NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with
Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted March 19, 2014*
Decided May 22, 2014
Before
RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge
JOHN DANIEL TINDER, Circuit Judge
No. 13‐1851
PETER J. LASLIE, Appeal from the United States District
Plaintiff‐Appellant, Court for the Northern District of Illinois,
Eastern Division.
v.
No. 10 C 3031
CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY,
Defendant‐Appellee. Thomas M. Durkin,
Judge.
O R D E R
Peter Laslie, a black rail‐car switchman, appeals the summary judgment for his
employer, the Chicago Transit Authority, in his suit asserting race discrimination and
retaliatory discharge. We affirm in part and vacate and remand in part.
*
After examining the parties’ briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral
argument is unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.
See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
No. 13‐1851 2
The CTA suspended Laslie in January 2009 for 17 days after he was involved in a
train collision. Laslie had been guiding a train without working brakes through the
CTA repair shop at the direction of another CTA employee. The train operator, unaware
that the train did not have working brakes, was unable to stop the train before it hit a
repair‐shop door. A later investigation completed by a CTA transportation manager
concluded that Laslie was partially responsible for the collision and violated CTA rules
by using a defective car to push other cars and damaging CTA property (the repair‐
shop door). Given his role in the accident (and in another accident two years earlier),
the CTA suspended Laslie and placed him on probation. He filed an EEOC charge,
alleging that the CTA discriminated against him based on his race because a white
employee (later identified as Dave Grabski) was involved in the same incident but was
not suspended.
The CTA discharged Laslie in December 2009 after he was involved in another
collision. This time he operated a train on a track that was partially obstructed by train
cars on an adjacent track. He misjudged whether there was space for his train to pass
and his train sideswiped the train cars on the adjacent track, causing substantial
damage to the train cars. A transportation manager investigated and concluded that
Laslie was responsible for the accident and, because he was still on probation for the
January incident, recommended Laslie’s discharge. The general manager agreed and
fired Laslie. He was later rehired by the CTA and reinstated to his switchman position.
Laslie sued the CTA under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C.
§§ 2000e‐2, 2000e‐3, alleging that the CTA discriminated against him based on his race
when it disciplined him for the January 2009 incident and later fired him in retaliation
for filing the discrimination charge with the EEOC.
The district court granted the CTA’s motion for summary judgment on both the
discrimination and retaliation claims. The court concluded that Laslie failed to present
“even a scintilla of evidence” that race motivated the CTA’s disciplinary decisions or
that he was discharged for filing the EEOC charge eight months earlier.
On appeal Laslie seems to challenge the district court’s conclusion that he did not
establish pretext. According to the court, Laslie failed to show that the CTA’s proffered
reasons for firing him were factually baseless because he admitted being partially
responsible for the sideswiping incident. But partial responsibility is not full
responsibility, Laslie now contends, and he asserts that the CTA’s retaliatory intent is
No. 13‐1851 3
reflected in its decision to hold him solely responsible for an incident that was not
entirely his fault. But courts must evaluate whether the employer’s proffered reason is a
lie, see Smiley v. Columbia Coll. Chicago, 714 F.3d 988, 1002 (7th Cir. 2013); Russell v. Acme‐
Evans Co., 51 F.3d 64, 68 (7th Cir. 1995); Clay v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 501 F.3d 695, 714
(6th Cir. 2007), not whether the employer “may be wrong about its employee’s
performance,” Gates v. Caterpillar, Inc., 513 F.3d 680, 691 (7th Cir. 2008);
see also Anderson v. Durham D & M, LLC, 606 F.3d 513, 522 (8th Cir. 2010). As the district
court correctly noted, Laslie did not provide evidence reflecting that the CTA had other
motivations for firing him, and he admits that he was partially responsible for the
damaged caused by the sideswiping incident. Given his culpability in that incident and
his prior disciplinary history, the court properly concluded that no reasonable jury
could find that the CTA’s reasons for firing him were pretextual. See Turner v. The
Saloon, Ltd., 595 F.3d 679, 687–88 (7th Cir. 2010); Pearson v. Mass. Bay Transp. Auth., 723
F.3d 36, 40–41 (1st Cir. 2013).
Regarding the discrimination claim, Laslie challenges the district court’s finding
that he had failed to identify any similarly situated employee who had been treated
more favorably than he. Laslie maintains that he had identified Grabski, the white
employee who was not suspended despite also being involved in the accident in which
Laslie was involved. The judge noted that Grabski worked in a different department
under a different supervisor and didn’t know that the train lacked working brakes. In
this appeal, Laslie challenges the judge’s finding on the basis of an excerpt from an
undated ruling by an arbitrator, who had handled Laslie’s grievance over his 17‐day
suspension and subsequent discharge. The arbitrator found, according to the excerpt,
that Laslie and Grabski had been “equally guilty of the rule violation” and that the
Transit Authority had, by disciplining Laslie but not Grabski, “clearly treated similarly
situated employees differently.”
This is evidence of discrimination against Laslie, but it was not submitted to the
district court; nor is it the complete arbitration decision, though it’s not apparent that
anything is missing that would bear on Grabski; nor is the excerpt authenticated,
though it appears to be authentic (the absence of a date on the excerpt doesn’t seem to
undermine its authenticity).
It is not “before” us, but we hesitate to invoke technical rules of evidence against
a pro se appellant. For all we know, Laslie didn’t have the arbitration ruling when the
case was in the district court (remember that we don’t have the date of the ruling), or
No. 13‐1851 4
didn’t grasp its significance until he appealed, and didn’t think that he should or could
ask the district court to reopen the case to consider it. If it is authentic and (so far as
Grabski is concerned) complete, it is significant evidence in support of Laslie’s claim,
and should if possible receive consideration. See Alexander v. Gardner‐Denver Co., 415
U.S. 36, 60 (1974); Coleman v. Donahoe, 667 F.3d 835, 855 (7th Cir. 2012). We have decided
therefore to order a limited remand to the district court, for a determination whether to
reopen the case to reconsider the denial of Laslie’s discrimination claim on the basis of
the arbitration ruling. See United States v. Adams, 746 F.3d 723, 744‐45 (7th Cir. 2014);
United States v. Obi, 542 F.3d 148, 154 (6th Cir. 2008). The denial of his retaliation claim
is, however, affirmed.