Opinion ID: 2999609
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Retaliation—Title VII

Text: Phelan also argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants on her Title VII retaliation claim. We agree. The Supreme Court recently addressed Title VII’s retaliation provision and concluded that the range of conduct prohibited under this provision is broader than Title VII’s discrimination provision. See White, 126 S. Ct. at 2414. The Court held that in order to sustain a claim of retaliation in violation of Title VII, “a plaintiff must show that a reasonable employee would have found the challenged action materially adverse.” Id. at 2415. Pursuant to White, Phelan was protected from any “materially adverse” action on the part of her employer designed to deter Phelan from engaging in protected activity. See id. But we have already explained that Phelan’s termination was actionable under the narrower discrimination provision of Title VII. The question, then, with regard to her Title VII retaliation claim, was whether Phelan had produced sufficient evidence to defeat summary judgment on the question of retaliatory motive. The district court applied the wrong standard in concluding that Phelan No. 04-3991 23 had not established a causal link between her complaints of sexual harassment in July and August 1999 and her termination in October 2000. This conclusion was based exclusively on the amount of time that elapsed between the protected activity and the materially adverse action. We jettisoned the “causal link” analysis in favor of a twomethod system of assessing Title VII retaliation claims, described in our decision in Stone v. City of Indianapolis Public Utilities Division, 281 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2002). See Mannie v. Potter, 394 F.3d 977, 984 (7th Cir. 2006) (“in Stone v. City of Indianapolis Pub. Util. Div., in an opinion that was circulated under Rule 40(e), we held that plaintiffs seeking to prove retaliation under the indirect method need not show ‘even an attenuated causal link.’ ”). Under the first method, a plaintiff can defeat summary judgment by “present[ing] direct evidence . . . that he engaged in protected activity . . . and as a result suffered the adverse employment action of which he complains.”7 Stone, 281 F.3d at 644. “If [the evidence] is contradicted, the case must be tried unless the defendant presents unrebutted evidence that he would have taken the adverse employment action against the plaintiff even if he had had no retaliatory motive.” Id. In the absence of an admission of retaliatory motive by the defendant, a plaintiff can succeed under this first method, referred to as the “direct method,” by presenting sufficient circumstantial evidence such that a jury could infer retaliation. See Culver v. Gorman & Co., 416 F.3d 540, 7 That Stone uses the term “adverse employment action” in this context, as opposed to the term “materially adverse action,” used by the Supreme Court in White, is irrelevant. Stone addresses the proper test for determining whether there is sufficient evidence of retaliatory motive, and this analysis is unaltered by White. Going forward, of course, a court adjudicating a retaliation claim on summary judgment must ask whether a reasonable employee would have found the challenged action “materially adverse.” 24 No. 04-3991 546 (2005). The second method described in Stone, known as the “indirect method,” “requires the plaintiff to show that after filing the charge only he, and not any similarly situated employee who did not file a charge, was subjected to an adverse employment action.” Stone, 281 F.3d at 644. Only the direct method is relevant to our inquiry here. In Culver, we concluded that the plaintiff could succeed under the direct method in part because she produced evidence that she had received favorable performance reviews shortly before her firing, and also because she alleged her immediate supervisor attempted to dissuade her from complaining to higher-ups about the supervisor’s discriminatory actions. 416 F.3d at 546-47. Like the Culver plaintiff, Phelan introduced evidence that her termination was inconsistent with her satisfactory performance of her job shortly before termination. Cook County’s finding upon reinstating Phelan was that she had made a good faith effort to appropriately utilize the company’s leave policy. Phelan also introduced evidence that her immediate supervisor attempted to discourage her from complaining about sexual harassment and failed to report her final complaints to Human Resources. The record is replete with the warnings of various employees that Phelan would experience adverse consequences if she continued to complain about her harassment. Phelan testified at her deposition that her immediate supervisor, Jack Callaghan, threatened to terminate her if she continued to complain about sexual harassment. The time between Phelan’s protected activity and her termination is not as short as the plaintiff in Culver, where only 72 hours passed between the plaintiff’s protected activity and her termination. But it is sufficiently short to create a triable issue of fact. Phelan’s attorney contacted Cook County regarding the sexual harassment directed at Phelan on June 30, 2000, and Phelan filed her related leave request in August. Cook County initiated the process to terminate her the following No. 04-3991 25 month, when it sent her a letter notifying her of the forthcoming disciplinary hearing. A reasonable fact finder, viewing the passage of time in the context of the other evidence of discriminatory retaliation, could conclude that Phelan’s termination was a prohibited act of retaliation.