NICOLE BRONSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ANN & ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN‘S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO and SUSAN RUOHONEN, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 22-1290
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
ARGUED SEPTEMBER 29, 2022 — DECIDED MAY 30, 2023
Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judges.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 20-c-2077 — John Z. Lee, Judge.
I.
We accept the following allegations of Bronson‘s complaint as true for purposes of reviewing the district court‘s decision to dismiss the complaint.
In August 2018, Chicago Public Schools (“CPS“) Manager Tora Evans hired Bronson as a citywide hospital and treatment center teacher. R. 1 ¶¶ 9, 27.1 Bronson was assigned to Lurie for a period of three years. ¶ 9. Lurie is a pediatric hospital—the largest provider of pediatric health services in the Chicago metropolitan region. ¶ 2. Bronson was one of three CPS teachers assigned to work at the hospital. ¶ 14. Bronson and one other teacher, Catherine Cooper, are Black; the third teacher, Barbara Lee, is White. ¶¶ 1, 14. Ruohonen, as Lurie‘s family services director, served as the teachers’ “representative supervisor” at the hospital. ¶¶ 11, 29. Ruohonen is White. ¶ 11. Only one percent of the hospital employees who worked under Ruohonen‘s supervision were Black. ¶ 11.
As a hospital teacher, it was Bronson‘s job to provide educational services to students who were unable to participate
Because Bronson was working directly with patients in a hospital setting, Lurie controlled her access to the hospital premises, to patient medical records, and to the patients themselves; supplied her with workspace; trained her on pertinent hospital policies and procedures, as it did with other hospital employees; and monitored her compliance with those policies and procedures. ¶¶ 10, 18–20, 22–24, 30–31. Bronson was issued a Lurie identification badge that gave her access to the hospital and a hospital pager and email account to facilitate and coordinate her access to patients. ¶ 10. She was also given an office on the hospital premises that she shared with the other two teachers assigned to Lurie. ¶¶ 39–40, 43. In addition to a general orientation, Bronson‘s training at the hospital included instruction regarding patient privacy, including the patient confidentiality provisions of the
The gist of Bronson‘s complaint is that from the beginning, Lurie and Ruohonen treated Bronson and Cooper, the first Black teachers who served at Lurie, in a discriminatory manner. Bronson alleges that Lurie staff, including Ruohonen in particular, took actions that made it more difficult for them to do their jobs, ostracized and demeaned them, subjected them to a hostile working environment, and attempted to have CPS discipline and/or remove them from Lurie. ¶¶ 16, 19–24, 26, 28, 33–35, 37–39, 44, 48, 51, 54.
In a departure from its consistent past practice with other CPS teachers, Lurie denied Bronson and Cooper access to the hospital‘s electronic medical records system, known as EPIC. ¶¶ 19–21. Among the data stored in the EPIC system is information concerning a student-patient‘s hospital admission and discharge dates, medical diagnosis, and medical providers. ¶ 18. Teaсhers need this type of information in order to secure consent to work with a student and to prepare and implement an appropriate educational plan. ¶¶ 17–18. The predecessors of Bronson and Cooper had all been granted access to EPIC; Bronson and Cooper were the first and only teachers at Lurie who had been denied such access. ¶¶ 15, 23. Without the ability to use EPIC, Bronson and Cooper found it much more difficult to gain access to hospitalized students. ¶¶ 19–20. It would take Bronson and Cooper as long as two to three days to obtain the requisite information through other means and to secure the parental consent and other authorizations
The identification badges that Lurie issued to Bronson and Cooper bore a different color than those issued to other workers at Lurie—indeed, different from those that previously had been issued to other CPS teachers assigned to Lurie, including their colleague Barbara Lee, who is White. ¶ 30. Lee was on parental leave in August 2018 when Bronson and Cooper were first assigned to Lurie. ¶ 14. When Lee returned to the hospital following her leave in March 2019, Cooper immediately noticed the difference in badge colors. It also came to light that Lee‘s badge granted her “regular employee access” to the EPIC medical records system. (The badges were used both for general identification purposes and to access Lurie computers.) Bronson and Cooper began asking questions
Not until September 2019, more than a year after Bronson first started work at Lurie, was she given any access to the EPIC medical records system. Bronson discovered the change when she swiped her badge on a Lurie computer in order to check her email and noticed that she was now being provided limited access to EPIC. ¶ 31. At no time did Lurie otherwise notify Bronson that she had been granted such access. ¶ 32.
