United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Charles P. Kocoras, United States District Judge
Before
the Court is Defendants Sheriff Thomas Dart (âDartâ),
Undersheriff Zelda Whittler (âWhittlerâ), Helen Burke
(âBurkeâ), Marlon Parks (âParksâ), Dana Wright (âWrightâ),
Alex Figueroa (âFigueroaâ), Ronald Zychowski (âZychowskiâ),
in their individual capacities, and the Cook County Sheriffâs
Officeâs (âCCSOâ) (collectively, âthe Defendantsâ) motion for
summary judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
56. For the following reasons, the Court grants the
Defendantsâ motion.
BACKGROUND
The
following facts are taken from the record and are undisputed
unless otherwise noted.
Plaintiff
Tamara Wuerffel (“Wuerffel”) is a former police
sergeant with the CCSO. Dart is the Sheriff of Cook County,
Illinois. Whittler is the Undersheriff of Cook County,
Illinois and is a female. Burke has served as the Chief of
the Bureau of Administration since January 2013. Wright has
served as the First Deputy Chief of the Sheriff’s
Police since September 2013. Parks has served as the Deputy
Chief of Patrol since 2012. Zychowski worked as a Commander
in the Sheriff’s Police Department and was in
Wuerffel’s chain of command for part of 2012 and 2013.
Figueroa was employed by the CCSO as an investigator for the
Office of Professional Review (“OPR”).
Initial
Overtime Concerns
On
November 16, 2012, Zychowski received a Court Time/Attendance
Report from Wuerffel, claiming nine overtime hours for
attending court on November 15, 2012. Four days later,
Zychowski inquired about the overtime request and discovered
that the juries in the case were dismissed at lunch time.
Accordingly, Zychowski questioned the validity of the
overtime request and addressed the issue with Wuerffel. Based
on the conversation, Wuerffel resubmitted the overtime
request for a lesser number of hours. At this point, Wuerffel
claims that she believed the matter to be resolved. However,
this incident sparked a much larger inquiry into
Wuerffel’s court overtime requests.
On
January 29, 2013, Zychowski wrote a memorandum to Parks
informing him of the November 2012 incident concerning
Wuerffel’s overtime request. Parks then asked his
assistant to pull the court overtime hours for his sergeants
in patrol. Though the parties dispute the accuracy of the
results, the summary chart showed that Wuerffel had 247.5
annual court overtime hours, while the next highest sergeant
had 64.5 hours.
Harassment
Allegations
Starting
in January 2013, Wuerffel claimed that Zychowski singled her
out by making her get days off or benefit time approved by
him. She also claims that Zychowski would not allow her to
adjust her schedule, despite male officers being allowed to
do so. Moreover, Wuerffel alleges that she was denied the
opportunity to work overtime assignments, such as two
roadside safety checks. Wuerffel raised these concerns in an
e-mail to Parks, and they had a phone conversation regarding
her concerns. At the time of this conversation, Parks already
reviewed the chart of court overtime hours.
On
February 13, 2013, Parks filed a complaint register
(“CR”) with OPR, requesting that they investigate
Wuerffel “due to inconsistencies in court
overtime.” In Spring 2013, Figueroa was assigned to
investigate the initial CR filed by Parks. Shortly thereafter
in June 2013, Parks removed Wuerffel as a field training
supervisor due to her pending OPR investigation.
Lieutenant
Promotion Process
Since
Wuerffel served as a sergeant with the CCSO, she was eligible
for promotion to the rank of lieutenant. In order to qualify
for promotion to lieutenant, Wuerffel had to pass a written
examination facilitated by the Merit Board. Afterward, the
promotion process was run pursuant to Article B of the
Sheriff’s Employment Action Manual
(“SEAM”). Mike Smith (“Smith”) was
the department head and the designee who handled this process
for the 2012–2013 promotions.
Pursuant
to the SEAM process, the lieutenant candidates are run
through a battery of tests for purposes of evaluation and
ranking. Qualified candidates are promoted in order of their
SEAM ranking, except that the department head has the option
of exercising a “discretionary pick” whereby he
can promote a candidate from the list out of order. On
December 3, 2012, Smith issued a memorandum to Chief of Staff
Brian Towne (“Towne”) that included a ranked list
of the lieutenant candidates. On the list, Nathan Camer
(“Camer”) was ranked first, Wuerffel was second,
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