Craig v. Wrought Washer Mfg., Inc.

108 F.4th 537

Jebari CRAIG, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WROUGHT WASHER MANUFACTURING, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

No. 23-1821

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued January 18, 2024

Decided July 16, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. No. 2:19-cv-01786 — Brett H. Ludwig, Judge.

Paul A. Kinne, Attorney, Gingras, Thomsen & Wachs LLP, Madison, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Michael D. Huitink, Attorney, Sorrentino Burkert Risch LLC, Brookfield, WI, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before Ripple, Brennan, and Scudder, Circuit Judges.

Ripple, Circuit Judge.

Jebari Craig worked for Wrought Washer Manufacturing, Inc. ("Wrought") from December 2010 until his termination in April 2019. He brought this Title VII action alleging that Wrought retaliated against him for filing a racial discrimination grievance. The complaint identified three instances of retaliation, but this appeal concerns only one of those claims: that he was unlawfully terminated in retaliation for filing his racial discrimination grievance. The district court granted summary judgment to Wrought on that claim. In doing so, the court relied on a contradictory declaration submitted by Wrought, the moving party, but did not consider a declaration submitted by Mr. Craig. For the reasons set forth in the following opinion, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

IBACKGROUND

A.

Mr. Craig, who is black, worked at Wrought, a producer of washers, nuts, and bolts, from 2010 until his termination in 2019. He began his employment in the general labor pool but eventually worked his way up to a job in stamping. Throughout Mr. Craig's employment with Wrought, Paul Schaefer was the plant manager.

Mr. Craig became the union president in 2018. In this role, he negotiated the union's contract with Wrought. During contract negotiations in 2018, Mr. Craig expressed his concerns to Schaefer about what he viewed as Wrought's lack of minority leadership. Earlier, in 2017, he had expressed his concerns about racial discrimination at Wrought to Schaefer.

On November 28, 2018, Mr. Craig got into a disagreement with a lead employee and a supervisor. This disagreement became a "yelling match" and worked its way up the shop floor and eventually to the front near Schaefer's office.¹ After Schaefer and a union employee informed Mr. Craig that he was in the wrong, Mr. Craig went back to the shop floor and began writing a union grievance. Later that same day, Mr. Craig handed Schaefer a grievance alleging racial discrimination based on Schaefer's lack of response to Mr. Craig's concerns about racial disparities at Wrought. Handing this grievance to Schaefer constituted the first step of the union's grievance process.

On December 3, Schaefer gave Mr. Craig a written warning for being loud and disruptive during the November 28 incident. Although Schaefer stated that Mr. Craig was "consistently loud, disruptive," and that "[t]hat was the way he operated," Mr. Craig had received no earlier discipline for his behavior.² Schaefer told Mr. Craig that Wrought "can't have this kind of behavior" and that he needed "to get something on file" about the incident.³

Schaefer and Mr. Craig met in early January 2019 to discuss Mr. Craig's allegations about the lack of minority leadership at Wrought. During the meeting, Mr. Craig expressed his concern that, compared to white employees, black employees at Wrought received fewer training opportunities, had less upward mobility, held inferior positions, and were subjected to racial disparities in discipline. Wrought investigated Mr. Craig's allegations in the weeks after the meeting and determined that Mr. Craig's claims lacked merit. Schaefer emailed Mr. Craig the investigation report's results.

Events at Wrought escalated further in early-to-mid-March. On March 7, Mr. Craig's work supervisor, Jason Jacobs, caught him using his cell phone while running his stamping machine. Wrought had a policy against its employees using cell phones while on the shop floor, and so Jacobs verbally warned Mr. Craig to put away his phone. A few days later, on March 11, Mr. Craig informed Schaefer that the union was formally requesting to move forward in the grievance process. The next day, Jacobs saw Mr. Craig using his cell phone three more times on the shop floor. The third time, he reprimanded Mr. Craig. A terse exchange between the two followed. Jacobs emailed Schaefer a report of the incident. In the email, he reported that Mr. Craig had told him what he was doing was none of his "[expletive deleted] business."⁴

The following day, Schaefer and Wrought's human resources manager met with Mr. Craig to discuss his confrontation with Jacobs. After hearing Mr. Craig's version of the story, Schaefer credited Jacobs's version and suspended Mr. Craig without pay, pending the results of an investigation into whether Mr. Craig had violated any of Wrought's policies. The investigation lasted fourteen working days. Partway into the investigation, on March 26, Mr. Craig emailed Schaefer's supervisor and raised his concern that the length of his suspension was in retaliation for his discrimination grievance. He pointed out that the investigations into two white employees who were suspended for insubordination each lasted only one day.

