By: Derek Hawkins//August 22, 2017//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Clayton Owens v. Chicago Board of Education
Case No.: 16-3607
Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and BAUER and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges
Focus: Sufficiency of Evidence
Owens contends that Miller discriminated against him because of his age (61 at the time) and his first suit. The district court granted summary judgment to the Board. 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119772 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 6, 2016). The claim of age discrimination failed, the court concluded, because no other older employee had fared poorly in Miller’s evaluations and because she had legitimate reasons to downrate Owens. A sheaf of documentary evidence shows that he dealt slowly, if at all, with serious problems such as the lack of hot water in the lavatories.
We agree with the district court that the record would not permit a reasonable trier of fact to conclude that Owens’s age influenced his “unsatisfactory” rating. See Ortiz v. Werner Enterprises, Inc., 834 F.3d 760 (7th Cir. 2016) (discussing the standards for the resolution of employment-discrimination claims). The judgment is affirmed to the extent it dismisses Owens’s age-discrimination claim but otherwise is reversed, and the case is remanded for trial.
Affirmed in part. Reversed and Remanded in part.