In the meantime, the relationship between Ruohonen and Bronson and Cooper had deteriorated. ¶¶ 21, 26, 33, 37. Ruohonen avoided contact with the two teachers, delegating to her administrative assistant the responsibility for providing certain training and orientation to Bronson and Cooper, although the assistant herself was unable to answer many of their questions and admitted that she did not know why Ruohonen was having her train them when she lacked the еxperience necessary to do so. ¶ 22. During a photography session at Lurie held in preparation for upcoming events marking Teachers Appreciation Week, Ruohonen posed for photographs with other school services workers, but when it was time for Cooper and Bronson to have their picture taken, Ruohonen announced she had somewhere else to be and excused herself from the photo, which caused them to feel disrespected and humiliated in front of their peers. ¶ 38.
Ruohonen was not the only person at the hospital who treated Bronson and Cooper in an allegedly demeaning manner. On one occasion, Bronson arrived at a student-patient‘s
On February 26, 2019, Ruohonen sent an email to Evans, their CPS supervisor, complaining that Bronson and Cooper: spent a good deal of time in their office and did not interact with other hospital workers; displayed attitudes that were perceived as passive-aggressive, dismissive, and “better than others“; exhibited annoyance when a patient was unavailable; were “[n]ot really committed to their service to our patients“; and in general did not reflect the culture at Lurie. ¶ 28. That email prompted Bronson to contact the Chicago Teachers Union, which led to a stern response to Ruohonen from Leah Raffanti, their CTU field representative. After identifying herself as such, Raffanti admonished Ruohonen as follows:
The CTU recognizes the special relationship our members have to develop at different locations while servicing CPS students. Certainly, Nicole [Bronson] and Catherine [Cooper], as well as all other city-wide CPS teachers and clinicians, work tirelessly to ensure CPS students receive
all they are owed according to the law while they are unable to attend a traditional school setting. I would like to clear up a few things regarding CTU members’ employment and due process rights. As I hope you are aware, the Chicago Board of Education and the CTU have a union contract that affords оur members due process rights and a progressive discipline system, should any member commit an infraction of Board policies or rules. What your “feedback” details … does not, in any way, show any such infractions and is based on unknown data collection and seemingly objective [sic] measures. Further, any unwarranted progressive discipline must be carried out by a member‘s direct supervisor. I am not sure what your “feedback” was intended to produce with Nicole‘s and Catherine‘s supervisor, although your email leads me to the conclusion you were attempting to convince Tora [Evans] of some kind of infraction. The only person who can initiate any disciplinary action against a CTU member is their supervisor.
The CTU-Board union contract, evaluation (known as REACH) best practices, and REACH handbook have very detailed rules by which members are observed and issued preliminary and summative evaluation scores. Your “feеdback” follows no such contract, best practices or handbook. The only person who can complete
REACH observations and issue evaluation scores is Tora, or another Board designee. Again, I am not sure what your “feedback” was intended to produce regarding Nicole‘s or Catherine‘s quality of work, but it cannot be used in their REACH evaluation, as you are not an employee of the Board. I truly hope you, Nicole and Catherine can move forward in a positive light. The allegations in your “feedback” are quite contemptuous. Calling into question their attitudes, work ethics, and accusing them of “not really being committed to patients” is insulting. Your patients are their students, and CTU members are nothing, if not dedicated to CPS students. From [your] email …, it seems like you are in regular communication with their supervisor. I urge you to continue to work this out with her, as your “feedback” has not been received well by the Union оr members assigned to work at Lurie.
CTU members have the right to union representation in any meeting with a supervisor they feel may lead to their discipline or termination. These are the Weingarten Rights afforded to them by the National Labor Relations Act. I have advised Nicole and Catherine of these rights.
¶ 29.
Finally, Bronson alleges that for a period of time beginning in the Spring of 2019, she (along with Cooper) was denied adequate office and desk space. The issue arose in May 2019, when Ruohonen emailed Evans to advise her that due to organizational changes, all CPS teachers were being moved to space on the 12th floor of the hospital shared by family sеrvices workers and hospital interns. ¶ 39. Bronson and Cooper were concerned to discover that in their newly assigned office space, they did not have adequate room to safely store either their student records, which contained sensitive medical and other confidential information, or their books and other teaching materials. This required the teachers to carry heavy boxes full of their records and materials with them around the hospital. ¶¶ 39, 40. Bronson eventually had to see a podiatrist to address the foot pain she was experiencing as a result of lugging the heavy boxes. ¶ 50. On the teachers’ behalf, Evans sent an email to Ruohonen advising her that under the collective bargaining agreement between the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Teachers Union, all CPS teachers had a right to “adequate workspace” appropriate to their job duties, including, at a minimum, а desk and a chair and access to a computer, printer, copier, and telephone. ¶ 41.
When Bronson subsequently arrived at Lurie to begin the 2019-2020 school year, she discovered that the office spаce then assigned to the CPS teachers included only two desks for the three teachers and that Lee‘s materials were already secured in one of those desks. ¶ 43. During a telephone conference call on October 3, 2019, Evans reported that Ruohonen had requested that one of the three CPS teachers be removed from Lurie because there was not sufficient office space for three teachers. Ruohonen made this request notwithstanding data indicating that even with three teachers working at Lurie, there often were not enough available teacher hours to provide instruction for each of the student-patients hospitalized on any given day. ¶ 45. Evans had been asked by another CPS administrator to inquire whether one of the three teachers assigned to Lurie would be willing to relocate to another hospital. Bronson advised Evans that “space was no longer an issue becаuse she made do with what she was provided over the past 2 months and would continue to make do.” ¶ 46. Bronson added that she was well aware that Ruohonen did not wish for Bronson to remain at Lurie, and that if placing
Evans went on to report that Ruohonen was drafting an email charging Bronson with HIPAA violations and that Ruohonen wanted the email to be placed in Bronson‘s personnel file. The charge was evidently based on an email of a kind that Bronson regularly sent to Evans and another CPS administrator containing data concerning the students to whom she provided educational services at Lurie. Bronson remarked that she did not understand how she had committed a HIPAA violation, given that each of the recipients of Bronson‘s email had independent access to the data summarized in the email, Evans had requested the same data from all citywide teachers on a weekly basis, and Lurie personnel themselves provided a census report of student-patients at the hospital to CPS. ¶ 48.
Later that same day, Bronson, Cooper, and Lee met to discuss the earlier conference call with Evans. After that meeting, Lee sent an email to Evans on behalf of the three teachers. Lee reported that “Catherine, Nicole and I were able to have a discussion as a team, and we all agree that Lurie Children‘s Hospital most definitely needs to have three CPS Hospital teachers on-site, versus only two, if we want to be able to provide educational services for the CPS students that are inpatients throughout the school year (not to mention providing them with the hour of school time they are legally entitled to).” ¶ 51. Lee also addressed the question of the working space that Lurie had made available to the teachers:
Overall, I think that the workspace and storage issues have been resolved, for the most part, except for one bin of teaching supplies/decorations, and when I saw Susan [Ruohonen] the other day, she mentioned she may have a place for us to store them. The only other issue is that, as we see more students while the year progresses, we will run out of (locked) space for our student files, even if we only hold onto our frequent flyers (which are many).
¶ 51.
In the wake of that same meeting, Bronson began to feel tightness in her chest as well as a loss of balance. She asked a nurse at Lurie to take her blood pressure, which turned out to be above the normal range, as it had been earlier in the day when Bronson had seen a podiatrist. ¶¶ 50, 52.
