Federal Circuits, 7th Cir. (December 14, 2006)
Docket number: 05-1788
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UNPUBLISHED ORDER
Not to be cited per Circuit Rule 53 United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604 Submitted September 22, 2006 Decided December 14, 2006 Before Hon. WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge Hon. DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge Hon. ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit JudgeNo. 05-1788PAMELA JORDAN, Appeal from the United States District Plaintiff-Appellant, Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. v. No. 01 C 1930MICHAEL CHERTOFF, SECRETARY,U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND Larry J. McKinney,SECURITY, Chief Judge. D e f e n d a n t - A p p e l l e e. ORDER Pamela Jordan contended that her former employer, the United States Customs Service ("Customs"),1 retaliated against her for complaining about alleged discrimination, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Customs, 1 On March 1, 2003, the United States Customs Service became part of the Department of Homeland Security. See Public Law 107-296. Prior to that date, the United States Customs Service was an agency within the Department of the Treasury. and we affirmed. See Jordan v. Chertoff, 160 Fed. Appx. 528 (7th Cir. 2005) (unpublished). Jordan then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, and the Court remanded this matter to us for further consideration in light of its decision in Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White, 126 S. Ct. 2405 (2006). See Jordan v. Chertoff, - - U.S. - - - -, 126 S. Ct. 2984 (2006). Because Jordan still cannot show that she suffered an actionable adverse action, we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Customs. I. BACKGROUND In 1988, the United States Customs Service hired Pamela Jordan, an African-American woman, to work as an accounting technician. Jordan worked at the National Finance Center in Indianapolis. The Center had four groups, including the Accounts Payable Group and the Financial Reporting and Analysis Group. During the time relevant here, Jordan worked in the Internal Recurring Obligation ("IRO") unit of the Accounts Payable Group. On several occasions, she requested a "detail" to the Forfeiture Fund Team ("FFT"), a unit in the Financial Reporting and Analysis Group. The term "detail" refers to a temporary assignment to a different position. While an employee serves on a detail, Customs considers the employee to occupy her regular position for pay purposes. At the conclusion of a detail, the employee returns to her regular position. Customs granted Jordan's FFT detail request in February 1995 and assigned her to the FFT for 120 days. She then asked that Customs reassign her to the FFT permanently. Although Customs denied her request for permanent reassignment, it extended her FFT detail for an additional 120 days. In the meantime, the IRO began to experience a substantial backlog in paying invoices for recurring services, its primary obligation. Invoice backlogs also traditionally rose higher during October and November with the beginning of the new fiscal year. And in October of 1995, the IRO was further burdened after losing the services of a summer intern and two clerks who had been detailed from another unit. As a result, the leader of the Accounts Payable Group requested that Jordan return to the IRO, and she did so. Prior to the conclusion of her second detail on the FFT, Jordan requested overtime; a supervisor denied Jordan's overtime request. Customs permanently reassigned Jordan to the FFT in 1998, where she worked until she left Customs in 2001. In her initial appeal to us in this case, Jordan maintained that Customs retaliated against her for filing administrative complaints by: (1) ending a temporary detail to the FFT; (2) failing to permanently reassign her to the FFT; and (3) denying her request for overtime on the FFT. II. ANALYSIS The anti-retaliation provision in Title VII prohibits an employer from taking actions that "discriminate against" an employee for "opposing" practices forbidden by Title VII or because she has "made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in" a Title VII investigation, proceeding, or hearing. 42U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a). In Burlington Northern, the Supreme Court held that Title VII's anti-retaliation provision "does not confine the actions it forbids to those that are related to employment or occur at the workplace." 126 S. Ct. at 2409. Rather, the Court stated, an employer can retaliate against an employee by taking actions that are not directly related to her employment or by causing her harm outside the workplace. 126 S. Ct. at 2412. The Court also ruled that Title VII's antiretaliation provision covers only those actions that a reasonable employee would find materially adverse. Id. at 2409. A. Summary judgment in favor of Customs remains proper after Burlington Northern. Jordan contends that in light of Burlington Northern, this court should remand this case to the district court to determine whether Jordan suffered an adverse action. We disagree. Burlington Northern did not eradicate the basic framework through which we evaluate a claim of retaliation under Title VII, as the essential inquiry remains whether an employee's protected activity constituted the reason for an employer's adverse action. To set forth a prima facie case of retaliation under Title VII, Jordan must either: (1) show that after filing a charge (or otherwise opposing an employer's allegedly discriminatory practice), only she, and not any similarly situated employee who did not take protected action, was subjected to a materially adverse action even though she was performing her job satisfactorily; or (2) present evidence that she engaged in protected activity and as a result suffered the materially adverse action of which she complains. See Burlington Northern, 126 S. Ct. at 2415; Tomanovich v. City of Indianapolis,