimum, the charge and the complaint must describe the same conduct and implicate the same individuals. Cheek, 31 F.3d at 501; see also McKenzie, 92 F.3d at 481; Harper, 45 F.3d at 148. 35 Ms. Benedict failed to raise her 1995-96 transfer denials in her October 1, 1995, EEOC charge of retaliation, though they apparently took place shortly before her filing. Because there is no indication that these incidents were like or reasonably related to the denial of her Title I position at Randall, McKenzie, 92 F.3d at 481, 483; Harper, 45 F.3d at 148, she has failed to exhaust her administrative remedies with respect to these incidents, see Cheek, 31 F.3d at 500. They were thus not properly raised in the district court. 36 Ms. Benedict also complains of her treatment at Lincoln School during the fall of 1995: she was excluded from a mid-October 1995, career-enhancing workshop, and her principal requested that Ms. Benedict's colleagues put their expectations of her into writing. Given the broad scope of conduct this circuit is willing to consider retaliatory, it is possible (without here deciding) that her treatment could be considered sufficiently adverse to warrant federal protection: placing an employee on the back of the workplace shelf is not necessarily conduct that falls beyond the federal reach. See, e.g., Dahm, 60 F.3d at 257; Collins, 830 F.2d at 702-06; see also Strother v. Southern Calif. Permanente Med. Group, 79 F.3d 859 (9th Cir.1996) (exclusion from a series of seminars, meetings and administrative positions sufficiently adverse). Moreover, the temporal proximity of her treatment to the August filing of her federal complaint and the October filing of her administrative charges might be sufficient at the summary judgment phase to permit an inference of causality. See McClendon, 108 F.3d at 796-97; Rabinovitz, 89 F.3d at 489. Nonetheless, there is nothing to suggest that but for her filings she would not have been treated as she was, see Gleason, 118 F.3d at 1146; McKenzie, 92 F.3d at 483, or that her treatment implicated the same individuals identified in prior incidents, Cheek, 31 F.3d at 501; see also McKenzie, 92 F.3d at 481. Without evidence that the Lincoln claim was like or reasonably related to her prior charges, see Cheek, 31 F.3d at 500-01, Ms. Benedict has failed to exhaust her administrative remedies, the condition precedent to bringing an allegation of discrimination into federal court, see McKenzie, 92 F.3d at 482. 37 Finally, employees claiming discrimination must timely file their charges: in this case, because Ms. Benedict cross-filed her EEOC charges with the ERD, within three hundred days of the allegedly discriminatory incident. See 29 U.S.C. § 626(d)(2); 42 U.S.C. § 12117(a) (incorporating Title VII's charge-filing requirements); Huels v. Exxon Coal U.S.A., Inc., 121 F.3d 1047, 1049 (7th Cir.1997) (ADA); Thelen v. Marc's Big Boy Corp., 64 F.3d 264, 267-69 (7th Cir.1996) (ADEA). Ms. Benedict filed her charge of age and disability discrimination on May 13, 1994: the three-hundred day period reaches back only until mid-July, 1993. Her treatment at Boyd is thus untimely raised. Neither has Ms. Benedict carried her evidentiary burden to come forward with admissible evidence that her treatment was part of a continuing violation. See Huels, 121 F.3d at 1049-50; Russell, 51 F.3d at 68, 70-71.