Opinion ID: 3173985
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence the District Court Admitted

Text: Before the district court—and on appeal—Bordelon re‐ lied on several pieces of circumstantial evidence that he claims give rise to an inference of Coates’s age discrimina‐ tion. First, he points to Everhart’s testimony that Coates “more or less suggested … [t]hat it was time for [Bordelon] to give it up.” This comment was made at a Council meeting in December 2010—shortly before it would vote on whether to renew Bordelon’s contract. Bordelon contends that this is an ambiguous statement akin to a company’s remarks that it would “not keep[] employees on until they reached sixty‐ five.” Robinson v. PPG Indus., Inc., 23 F.3d 1159, 1164–65 (7th Cir. 1994). This “express remark[] about Plaintiff’s age” and No. 14‐3240 9 its suspicious timing, Bordelon argues, could lead a trier of fact to infer that Coates held an age animus. (Appellant’s Br. at 5.) Coates’s statement is not an express remark about Bor‐ delon’s age. Nor is it an ambiguous remark sufficient to give rise to an inference that Coates was motivated by age. Ever‐ hart clarified that he thought this statement was referring to the school’s poor academic performance, not Bordelon’s age. Council member Chantelle Allen testified that Coates did not make any statements about Bordelon’s age at the meet‐ ing. The statement made, unlike Robinson, does not even mention age. Coupled with the testimony of Everhart and Allen, no rational trier of fact could draw the inference that Coates was motivated to discriminate against Bordelon based on his age because of this statement. Bordelon also points to Sanders’s testimony that Coates had a list of five or six “older black principals to be disci‐ plined.” This list does not support an inference of intentional discrimination based on age. First, there was a younger prin‐ cipal included on the list; Lennox was only 48. Second, the two principals that Sanders identified as having been on the list were both, like Bordelon, in charge of poorly performing schools. Third, Sanders did not testify as to who the other two or three principals on the list were. Finally, the mere fact that older principals appeared on the list does not support an inference of age discrimination where most of the princi‐ pals in Area 15 were older—only two of the sixteen principals were under 40 years old. Bordelon has offered no explana‐ tion as to why these principals were on this list or whether they merited discipline. Therefore, Sanders’s testimony 10 No. 14‐3240 about the list does not give rise to an inference of age dis‐ crimination by Coates. Additionally, as evidence that Coates favored younger workers, Bordelon relies on Sanders’s testimony that Coates fired her and replaced her with someone “younger and brighter.” Sanders explained, however, that she meant that her replacement must have “more education, or maybe she has a field in that position, she could do a better job.” This testimony does not give rise to an inference that Coates was motivated by age discrimination where Sanders expressly disavowed that she was replaced because of her age. Instead, she testified that she was replaced by someone who could do a better job. Her impression that Coates wanted someone younger, without more, does not give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination.