A Middle Eastern former mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service failed to show that his removal by police and placement on emergency leave following a workplace dispute constituted race- and national origin-based discrimination, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Thursday.
In 2022, the plaintiff in Ismail v. Steiner engaged in an argument with his supervisor over the length of time the plaintiff would spend on his route given the day’s mail volume. The supervisor asked the plaintiff — who, per court records, requested overtime on a “near-daily basis” — to return by 5:30 p.m.
The discussion escalated to yelling. When asked to take the discussion to the supervisor’s office, the plaintiff refused and continued yelling on the workroom floor, at one point using a profane remark. The supervisor left the floor of the Carpentersville, Illinois, post office and called the police, who escorted the plaintiff out of the facility. The Postal Service placed the plaintiff on emergency off-duty status, which removed him from work and docked him two days’ pay.
The plaintiff filed a grievance under the Postal Service’s collective bargaining agreement that resulted in a settlement. The agreement rescinded his off-duty placement and compensated him for the missing two days of pay. However, he later filed a lawsuit alleging that the dispute, combined with other alleged incidents of discrimination, violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
A district court granted summary judgment to the Postal Service, and the 7th Circuit affirmed. It held that the plaintiff had not shown evidence that the disciplinary action was attributable to his race or national origin, nor did he show that it had been in retaliation for his filing of equal employment opportunity complaints.
The plaintiff claimed that a White female carrier who had the same supervisor also confronted and yelled at the supervisor in the workroom without being escorted away by police. But he did not observe this incident firsthand and had no personal knowledge of it, the court said, nor did he know whether the other carrier faced discipline.
A union steward similarly testified that arguments between mail carriers and management occasionally took place in the workroom. But the 7th Circuit noted such encounters were usually deescalated by those involved, and the steward did not identify the names or racial or ethnic identities of these employees.
Therefore, the plaintiff failed to create a genuine issue of fact that co-workers engaging in substantially comparable conduct received more favorable treatment, the court held.
The court applied the U.S. Supreme Court’s McDonnell Douglas framework for Title VII claims, under which plaintiffs alleging disparate treatment using circumstantial evidence must, in part, show that they were treated less favorably than other similarly situated employees. The framework’s comparator requirements have been upheld by appeals courts even as other aspects of McDonnell Douglas face scrutiny.
The 7th Circuit also rejected the plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim. It held that, while the plaintiff and his supervisor argued and the supervisor’s treatment may have been “disrespectful or ill-advised,” no reasonable jury could conclude that this had any relationship to his protected characteristics.
Another notable aspect of the court’s decision concerned the plaintiff’s filing of union grievances complaining of overtime and timekeeping processing and approval errors by the Postal Service. The plaintiff argued that these filings should be considered protected activity within the meaning of Title VII. The 7th Circuit disagreed, citing court precedent holding that such grievances cannot form the basis of a Title VII retaliation claim.