Opinion ID: 6331804
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jury-Service Retaliation Claims

Text: Under the Illinois Jury Act, “[n]o employer shall discharge, threaten to discharge, intimidate or coerce any employee by reason of the employee’s jury service, or the attendance or scheduled attendance in connection with such service,” in any Illinois court. 705 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. 305/4.1(b). Case law interpreting this Act is sparse. Perez has also brought a common-law retaliatory discharge claim based on this Act. A former employee bringing a common-law claim for retaliatory discharge must show: “(1) the employer discharged the employee, (2) in retaliation for the employee’s activities, and (3) that the discharge violates a clear mandate of public policy.” Turner v. Mem’l Med. Ctr., 911 N.E.2d 369, 374 (Ill. 2009). “Illinois does not apply the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework commonly applied in federal retaliation cases.” Gordon v. FedEx Freight, Inc., 674 F.3d 769, 774 (7th Cir. 2012). Instead, a plaintiﬀ must ﬁrst “proﬀer[] suﬃcient evidence from which a reasonable jury 18 No. 21-2601 could infer that the employer was improperly motivated” before the employer is required to provide a legitimate reason for the termination. Id. The parties do not dispute that Staples terminated Perez’s employment, and that jury service is a matter of public policy. The only element in dispute on either of Perez’s jury-duty claims is whether Perez’s four days of jury service caused his termination. Like the district court, we assume without deciding that the jury service must be “a proximate cause” of the termination. See ILLINOIS PATTERN JURY INSTRUCTIONS 250.01 and 250.02. If there is no genuine issue of material fact that Staples had a valid, non-pretextual basis for discharging him, then summary judgment was properly entered for the company. Gordon, 674 F.3d at 775. We consider Perez’s arguments for why the protected activity of his jury service was a proximate cause of his discharge. In doing so, ﬁrst we evaluate the aﬃrmative evidence that Perez relies on for his belief that Staples actually ﬁred him because of his jury service.
In attempting to show a genuine issue of material fact as to causation, Perez cites what he terms “Coha’s overt hostility toward [Perez’s] jury duty.” The district court concluded that this evidence did not give rise to an inference that Staples’s termination of Perez’s employment was driven by his jury service. Perez characterizes as “hostile” Coha’s allegedly “funny” facial reaction to being informed that while Perez was on the plan he had been selected for jury duty, and Coha’s inquiry as to whether Perez could “get out of it.” But Perez fails to cite case law or to develop his argument. No No. 21-2601 19 reasonable jury could conclude from Coha’s facial reaction and comments that Staples ﬁred Perez because of his jury service.
By its terms, the associate success plan started on March 7, 2016 and ended June 6, 2016. Perez was terminated four days later, June 10, 2016. Perez contends Staples failed to extend the plan to account for his jury service. According to Perez, the district court erred by concluding that the plan was extended to accommodate his jury service. But the undisputed evidence shows that he was terminated four days after the plan’s scheduled end date, the same number of days that he served as a juror. Perez also maintains that the district court erred by not finding that Staples should have extended the plan by the number of holidays and vacation days he took during the plan’s term. Yet, the district court correctly concluded that even if Staples had that requirement, no evidence existed that the company’s deviation from it related to Perez’s jury service. And the court found that Perez knew when he entered into the plan that he had scheduled vacation during its term, and he was aware of the difficulty his scheduled time off could cause. So, Perez could have asked that the plan’s end date be adjusted accordingly, but he did not. Perez oﬀers another argument—that Staples began the process to terminate him before the plan ended, as evidenced by Coha’s June 2–3, 2016 emails to his superior Watson that Perez was falling short of the associate success plan’s requirements. This contention also fails, though, as Coha’s report was based only on Perez’s performance under the plan, and he did 20 No. 21-2601 not ask for permission to ﬁre Perez. Coha’s actions did not amount to a termination before the end of the plan, and the district court correctly rejected Perez’s assertion that Staples retaliated against him before the end of the plan.
Perez compares his performance to that of his fellow account manager Julie Claver, arguing that his results were superior to hers. To Perez, this showed that Staples’s reliance on his production under the associate success plan was pretextual. But, as discussed above, the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework does not apply to retaliatory-discharge claims under Illinois law. See Gordon, 674 F.3d at 774. And the district court noted that Perez conceded the point that comparisons to similarly-situated employees are not relevant on a common-law claim for retaliatory discharge. Perez failed to dispute the district court’s conclusion in the portions of his opening brief on appeal that compare his performance to that of Claver, so he has waived the argument. In any event, Perez’s comparisons to Claver do not create a genuine dispute of material fact regarding pretext. “Similarly situated employees must be directly comparable to the plaintiﬀ in all material respects” such that any “other possible explanatory variables” are eliminated. Formella v. Brennan, 817 F.3d 503, 512 (7th Cir. 2016) (citation omitted). Perez has not made that showing as to Claver, so she cannot be considered a similarly-situated employee. Moreover, as the district court correctly reasoned, the sales growth rates of Perez and Claver do not establish the relationship between each employee’s overall performance. Comparisons to Claver therefore do not support an inference that Staples acted pretextually in ﬁring Perez. No. 21-2601 21
Perez also responds to Staples’s arguments that his deﬁcient performance under the associate success plan caused the company to ﬁre him. He disputes that he failed to improve his performance during the plan, as he believes he met each of the plan’s three requirements. But although we view the evidence in the light most favorable to Perez, he did not satisfy at least two of the three plan requirements. First, the district court correctly concluded that during the plan period Perez did not close a minimum of $75,000 in Salesforce.com wins per period. Coha reported that Perez closed $48,000 in wins in March, $75,000 in April, and $25,000 in May. In Exhibit 31, discussed earlier, Perez has recalculated those ﬁgures as $115,000 in March, $75,000 in April, and $90,000 in May. To reach the May number, Perez includes a $50,000 win for a sale to the Elk Grove Village post oﬃce. But the basis for claiming that win is not clear. Initially, Perez says he was not informed about the sales to the Elk Grove Village post oﬃce until discovery in this lawsuit commenced. Later, he oﬀered that his ﬁrst-time sale to that buyer “projected into a yearly opportunity pipeline of $50,000.00.” Perez thus eﬀectively concedes the district court properly declined to credit this as a $50,000 win. As a matter of law, then, Perez failed to meet the ﬁrst requirement. Second, on the plan’s requirement that Perez maintain $1,000,000 in his Salesforce.com pipeline, there is no genuine dispute that he fell well short of the mark. Perez contends Staples improperly adjusted his ﬁgures and failed to credit additional accounts toward his pipeline because of a retaliatory motive. But there was an insuﬃcient evidentiary record to 22 No. 21-2601 draw either of those inferences. Pipeline credits were properly denied where the opportunity was already won. Perez contends on appeal that by Staples’s criteria, his pipeline averaged $354,420. He claims that $350,000 was the pipeline amount required for an account manager—his position—rendering irrelevant the $1,000,000 requirement in the associate success plan that he signed. Perez’s novel argument is that his inadequate performance was a pretext for retaliation because Staples held him to a standard for a position he did not hold. But the undisputed evidence is that Perez agreed to the associate success plan, which had a $1,000,000 pipeline requirement, before the point at which his jury service could have become a consideration. Perez fell short of that expectation, even if all the accounts he claims were improperly excluded were included. On these facts, no reasonable juror could conclude that Perez’s poor performance under the associate success plan was a merely pretextual reason for his termination.