Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—SEX—7th Cir.: Female lab technician, fired for poor performance, fails to revive claim, (Jul 15, 2025)

By Tulay Turan, J.D.

The technician admitted she did not know how her two male coworkers’ performance compared to hers.

Affirming a district court’s grant of summary judgment in Exxon’s favor on a female lab technician’s Title VII sex discrimination claim, the Seventh Circuit ruled she failed to provide sufficient evidence for her claim where there was no evidence that two male coworkers she identified as comparators were similarly situated, and she failed to show the company’s reason for her termination—poor performance—was pretextual (Mitchell v. Exxon Mobil Corp., No. 24-2823 (7th Cir. July 14, 2025)).

The employee began working as a technician in Exxon’s testing laboratory in 2016. After working for three years as a contractor, the company hired her for a full-time position with the same title and responsibilities.

Employee assessment process. Exxon conducts a complex, multi-step performance assessment to evaluate the achievements and progress of its large workforce every year. At the beginning of every performance assessment period, employees complete a one-page summary of their accomplishments, strengths, and development opportunities during the previous 12 months. They also select co-workers to evaluate their performance.

Exxon assessed the technician’s role by a process that assigned performance categories A, B, C, or D to employees in the assessment group with quotas for how many employees in a group could be assigned to each category. Employees who were assigned category D were placed on Exxon’s Management of Lower Relative Performance program. During the 2019-2020 performance assessment cycle, the performance improvement plan option was not available to employees who fell into the Management Assigned Category (MAC), meaning they were a new hire with three or more years of relevant experience before joining Exxon. The technician was a MAC employee.

Assessment category. About one year into her full-time employment, the technician had her first and only performance assessment. In her preliminary assessment, she received a category B. After an assessment group meeting at which the supervisors determined the other employees in her group “tended to go above and beyond” in performing their responsibilities, she was assigned a final category of D. The plant manager met with her to deliver the results, telling her that her assessment group was “competitive” and she did not stand out compared to her peers. He provided her with a separation agreement, which she ultimately decided not to sign, and, thus, Exxon terminated her.

Prior proceedings. The technician sued Exxon for sex discrimination under Title VII. The district court granted summary judgment to Exxon because she failed to provide sufficient evidence for her claim. She filed this appeal.

Process errors. Affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment in Exxon’s favor, the court found the technician failed to present a prima facie case of sex discrimination. The court rejected the technician’s arguments that Exxon committed process errors in her evaluation. She did not point to any evidence showing that the final assessment group meeting was a pretense. The performance assessment process appeared to be dynamic, involving supervisors at different levels in the hierarchy discussing the readily changing rankings. “This means that the preliminary assessment category could have just as easily changed at the final assessment meeting as it did in the preliminary assessment stage,” the court wrote.

The court also rejected her argument that in the preliminary assessment stage, she was ranked relative to two male employees in violation of the assessment process described in Exxon’s manual. That portion of the manual, the court said, was vague as to what goes into the preliminary assessment categorization. “Inherent in a supervisor’s analysis of an employee’s performance is a comparison of the employee to his other direct reports,” the court wrote. Even if some deviation from the manual occurred in the preliminary assessment stage, the technician failed to establish that she was prejudiced by it.

Comparators not similarly situated. Next, the court affirmed the district court’s finding that the two male technicians that the female identified as comparators were not similarly situated. The female technician did not offer evidence from which to draw a comparison relevant to the performance assessment context. The record did not contain any evidence about the final assessment categories assigned to the males. Without any evidence about how they compared in the annual assessment process, the district court did not err when it concluded that her contention that she was treated less favorably based on sex was “mere speculation.”

No pretext. Turning to the issue of pretext, the court found that, even if it assumed the technician established a prima facie case, her claim failed because Exxon’s proffered reason for her termination—that her performance compared poorly relative to others in her comparator group—was nondiscriminatory.

Although she argued there was no evidence that her performance fell so short of her peers as to justify her category D assignment, she did not cite any evidence to show that her performance was comparable to that of the employees in her assessment group. The record did not contain self-assessment summaries from the three comparators to weigh against her accomplishments. When interviewed, she admitted to not having met her comparators, not having observed their job performance, not knowing how their job performance compared to hers, and not knowing what final assessment they received during the previous annual review. Thus, the court found she failed to carry her burden of proving that Exxon’s proffered reason for her termination was pretextual. Other than the fact that she was a member of a protected class, there was no evidence in the record from which a reasonable juror could infer that she was terminated because of her sex.

No pattern or practice. Finally, the court rejected the technician’s argument that Exxon engaged in a pattern or practice of sex discrimination. The court found that the district court correctly concluded that her pattern-or-practice claim boiled down to her assertion that several women in various positions at the Cicero plant were “let go by [the plant manager] through the [Management of Lower Relative Performance] process.” This assertion, without context and “at this high level of generality,” was not actionable, the court concluded.

The case is No. 24-2823.

Judge: Brennan, M.

Attorneys: Christina Abraham (Abraham Law & Consulting) for Kara Mitchell. Patrick Richard Duffey (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius) for Exxon Mobil Corp.

Companies: Exxon Mobil Corp.

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