We have now summarized the specific incidеnts of mistreatment that Bronson has detailed in her complaint. More generally, she alleges that “[a]s time passed, [Ruohonen] continued to single out Plaintiff for discriminatory treatment. Plaintiff was subjected to efforts by [Ruohonen] to discipline, reassign and/or terminate her for conduct for which other employees were not punished and [to incidents] of harassment, and disparate treatment. ¶ 54.3
On December 12, 2019, Bronson filed a charge of discrimination against Lurie with the Illinois Department of Human Rights and with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Counts I and II of Bronson‘s complaint assert Title VII claims of race discrimination against Lurie for a hostile work environment and disparate treatment. Count IV asserts a claim under section 1981 against both Lurie and Ruohonen for interfering with her right to make and enforce a contract, again based on Bronson‘s race. Counts III and V assert state-law claims for defamation and tortious interference with contract.
The district court dismissed the Title VII claims against Lurie on the ground that Lurie was not a de facto employer of Bronson and could not be sued as such. The court reasoned that it was CPS, and not Lurie, that had the right to control and direct Bronson‘s work. To the extent that Bronson alleged that Ruohonen attempted to take adverse employment actions against Bronson, the allegations of the complaint showed that she had to pursue such attempts through CPS and Evans, and that she was unsuccessful in doing so. And although Lurie issued a hospital identification badge, pager, and email account to Bronson, designated Ruohonen as her “representative supervisor” at the hospital, trained Bronson with respect to hospital policies and patient privacy under HIPAA, provided Bronson and the оther teachers with office workspace, controlled the medical records system, and required Bronson to follow hospital policies (including HIPAA rules), these circumstances were insufficient to show that Lurie was her de facto employer. Lurie did not have the power to hire or fire Bronson or direct her work as a teacher; only CPS did. Bronson, 2021 WL 1056847, at *4–*5.
The court also dismissed the state claim for tortious interference with contract on the same grounds that it cited for dismissing the § 1981 claim, i.e., that Bronson did not adequately allege that the defendants had actually interfered with the rights bestowed on her by the agreement between CPS and the CTU. Id., at *7.
Having dismissed the federal claims, the court dismissed without prejudice the remaining state claim for defamation, allowing Bronson to pursue it in state court.
II.
We review the district court‘s decision to dismiss Bronson‘s complaint de novo. E.g., KAP Holdings, LLC v. Mar-Cone Appliance Parts Co., 55 F.4th 517, 523 (7th Cir. 2022). To survive a motion to dismiss, a plaintiff need allege “only enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 1974 (2007). So long as “the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged,” the complaint is sufficient. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009) (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556, 127 S. Ct. at 1965). For purposes of our review, we accept the well-pleaded facts in the complaint as true and draw reasonable inferences in the plaintiff‘s favor. KAP Holdings, 55 F.4th at 523. “[B]ut legal conclusions and conclusory allegations merely reciting the elements of the claim are not entitled to this presumption of truth.” Id. (quoting McCauley v. City of Chicago, 671 F.3d 611, 616 (7th Cir. 2011)).
A. Title VII
Count I of Bronson‘s complaint seeks relief pursuant to Title VII for a hostile work environment, and Cоunt II seeks relief under the same statute for disparate treatment, both based on Bronson‘s race. Only an employer can be liable under Title VII. Love v. JP Cullen & Sons, Inc., 779 F.3d 697, 701 (7th Cir. 2015).4 Whether a particular employer constitutes the plaintiff‘s employer presents a legal question. DaSilva v. Indiana, 30 F.4th 671, 672 (7th Cir. 2022). At this point, Bronson does not dispute that CPS was her direct employer: she concedes (and the complaint itself makes clear) that CPS hired her, had the power to direct her work as a teacher, and also had the authority to reassign her to another hospital. Bronson was also a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents teachers employed by CPS. But the cases recognize that an indirect or de facto employer can be liable to an individual under Title VII provided it had sufficient control over the terms and conditions of that individual‘s work. Bronson contends that, on a favorable view of the facts alleged in her complaint, Lurie was hеr de facto employer.5
(1) the extent of the employer‘s control and supervision over the employee; (2) the kind of occupation and nature of skill required, including whether skills were acquired on the job; (3) the employer‘s responsibility for the costs of operation; (4) the method and form of payment and benefits; and (5) the length of the job commitment.
