08-1957 Weber v. Universities Research Ass’n., Inc.

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Employment
Sex discrimination

Where an employee spent 16 hours per week on non-work related websites, her termination was not sex discrimination.

“Weber identified a number of male URA employees that had outside employment, conducted personal business while at URA, viewed pornography on URA computers, or viewed websites that could have been related to their outside employment. She argues that all of these men are similarly situated to her because they were all subject to the same outside employment and computing policies. Although Weber has produced evidence that her male coworkers violated URA policy and were not fired, she has not satisfied her burden to show that any of those men were similarly situated with regard to her. Specifically, although she has identified a number of policy violations, she has not produced evidence that any of the men had trouble finishing their work because of the violations or that any of them violated URA’s policy with the same reckless abandon. Even if downloading music files is on par with looking up dog-related websites, downloading one music file is a far cry from spending more than 16 hours in one week on myriad websites related to an outside business. The fact that she accessed personal email addresses that were listed as contact emails for her business serves to further distinguish her violations of company policy from those of her male coworkers.”

Affirmed.

08-1957 Weber v. Universities Research Ass’n., Inc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Andersen, J., Kanne, J.

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