Alamo v. Bliss

Federal 7th Circuit Court
Civil Court
Employment Discrimination
Citation
Case Number: 
No. 15-2849
Decision Date: 
July 20, 2017
Federal District: 
N.D. Ill., E. Div.
Holding: 
Reversed and remanded

Dist. Ct. erred in dismissing for failure to state claims, plaintiff-employee’s Title VII action alleging that he was victim of harassment and discrimination based on his national origin and retaliation for having made prior complaint of discrimination. Plaintiff stated viable harassment claim, where plaintiff alleged that his co-workers uttered offensive slurs on two occasions, stole food and physically threatened him over two-year period, and that his supervisors failed to act on his complaints of harassment. Plaintiff also stated viable discrimination claim based on disparate treatment, where plaintiff claimed that defendant gave him undesirable job assignments and generated impossible prerequisites for him to come back off of medical leave, where: (1) both job assignment and generation of said prerequisites qualified as actionable adverse acts that involved, among other things, plaintiff having to miss work; and (2) plaintiff alleged that defendant did not treat plaintiff’s co-workers in similar fashion. With respect to plaintiff’s retaliation claim, although period of months had elapsed between plaintiff’s protest of discrimination and defendant’s generation of series of prerequisites for plaintiff’s return to work after his medical leave, said gap did not preclude plaintiff from proceeding on his retaliation claim, since generation of said prerequisites was first opportunity for defendant to retaliate against plaintiff for having made protest.