Opinion ID: 2971784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Brooks - Discharge

Text: In response to Brooks’s unlawful discrimination claim, SEIU offered evidence that one of its reasons for terminating Brooks’s employment was that she misled SEIU into believing that she had relocated to Chicago in order to collect paid leave she otherwise would not have received. Brooks argues that the evidence in the record reveals that she never told anyone she had acquired permanent housing in Chicago. She argues that the district court impermissibly made a credibility determination. The question is not whether Brooks’s evidence was credible. The question is whether SEIU honestly believed in its proffered nondiscriminatory reason for discharging Brooks. Majewski, 274 F.3d at 1117. The undisputed evidence shows that during a telephone conversation Brooks told Schneider that she had found a place in Chicago that would be available on December 5. She now explains that while she said she had found a house that would be available on December 5, she never said that she had actually purchased that house. On December 5, however, SEIU sent a letter to Brooks confirming that Brooks had told SEIU that she had found permanent housing. Brooks never corrected what she has now shown was a misunderstanding. Brooks’s assertion that she did not actually tell anyone that she had permanent housing in Chicago is insufficient to call into question SEIU’s honest belief that she did. No credibility determination is needed to reach this conclusion. Nor are we persuaded by Brooks’s No. 03-1916 16 contention that SEIU should have known she had not purchased a home in Chicago because she did not apply for a moving expense benefit or stipend. Because we find that Brooks has not met her burden of raising a genuine issue of material fact as to whether SEIU’s reasons for discharging her were pretextual, we affirm the grant of summary judgment.7 AFFIRMED. 7 In the statement of facts, Brooks alludes to two arguments that she does not develop in the argument section of the brief. First, she states that a white female, Stella Lindsey, applied for and received multiple weeks of medical leave, decided not to transfer, and was laid off rather than discharged. SEIU responds that Lindsey was not similarly situated because there was no evidence that Lindsey misled SEIU with respect to her transfer decision. Second, Brooks challenges the statement in her termination letter that she was not welcomed at any central region locals. She does this by arguing that the letters must have been solicited by Schneider because the letters from the locals were all written within a few weeks of each other just before Brooks’s termination. Schneider stated in an affidavit that she asked for written confirmation from the locals after receiving information verbally in prior meetings.