Malekpour v. Chao

682 F. App'x 471
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedMarch 29, 2017
DocketNos. 16-3440 & 16-3442
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 682 F. App'x 471 (Malekpour v. Chao) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Malekpour v. Chao, 682 F. App'x 471 (7th Cir. 2017).

Opinion

ORDER

Shahram Malekpour works as an aerospace engineer for the Federal Aviation Administration (an agency within the Department of Transportation). These consolidated appeals arise from a pair of overlapping lawsuits (which, for simplicity, we treat as one) in which he claims that the FAA violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c). Malekpour alleged that he suffered discrimination because he is Muslim and was born in Iran. He also alleged that the agency retaliated after he complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The district court granted summary judgment for the FAA, reasoning that a jury could not permissibly find that a brief suspension without pay—the only harm sufficiently adverse to be actionable—was discriminatory or retaliatory. We agree with this analysis.

[473]*473Summary judgment is proper “if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Allin v. City of Springfield, 845 F.3d 858, 861 (7th Cir. 2017) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)). We review grants of summary judgment de novo, drawing “all inferences in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.” Id. On appeal Ma-lekpour principally argues that the district court disregarded evidence creating genuine disputes of fact about his claims of discrimination and retaliation. We disagree. Malekpour has not pointed us to any relevant evidence overlooked by the district court (though his submissions at summary judgment include a great deal of information that the district court would have been authorized to ignore as inadmissible hearsay. See Grunville v. Walker, 583 F.3d 979, 985 (7th Cir. 2009) (“[A] court may consider only admissible evidence in assessing a motion for summary judgment.”). But even taking as true all of Malekpour’s unsupported allegations, we agree with the district court that a jury could not reasonably infer that he suffered actionable workplace discrimination or was retaliated against for complaining about perceived discrimination.

In analyzing Malekpour’s claims of discrimination and retaliation, the district court first asked if any action taken against him, standing alone, was “materially adverse” or, if viewed collectively, the actions attributable to the agency created a hostile work environment. See Alexander v. Casino Queen, Inc., 739 F.3d 972, 982 (7th Cir, 2014) (defining a hostile work environment as one where the “workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult, that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment”) (quotation marks omitted); Porter v. City of Chicago, 700 F.3d 944, 954 (7th Cir. 2012) (explaining that adverse employment action is an element of a claim of disparate treatment); Stephens v. Erickson, 569 F.3d 779, 790 (7th Cir. 2009) (noting that “an employer’s retaliatory conduct is actionable only if it would be materially adverse to a reasonable employee”). Malekpour characterizes as adverse a litany of workplace interactions: (1) he was removed—at his own request—as project manager for an aircraft-safety directive after disagreeing with management about the directive’s wording; (2) a manager said Shahram is too difficult a name to pronounce and suggested using “Shawn” for “ease of conversation”; (3) a manager critiquing a report written by Malekpour said his analysis made the FAA appear “chicken”; (4) a supervisor threatened to “fire your ass” if Malekpour didn’t follow directions; (5) a coworker criticized him on several occasions; (6) a manager predicted he would not “last long” at the agency; (7) management denied and later granted a request for compensatory time; (8) a manager asked Malekpour to use annual leave after arriving 15 minutes late but later rescinded that request; (9) Malekpour’s complaint to an FAA safety hotline was deemed invalid; (10) he found on his desk an anonymous note with the word “hostage”; (11) his manager referred an incident involving Malekpour and another employee to the FAA’s “Accountability Board” (apparently nothing came of this); (12) a supervisor threatened him with unspecified “consequences” for refusing to attend a meeting; (13) he was suspended for ten days without pay after failing to explain personal charges on his government credit card; and (14) information about that suspension was put into the “public record” by the Department of Labor and affected his credit.

[474]*474The district court sorted through these actions and concluded that only one was “materially adverse.” An adverse action for a discrimination claim must “materially alter the terms or conditions of employment to be actionable,” Porter, 700 F.3d at 954, while an adverse action for retaliation purposes must be “serious enough to dissuade a reasonable employee from engaging in protected activity,” Poullard v. McDonald, 829 F.3d 844, 858 (7th Cir. 2016). Most of the incidents Malekpour describes do not come close to meeting either standard. Instead, some appear to be commonplace management decisions, and others are merely “petty slights or minor annoyances that often take place at work and that all employees experience.” See id, at 857 (quoting Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 68, 126 S.Ct. 2405, 165 L.Ed.2d 345 (2006)); see also Griffin v. Potter, 356 F.3d 824, 829-30 (7th Cir. 2004) (listing cases involving “trivial,” and thus nonactionable, grievances), A couple of incidents might be considered offensive, but isolated incidents such as these are not actionable unless they are “extremely serious” or unless they “amount to discriminatory changes in the terms and conditions of employment.” Ellis v, CCA of Tenn. LLC, 650 F.3d 640, 648 (7th Cir. 2011) (quotation marks omitted).

But three events on Malekpour’s list merit discussion. First, taking away Malekpouris oversight of the aircraft-safety directive might have been materially adverse if certain conditions were present. Job reassignments are sometimes significant enough to be actionable, but only if they affect the employee’s “work hours, compensation, or career prospects.” Stephens, 569 F.3d at 790-91. Malekpour did not offer evidence that his job was affected at all by the reassignment, much less that his duties or career prospects were significantly altered (we know that his pay was unaffected). More importantly, Malekpour tells us that he initiated the reassignment by asking management to remove his name from the directive, so the decision to respect his wishes cannot fairly be characterized as “adverse.” See Hancock v. Potter,

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