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Employment — discrimination

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//February 5, 2014//

Employment — discrimination

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//February 5, 2014//

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Employment — discrimination

These related cases raise dozens of claims of illegal discrimination in the promotion process used by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the Indianapolis Fire Department. The plaintiffs have focused most of their appellate argument on claims of procedural error. They contend that the district court erroneously applied summary judgment standards at the pleadings stage and wrongly denied their second motion to amend the complaint. The court finds no procedural error and concludes that judgment for the City was proper in both cases. To the extent that some of the Title VII disparate-treatment claims arose out of promotion decisions made in 2002, 2006, and 2007, the district court quite properly dismissed them as time-barred.

The plaintiffs’ EEOC charges were adequate to exhaust administrative remedies, but the amended complaint must satisfy the Twombly/Iqbal plausibility standard. For all its heft, the amended complaint alludes to disparate impact in wholly conclusory terms.

The plaintiffs produced no evidence showing that the promotion tests administered in 2007 and 2008 caused a statistically significant disparate impact on black candidates for promotion in the police and fire departments. Accordingly, the city was entitled to summary judgment on the disparate-treatment claims. The second lawsuit meets all the elements of claim preclusion. The parties are the same and the first lawsuit was resolved in a final judgment. Whether the causes of action in the two suits arise from the same core of operative facts is a closer question, but we conclude that they do.

Affirmed.

12-3422 Adams v. City of Indianapolis

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. Sykes, J.

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