Love, 779 F.3d at 702 (citing Knight v. United Farm Bureau Mut. Ins. Co., 950 F.2d 377, 378–79 (7th Cir. 1991)) (the ”Knight factors“); see also Bridge v. New Holland Logansport, Inc., 815 F.3d 356, 361 (7th Cir. 2016). These factors derive from the same agency principles that we employ to assess whether an individual is the defendant‘s employee or instead is an independent contractor. See Alexander v. Rush N. Shore Med. Ctr., 101 F.3d 487, 491 (7th Cir. 1996). The first of these factors is the most important one. Love, 779 F.3d at 702–03. Examination of the putative employer‘s authority over the plaintiff and her work takes into account not only control over the result of the work but the details by which it is achieved. Id. at 703 (quoting Alexander, 101 F.3d at 493). But the key powers evincing control are the right to hire and fire the plaintiff. Id. (citing
Applying these factors to the facts alleged in Bronson‘s complaint rules out the possibility that Lurie was her de facto employer as a general matter. Bronson‘s job was that of teacher, and although she performed that work in the hospital setting, the complaint is devoid of any allegations indicating that Lurie exercised any meaningful control or supervision over her teaching activities. To be sure, because the instruction took place on the hospital premises, Lurie exercised control over Bronson‘s access both to those premises and to the hospital‘s patients and their medical information, and Lurie took steps to ensure that she was familiar and compliant with hospital rules and policies, including those related to patient privacy. The complaint makes this much clear. But there are no allegations suggesting that Lurie exercised any authority with respect to her work as a teacher. Cf. Alexander, 101 F.3d at 493 (anesthesiologist constituted independent contractor rather than employee of hospital notwithstanding facts that hospital required anesthesiologist to be “on call” for specified number of hours per week and hospital‘s anesthesiology section chief assigned operating room patients to him). Lurie could register objections with CPS as to how effectively Bronson and the other teachers assigned to Lurie were functioning within the hospital environment, and Ruohonen did so. Bronson alleges, in fact, that Ruohonen contacted CPS on multiple occasions complaining about Bronson (and in some cases, her colleague Cooper) and asking in at least one instance that Bronson be reassigned elsewhere. But the complaint leaves no doubt that it was up to CPS to decide whether or not to take action against Bronson. In fact, Ruohonen‘s alleged campaign to have Bronson removed from her post at Lurie failed;
The other Knight factors reinforce the notion that CPS, rather than Lurie, was Bronson‘s sole employer. Bronson was a teacher, and there is no allegation that Lurie was in any respect responsible for her training or certification for that role. See Bridge, 815 F.3d at 362; Love, 779 F.3d at 704. Whatever training and credentials Lurie required of and provided to Bronson were centered on access to the hospital and compliance with hospital protocols rather than Bronson‘s substantive work as a teacher instructing hospitalized students. See Love, 779 F.3d at 704 (providing worksite safety training insufficient to demonstrate control over worker). Lurie no doubt incurred certain costs in hosting Bronson and the other CPS teachers: providing office space, training them in hospital procedures, and supplying pagers, access badges, email accounts and the like. But there is no indication that Lurie paid Bronson‘s salary or otherwise bore the primary costs of providing instruction to hospitalized students. And finally, although Bronson was assigned to teach at Lurie for a period
It has not escaped our attention that Lurie controlled the premises where Bronson performed her work, and some cases have considered ownership of the facility where the plaintiff worked as a factor distinguishing the work of an employee from that of an independent contractor. See Rutherford Food Corp. v. McComb, 331 U.S. 722, 730, 67 S. Ct. 1473, 1477 (1947) (FLSA case). But this factor, although it may lend support to the alternative theory of liability we are about to discuss, is by itself insufficient to suggest that Lurie was Bronson‘s de facto employer in a general sense.
