By: dmc-admin//May 31, 2010//
Employment
Race discrimination; retaliation
Where an employee denied a promotion received the lowest scores of the candidates from all the interviewers, and not just those against whom he had previously filed a civil rights complaint, summary judgment was properly granted to the employer on his retaliation claim.
"Given the standardized interview format and the consistency of the interviewers' scoring, Leonard cannot show that any interviewer(s) denied him a promotion in retaliation for his civil rights complaint. See id. at 788 (describing a similar interview process with standardized questions and numerical scoring as 'reasonable and fair'). Notably, McElwee and Magee, the Chief shirt wearers most likely to be upset over Leonard's complaint, gave Leonard scores that were within the mainstream. McElwee's and Magee's total scores for Leonard were 19 and 18, respectively, which were actually higher than the 17 given by Larkin and the 16 given by Sigler. True, McElwee and Magee gave Leonard the lowest score of any candidate, but so did Valerie Leonard and Gilbert. This consistent scoring pattern by the interviewer panel suggests only that Leonard was outperformed by other candidates, not that he was the target of retaliation."
Affirmed.
09-2443 Leonard v. Eastern Illinois University
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, McCuskey, J., Tinder, J.