On April 5, Schaefer called Mr. Craig to discuss his return to work. Schaefer informed Mr. Craig he could return to work if he signed Wrought's "Last Chance Agreement." By its terms, the Last Chance Agreement permitted Mr. Craig to return to work if he agreed to abide by Wrought's company policies. Mr. Craig refused to sign the agreement, and Wrought subsequently terminated him.

After his termination, Wrought offered Mr. Craig a severance agreement. But the severance agreement required Mr. Craig to release his discrimination claims against Wrought, and therefore he refused to sign it.

B.

Mr. Craig brought this action against Wrought in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. His complaint set forth allegations that Wrought had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by retaliating against him for filing a grievance. He identified three instances of alleged retaliation: (1) his December written warning; (2) his March suspension; and (3) his April termination.

After the parties conducted discovery, Wrought moved for summary judgment, which the district court granted in part and denied in part. First, as to the written warning, the court concluded that Mr. Craig had failed to establish his prima facie case of retaliation because the warning did not constitute an adverse employment action. Second, the court reasoned that Mr. Craig's claim regarding his March suspension should move forward to trial based on the suspicious timing and length of the suspension.⁵ Third, and of prime importance to this appeal, the district court granted summary judgment to Wrought on Mr. Craig's claim regarding his April termination. Mr. Craig now appeals the judgment of the district court as to his retaliation claim based on his termination.

IIDISCUSSION

We review the district court's summary judgment ruling de novo, construing the record in the light most favorable to Mr. Craig. See James v. Hale, 959 F.3d 307, 314 (7th Cir. 2020). To succeed on his Title VII claim relating to his termination, Mr. Craig must show that he engaged in protected activity, that he suffered an adverse employment action, and that a causal connection exists between the two. See King v. Ford Motor Co., 872 F.3d 833, 841 (7th Cir. 2017). Only the third element is in dispute, and whether Mr. Craig has satisfied that disputed element turns on the contents of his April 5 telephone conversation with Schaefer.

A.

In order to evaluate properly Mr. Craig's argument on appeal, we first must examine in some detail the facts surrounding the April 5 telephone conversation between Schaefer and Mr. Craig. In that conversation, Schaefer offered Mr. Craig the opportunity to return to work if he signed the Last Chance Agreement. Mr. Craig refused to sign the agreement, and the parties dispute the reason for his refusal. Wrought submits that Mr. Craig refused to sign because the Last Chance Agreement did not provide him with back pay for the fourteen days of work he missed while on suspension; Mr. Craig contends he refused to sign because Schaefer told him that the Last Chance Agreement required him to give up his discrimination claims against Wrought. Because the district court agreed with Mr. Craig that Wrought could not lawfully condition his continued employment on the sacrifice of his discrimination claims, Mr. Craig's termination claim hinged on the substance of this phone conversation.

Prior to and at the beginning of this litigation, Mr. Craig maintained that he refused to sign the Last Chance Agreement because it did not provide for back pay for his fourteen-day suspension. He had testified in an unemployment hearing before an administrative law judge that he refused to sign the agreement because it did not provide for back pay.⁶ His complaint stated that he refused to sign the Last Chance Agreement because it did not provide for back pay.⁷ And he testified in his deposition that he refused to sign the agreement because it did not provide for back pay.⁸

But Mr. Craig's story changed after Schaefer's deposition. During that deposition, Schaefer stated that the Last Chance Agreement "was a full and final settlement" that required Mr. Craig to relinquish his right to pursue his discrimination and retaliation claims.⁹ But Schaefer also appeared to be confused about the difference between the Last Chance Agreement and the severance agreement; at one point he stated that he was unfamiliar with the severance agreement offered to Mr. Craig.¹⁰ The parties took a break, hoping to clear up some of the confusion, but when the deposition resumed Schaefer continued to testify that the Last Chance Agreement required Mr. Craig to give...