Opinion ID: 8414565
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Waiver of Certain Arguments

Text: One threshold matter that we must address is Burton’s attempt to inject more facts into the case on appeal than she presented to the district court. Burton claims that the district court erred by limiting its analysis to certain alleged protected activities and materially adverse actions. She says that if the district court had considered everything, it would have found that she engaged in more protected activities and suffered more significant adverse employment actions. Burton’s problem is that she did not make these broad arguments to the district court. For example, on the Title IX claim she argues that the district court should have considered a litany of potential materially adverse employment actions. Yet she presented only two to the district court: Caywood’s reaction to her reporting of the note incident and Cay-wood’s and Throop’s supposed withdrawal of support for her cybersecurity curriculum. Throughout her briefing, Burton relies on facts that appear nowhere in her opposition to the Board’s motion for summary judgment below. It appears that she made a strategic decision in the district court to focus on the strongest points in her case and omit the rest. That decision was not necessarily a bad one, but it does preclude her reliance here on the facts omitted below. For one, she had the burden of identifying protected activities and materially adverse actions in opposition to summary judgment before the district court. See Ellis v. CCA of Tenn. LLC, 650 F.3d 640, 649 (7th Cir. 2011). The district court was necessarily limited to arguments presented in Burton’s opposition brief. After all, “a lawsuit is not a game of hunt the peanut. Employment discrimination cases are extremely fact-intensive, and neither appellate courts nor district courts are ‘obliged in our adversary system to scour the record looking for factual disputes....’” Greer v. Bd. of Educ., 267 F.3d 723, 727 (7th Cir. 2001) (quoting Waldridge v. Am. Hoechst Corp., 24 F.3d 918, 921-22 (7th Cir. 1993)). Instead, “[i]t is a well-settled rule that a party opposing a summary judgment motion must inform the trial judge of the reasons,, legal or factual, why summary judgment should not be entered.” Lib erles v. Cook Cty., 709 F.2d 1122, 1126 (7th Cir. 1983). “If [the nonmov-ing party] does not do so, and loses the motion, it cannot raise such reasons on appeal.” Id. This rule prevents Burton from raising specific - factual arguments that were absent from her briefing below even though her general claims were plainly before the court. See Fednav Int’l Ltd. v. Cont’l Ins. Co., 624 F.3d 834, 841 (7th Cir. 2010) (“[A] party has waived the ability to make a specific argument for the first time on appeal when the party failed to present that specific argument to the district court, even though the issue may have been before the district court in more general terms.”). Thus, Burton is limited to the facts laid out in Part I above and to the particular protected activities and adverse actions that she argued below. We now proceed to the merits of her Title IX and Title VII claims.