Employment — national origin discrimination

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Civil

Employment — national origin discrimination

Where an employee was insubordinate, his termination was not the result of national origin discrimination.

“Tank argues T-Mobile’s explanations for firing him are insufficient to motivate his discharge because T-Mobile disciplined other employees for comparable infractions far less harshly. To show that co-workers are similarly situated, Tank must demonstrate that the putative similarly situated employees were directly comparable to him in all material respects. Patterson v. Ind. Newspapers, Inc., 589 F.3d 357, 365–66 (7th Cir. 2009). This requires Tank to show that he and an alleged comparator ‘engaged in similar conduct without such differentiating or mitigating circumstances as would distinguish their conduct or the employer’s treatment of them.’ Hanners v. Trent, 674 F.3d 683, 692–93 (7th Cir. 2012). As circumstantial evidence, Tank offers Ray and another VP as comparators to support his retaliation claim.4 Tank alleges that T-Mobile did not investigate Ray when he allowed a vendor to award itself 90% of T-Mobile’s outside contracts for the region or when a VP was found to have accepted gifts from a vendor whom he was perceived as favoring. Ray and the other VP are not valid comparators, how-ever, because neither engaged in the litany of misconduct that Tank engaged in. Tank was found not only to have demonstrated favoritism towards one of his employees, he was also found to have engaged in unprofessional conduct, and insubordination. In addition, the VP that Tank claims was not investigated was indeed investigated. Moreover, Tank was fired after being investigated a second time for breaking company rules. Neither of the T-Mobile employees Tank points to as comparators broke the rules a second time so they are not actually comparators.”

Affirmed.

13-1912 Tank v. T-Mobile USA, Inc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Guzmán, J., Williams, J.