Employment — Age discrimination

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U.S. Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Employment — Age discrimination

Where a terminated employee’s duties were divided between employees both younger and older than him, summary judgment was properly granted to the employer on his age discrimination claim.

“Of course, hiring younger employees could demonstrate pretext, but in this case Widmar has also failed to present sufficient evidence of this. Sun Chemical denies that Widmar’s duties were absorbed by any younger employees at all, but rather were taken on by Toliopoulos, three years older than Widmar, and Ralph Zarada, another manager who is
six years older than Widmar, with both of them delegating tasks to less senior employees. Widmar claims that the twenty-three-year-old Jose Sanchez assumed the bulk of the du-ties that he had performed in the twelve months prior to his termination, and that Angel Ruiz, who was thirty-nine at the time, assumed others. But even if this is true, Widmar also admits that all of the people who reported to him began reporting to Toliopoulos after he was fired, including Ruiz and Sanchez. (One employee who formerly reported to Widmar began reporting to Zarada.) He also admitted that Toliopoulos and Zarada reported directly to Roberts, just as he had. He does not deny that he had managerial duties and that these older employees assumed some of them. He now asserts that the bulk of his job was performing lower-level ministerial tasks that were absorbed by the younger non-management workers, Sanchez and Ruiz. But even if we take Widmar’s facts as true, we can only conclude that some of his job duties were absorbed by employees who were older (tasks such as managing less senior employees) and some of his job duties were absorbed by employees who were younger (such as ministerial tasks). Thus even taking the facts in the light most favorable to Widmar (and we agree that it is a stretch that a plant manager/manufacturing man-ager who reported directly to the person overseeing all of manufacturing, purchasing, and the laboratory at the plant spent 90% of his time on ministerial matters), it is still true that Widmar’s duties were re-delegated among two men who were significantly older than Widmar, and two men who were significantly younger. Consequently Widmar has not made a showing that such reassignment was a pretext for discrimination.”

Affirmed.

13-2313 Widmar v. Sun Chemical Corp.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Leinenweber, J., Rovner, J.

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