Employment; Retaliation; sexual harassment

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Employment; Retaliation; sexual harassment

Where an employee alleged protected activity and a material adverse employment action, it was error to dismiss the complaint.

“Luevano’s original, timely complaint also included a viable claim for retaliation. To plead a retaliation claim under Title VII, a plaintiff must allege that she engaged in statutorily protected activity and was subjected to adverse employment action as a result of that activity, though she need not use those terms, of course.

See McKenzie v. Illinois Dept. of Transp., 92 F.3d 473, 483 (7th Cir. 1996). Even at the summary judgment stage, which requires more from the plaintiff than the pleading stage, ‘[t]o establish a prima facie case of retaliation, an employee need not present proof of a causal link between the protected expression in which the plaintiff engaged (as by filing a complaint about an unlawful act by his employer) and the adverse employment action of which he is complaining.’ Johnson v. Cambridge Industries, Inc., 325 F.3d 892, 897 (7th Cir. 2003) (internal quotations omitted). Here the statutorily protected activity was the filing of the complaint against Luevano’s supervisor. The materially adverse action was reduction of assigned working hours. These were sufficient to meet the first two requirements of a prima facie claim, which is all Luevano needed to do at that stage.

Luevano thus sufficiently pled a claim for retaliation.”

Reversed and Remanded.

11-1917 Luevano v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Kendall, J., Hamilton, J.

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