Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, RETALIATION—N.D. Ill.: Suspended employee’s suit under Title VII and ADEA may not proceed to trial, (Feb 20, 2026)

By Nadine E. Roddy, J.D.

The employee’s evidence to support the element of causation wholly failed to raise an inference of retaliatory intent.

An employee who received multiple suspensions without pay as discipline for repeated job performance failures failed to raise an inference of retaliation by the employer for her filing of EEOC charges, a federal district court in Illinois has ruled. No reasonable jury could find a causal connection between the EEOC filings and the suspensions (Anderson v. Illinois Department of Employment Security, No. 1:23-cv-04097 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 13, 2026)).

Continuing job performance issues. A state agency employee who had been disciplined multiple times for poor job performance brought suit against her employer, asserting claims of discrimination and retaliation under Title VII and the ADEA. The discrimination claims were dismissed, leaving only the retaliation claims. After discovery, the employer moved for summary judgment on the remaining claims.

The record evidence showed that the employee, who worked as an Auditor II, was a member of the employer’s unionized workforce; thus, the terms and conditions of her employment were covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). She had been employed in this position since before 2021. In May 2021, she filed an EEOC charge, alleging discrimination based on race, age, and sex, as well as retaliation for engaging in protected activity. The EEOC dismissed the charge and issued a Notice of Right to Sue letter. No response to the charge was ever required of the employer.

Corrective action plan. Subsequently, the employee failed to meet the standard objectives of her position in her annual evaluation. As a result, her supervisor placed her on a 90-day Corrective Action Plan (CAP) that commenced on July 14, 2021, and in October of that year he instituted quarterly performance reviews. Despite these measures, the employee failed to meet the standard objectives during her 2022 annual evaluation period. Around September 2022, the supervisor and his supervisor referred the employee to the Labor Relations Department (LR) for discipline related to her poor performance. She received a one-day suspension without pay that she served in November 2022. At this time, none of the supervisory personnel involved knew that she had filed an EEOC charge in May 2021.

There followed a series of unsatisfactory quarterly evaluations and disciplinary suspensions without pay. The employee filed another EEOC charge in March 2023, alleging discrimination and retaliation based on the suspensions. The employer was notified of the charge a few days later, but the employee’s immediate supervisor did not learn of it until the winter of 2024. The employee filed her lawsuit in June 2023.

Causation. As an initial matter, the court noted that the employer challenged only the third element of retaliation under Title VII and the ADEA, arguing that the employee could not show any causal link between her EEOC charge filings (the protected activities) and any of her suspensions (the adverse actions). For her part, the employee did not dispute that she had continually failed to meet her performance goals from 2021 through her 2024 suspensions.

Policy deviations. Concerning the employee’s argument that the employer’s failure to follow the CBA policies raised an inference of retaliation for her EEOC filings, the court noted that employers are not required to rigidly adhere to procedural guidelines in order to avoid such an inference. Rather, courts look for pretext in the form of “a dishonest explanation, a lie rather than an oddity or an error.” In this case, the employee wholly failed to explain how the alleged procedural irregularities led to an inference of retaliation.

Comparator evidence. As for the employee’s argument that other Auditor IIs were treated more favorably than she, the court observed that similarly situated employees must be directly comparable to the plaintiff in all material respects. The relevant comparators in this case, therefore, would be Auditor IIs under the same supervisor’s supervision. Yet the employee had not identified any specific Auditor II employee under her supervisor’s supervision that had received more favorable treatment.

Temporal proximity. The employee also contended that suspicious timing between her EEOC charges and the suspensions created an inference of retaliatory intent. Acknowledging that temporal proximity can support an inference of causation, the court explained that a plaintiff must demonstrate (1) that the adverse employment action followed “closely on the heels” of the protected expression, and (2) that the decisionmaker knew of the protected conduct when the decision was made. In this case, none of the suspensions that the employee identified followed so closely on the heels of her EEOC charges as to create an inference of retaliatory intent. Further, because one of the joint decisionmakers had not learned of the March 2023 EEOC charge until nearly a year afterward, the decision had not been made with knowledge of the protected activity.

For these and other reasons, the court granted summary judgment for the employer on all claims.

The case is No. 1:23-cv-04097.

Judge: Rowland, M.

Attorneys: Joshua D. McCann (Law Offices of Michael T. Smith & Associates, P.C.) for Shatosha Anderson. Sandy L. Morris (Valentine Austriaco & Bueschel, P.C.) for Illinois Department of Employment Security.

Companies: Illinois Department of Employment Security

Cases: Discrimination RaceDiscrimination AgeDiscrimination SexDiscrimination Retaliation IllinoisNews