Opinion ID: 780618
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Same-group inference

Text: 41 The district court also invoked the same-group inference in holding that Wexler's direct evidence of discrimination was inadequate for his claim to survive summary judgment. By emphasizing that Schiffman was actually older than Wexler when he demoted Wexler, the district court was relying on the idea that one member of a group is unlikely to discriminate against another member of the same group. This inference has been explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court in the context of race and sex discrimination. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 78, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998) (explaining that [b]ecause of the many facets of human motivation, it would be unwise to presume as a matter of law that human beings of one definable group will not discriminate against other members of their group) (internal quotation marks omitted). We see no reason why the same reasoning should not apply to age discrimination cases. Kadas v. MCI Systemhouse Corp., 255 F.3d 359, 361 (7th Cir.2001) (explaining that the Seventh Circuit's emphatic rejection in a prior case of the idea that one member of a protected class is unlikely to discriminate against another member of the same protected class in race-discrimination cases applies with equal force to proof of age discrimination). Thus, the district court erred when it invoked the same-group inference at the summary judgment stage.