Even if a putative employer does not exercise control over the plaintiff as a general matter, it may qualify as a de facto employer if it exercises “control over the specific aspects of his employment related to the subject of his suit,” Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1088–89 (7th Cir. 2008); see also Harris v. Allen Cnty. Bd. of Comm‘rs, 890 F.3d 680, 684, 686 (7th Cir. 2018); Love, 779 F.3d at 706, and Bronson faults the district court for not considering this possibility. As she sees it, even if Lurie did not control her work as a teacher, it surely did exercise control over the environment in which she was required to perform her duties. Thus, it was Lurie that restricted her access to the EPIC patient records system and made it more difficult fоr her to meet her students’ educational needs; it was Lurie that issued different-colored badges to Bronson and another Black teacher; and it was Lurie‘s employees, including Ruohonen, who engaged in conduct that stigmatized
We can assume that Bronson is correct that a specific-control analysis might well be more favorable to her. Any number of workers are regularly required to perform their work in client and other third-party settings that their direct employers do not control. Suppose the employee of an accounting firm is assigned for a substantial period of time to the premises of the firm‘s client for the purpose of conducting an audit of the client‘s inventory and financial records, and she experiences severe or pervasive sexual harassment from the client‘s employees, of which she complains to thе client and the accounting firm to no avail. In that scenario, there would be little question as to who the plaintiff‘s employer was in the usual sense: the accounting firm hired her and had the right to fire her; it paid her; and it controlled the substantive aspects of her work as an auditor wherever she performed it. And that firm, which could both admonish (and even terminate its relationship with) the client and/or remove its employee from the hostile environment, might bear some responsibility to her for the uncorrected harassment. But for the duration of the audit, it was the client who controlled the conditions of the plaintiff‘s day-to-day work environment. Thus, one might also plausibly argue that the client, which had direct control over the premises and the employees who perpetrated the harassment, ought to be treated as the plaintiff‘s de facto employer for the specific and limited purpose of a hostile environment claim. Sеe Howard v. Cook Cnty. Sheriff‘s Office, 2022 WL 1404833, at *7–*8 (N.D. Ill. May 4, 2022) (denying summary judgment to sheriff‘s office on hostile environment claim asserted by patient care attendant who was directly employed by county rather than sheriff but was assigned to work
The problem for Bronson is that she is pursuing this theory for the first time on appeal. In the district court, both she and Lurie argued the matter of control solely as a general matter using the Knight factors, and the court itself assessed Lurie‘s status as putative employer on that basis. Thus, control over Bronson‘s work as a teacher was treated by the court as the most significant factor in its analysis, and as we have
The line we have drawn between these two theories of employment may seem artificial at first blush, in that both take into consideration the putative employer‘s control over aspects of the plaintiff‘s work. But they do so in significantly different ways: one focuses on whom the plaintiff works for in rеal terms and the other looks at who was responsible for the particular work conditions that gave rise to her claim of discrimination, irrespective of who hired her, paid her, and controlled the substance of her day-to-day work. Bronson herself acknowledges that the two tests are distinct. Bronson Br. at 5. The claim-specific focus is entirely missing from Bronson‘s memoranda in the district court. Indeed, the theory reflected in her complaint is that Lurie was her employer, period—Bronson apparently did not anticipate that the district
Recognizing the possibility that we might come to this conclusion, Bronson in her reply brief urges us to review the district court‘s focus on general control alone for plain error. Plain error review is available in criminal cases, but needless to say, this is not a criminаl case, and with limited exceptions not applicable here, there is no plain-error review in civil cases. E.g., Walker v. Groot, 867 F.3d 799, 802–03 (7th Cir. 2017) (noting that
Because the allegations in Bronson‘s complaint establish that Lurie is not her de facto employer as a general matter, she cannot sue Lurie pursuant to Title VII. Counts I and II of the complaint were properly dismissed.
