Opinion ID: 688748
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiff's Contact Duties

Text: 41 Plaintiff testified in her deposition, in November of 1992, about her duties as a regional attorney and how they differed from those of a lobbyist. She had done some lobbying, but after she became a full time regional attorney she did not do lobbying. She stresses, however, that she talked with some legislators, went to some meetings and hearings, sometimes testified, planned, strategised, negotiated and drafted, reviewed legislative bulletins and bills, decided when additional input was needed, and sometimes drafted proactive legislation. 42 But it was clear to her what the lobbyists did that she did not do: maintain contacts with legislators and staff members; keep an eye on how things were moving through the legislature; recommend to AT & T people who voted in PACs how to distribute PAC dollars; be primarily responsible for understanding the political climate; attend fund raisers regularly, be[ ] there (in the legislature) on foot; try to get commitments on how legislators were going to vote in committee or on the floor. She could think of only one legislator with whom she kept more regularly in touch than with others, and even here she would see him only jointly with a lobbyist. 43 A year later, in December, 1993, plaintiff executed an affidavit, enlarging on her contacts with the legislator, adding another name, and generally asserting numerous other activities that involved external contacts with state legislators, legislative staff members, and others. This effort to manufacture an issue of fact by adding the gloss of a subsequent affidavit to an earlier deposition is to no effect. As we said in McCarthy v. Kemper Life Ins. Companies, 924 F.2d 683, 687 (7th Cir.1991), one cannot by affidavit effectively oppose a motion for summary judgment by contradicting his own deposition testimony. Plaintiff's present attempt to explain her deposition testimony as referring only to the job of a registered lobbyist does not reach the exculpatory level of confusion or lack of access to all material facts, which we recognized in Miller v. A.H. Robins Co., Inc., 766 F.2d 1102, 1104 (7th Cir.1985). 44 Having carefully considered all of plaintiff's submissions, we conclude that she has failed to put forward enough evidence to justify the inference that defendants failed to promote her because she is a woman. It is questionable whether plaintiff was even eligible for promotion under the plan pursuant to which the lobbyists were promoted. Even if she was, the criteria for promotion seem so overwhelmingly-oriented to lobbyists that, absent other evidence of discriminatory motive, her failure to be promoted logically raises no inference of discrimination. In other words, the theoretical possibility that defendants could have stretched the criteria of the flex plan to promote her to SG 11 does not make their failure to do so gender-based. By its own terms, the flex plan was geared to lobbyists, and, as implemented, it was never used to promote any regional attorneys, male or female. Furthermore, over the years, plaintiff received very favorable treatment from defendants, including the near doubling of her salary within a six year period, the payment of tuition and grant of necessary time off to allow her to pursue her Ph.D., and an offer to promote her to SG 11 if she accepted a Washington, D.C. position. Finally, there is no direct evidence whatsoever of any discriminatory animus. Based on this record, no rational juror could conclude that defendants failed to promote plaintiff under the flex plan because of her gender. Cf. Rand v. CF Industries, Inc., 42 F.3d 1139 (7th Cir.1994) (granting summary judgment because evidence allows no reasonable inference of discrimination to be drawn).