Court Opinion

ID: 9492200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:34:44.772775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:10.375493
License: Public Domain

EVANS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Joseph Falica, the newly appointed chief of police for the Village of Dixmoor, suspended Frank Sanders, a part-time police officer with the Village, with (according to Sanders) this send-off: “Nigger, you’re suspended.” Sanders sued, summarily recounting the exchange in his skimpy (2-page) complaint and alleging that Falica “did not have any basis, other than plaintiffs race, to order plaintiffs suspension.” Sanders further alleged that Falica’s outburst and the ensuing suspension “deprived [him] of rights secured by Title VII.” The district court granted summary judgment for the Village, finding that Sanders “fail[ed] to satisfy the objective prong of the hostile work environment en-quiry, and consequently fail[ed] to demonstrate an actionable claim of racial harassment under Title VII.” Central to the court’s holding was its conclusion that Sanders was asserting a racial harassment, not a racial discrimination, claim. On appeal, Sanders says (but inexplicably only in a footnote) that the court incorrectly construed his claim; he was claiming discrimination, not harassment. He does, however, argue repeatedly that Falica’s use of “the most noxious racial epithet in the contemporary American lexicon” was direct evidence of racial discrimination.
A plaintiff in an employment discrimination case can avert summary judgment in two ways. First, he can offer enough evidence (whether direct or circumstantial) to create a triable issue of whether the adverse employment action of which he complains had a discriminatory motivation. Or, he can proceed under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting mode of proving a case. Wallace v. SMC Pneumatics, Inc., 103 F.3d 1394, 1397 (7th Cir.1997). Sanders went the first route. He claimed, though very inartfully, that Faliea’s statement — “Nigger, you’re suspended” — was direct evidence that Falica suspended him because of his race. Wallace provides solid support for such a claim.
Robert Wallace, an American, worked for an American subsidiary of a Japanese corporation. After Wallace botched a project, his general manager, David Robinson (also an American), fired him. Shortly before Wallace was fired, the director of the subsidiary, Fusao Takehashi (who was Japanese), said to Wallace: “all Americans are stupid.” Wallace sued under Title VII and lost on summary judgment. We affirmed because Wallace demonstrated no link between Takehashi’s racially charged insult and Robinson’s decision to fire Wallace. Chief Judge Posner, however, with eerie foresight, noted:
If Takehashi had fired Wallace after making this statement, Wallace would have made out a prima facie case (wholly apart from McDonnell Douglas), that is, a strong enough case to go to a jury rather than being resolvable by the grant of a directed verdict to the defendant. Id. at 1399.
The district court never considered whether Falica’s statement could support a claim of discrimination. Instead, the court analyzed Sanders’ claim as one of harassment and concluded that this single incident wasn’t enough to alter Sanders’ conditions of employment. That conclusion may be right, but the court’s analysis plays no role in the assessment of a discrimination claim. Though Sanders should have pushed his discrimination claim with more clarity, we should, nevertheless, be able to easily tease a discrimination claim out of what he did, in fact, allege. And the district court, I think, was wrong to brush the claim off so easily. In addition, the decision to characterize Sanders’ claim as one of harassment alone is baffling because the Village moved for summary judgment as if discrimination, not harassment, was alleged. The Village never mentioned harassment. In short, the district court granted summary judgment to the Village on a claim not even it recognized and barely addressed the claim both parties *872seemed to think was at issue, although admittedly Sanders’ counsel did a masterful job of camouflaging what he was trying to do.
Perhaps Sanders should have sought further relief in the district court before turning to us. That, it seems, would have been a wise course to pursue. And of course Sanders would, in any event, face an uphill battle convincing a trier of fact that Chief Falica actually said “Nigger, you’re suspended.”1 But if Falica, a white man, used “Nigger,” as vile a racial epithet as has ever been uttered, in the same sentence as a suspension order, that, in my view, is enough to create a triable issue as to whether Sanders was suspended because of his race. Accordingly, I dissent.

. The Village conceded, as it had to, Sanders' version of events for purposes of its summary judgment motion, so a credibility issue wasn't before the court.