B. Section 1981
As relevant here, under section 1981, “[a]ll persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts … as is enjoyed by white citizens … .”
We have looked to Illinois law, and specifically the tort of tortious interference with contract, for guidance as to what type of action might suffice to establish that a defendant has deprived the plaintiff of her section 1981 right to make and enforce a contract with others. Id. at 630–31. To establish a claim for tortious interference with contract under Illinois law, “a plaintiff must show: ‘(1) the existence of a valid, enforceable contract between the plaintiff and a third party; (2) defendant‘s knowledge of that contract; (3) defendant‘s intentional and unjustified inducement of the third party to breach the contract; (4) occurrence of a breach resulting from defendant‘s conduct; [and] (5) damages[.]‘” Resource Fin. Corp. v. Interpublic Grp. of Cos., 2008 WL 4671773, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 21, 2008) (quoting Guice v. Sentinel Techs., Inc., 689 N.E.2d 355, 359 (Ill. App. Ct. 1997)). To establish that the tortious interference violated section 1981, a plaintiff must additionally show that the defendant was motivated by race when it interfered with the plaintiff‘s contrаctual rights. Muhammad v. Oliver, 547 F.3d 874, 878 (7th Cir. 2008). Notably, a mere attempt to induce another to deprive the plaintiff of a contractual right will not suffice to show tortious interference; the defendant must actually cause a breach of contract. Peco Pallet, Inc. v. Nw. Pallet Supply Co., 2016 WL 5405107, at *13 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 28, 2016).
The district court accepted the notion that Bronson could pursue a claim against Lurie and Ruohonen9 for tortiously interfering with her contract rights under the collective bargaining agreement between CPS and the Teachers Union. The complaint—which includes a claim under Illinois law for tortious interference with contract premised on this precise theory—and Bronson‘s memorandum opposing dismissal below identified interference with Bronson‘s right to adequate workspace in particular. R. 25 at 3, 10–11, 13. But the court found, in essence, that Bronson had pleaded herself out of court on this claim. Although the complaint indicated that Lurie in the first instance had not supplied the teachers with аdequate work space at the hospital (recall that Bronson had to share a desk with Cooper, and the teachers lacked secure space in which to store their records), it also alleged that CPS reminded the hospital of its obligation in this regard, that
Bronson faults the court for relying on the email because she was not the author of that email. But her own complaint quotes the email and notes that it was sent on behalf of all three CPS teachers assigned to Lurie, and the email on its face suggests that the workspace issue was resolved. Nothing in the complaint suggests otherwise. Bronson argues in the briefing that the email did not necessarily reflect her own views, but the complaint certainly does not allege that.
Bronson alsо suggests the court construed her section 1981 claim too narrowly and did not consider, inter alia, whether Lurie and/or Ruohonen may have interfered with her contractual rights under the CBA by subjecting her to a hostile work environment, for example. The complaint is certainly broad enough to include a hostile work environment and other disputed matters beyond the workspace issue. But the only specific provision of the CBA that Bronson cited in her complaint in support of the tortious interference claim was the workspace provision. ¶¶ 41, 104. More to the point, Bronson‘s response below to the motion to dismiss, which was her opportunity to explain how her complaint should be read, did not develop any other potential basis for the section 1981 claim. See R. 25 at 3, 10–11, 13. A court should not have to divine theories that a party represented by counsel does not herself put forward.
Bronson also argues that the district cоurt erred in considering only the contractual relationship between Bronson and CPS (via the collective bargaining agreement with CTU) as the object of interference by the defendants and did not
Bronson‘s state-law claim for tortious interference with contract fails for the same reasons that the section 1981 claim does.
III.
Bronson‘s federal claims under Title VII and section 1981 were properly dismissed, as was her claim under Illinois law for tortious interference with contract.
AFFIRMED