A federal appeals panel will let a former Springfield city worker resume her racial discrimination lawsuit against the city after finding a lower court gave too much leeway to the municipality’s conflicting explanations for why it promoted a Black woman to a supervisory job instead of the white plaintiff.
In August 2018, Diane Runkel sued Mayor Jim Langfelder and the city where she worked as an assistant purchasing agent after someone she supervised earned a promotion to head purchasing agent on March 1. Although the city offered Runkel a $5,000 annual salary bump, she instead filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The city disciplined Runkel and rescinded the raise; she retired shortly thereafter. In addition to discrimination, her complaint alleges illegal retaliation.
U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough granted summary judgment to the city on both claims. Runkel challenged that decision before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge David Hamilton wrote the panel’s opinion, issued Oct. 18; Judge Thomas Kirsch concurred. Judge Michael Kanne heard oral arguments on Kunkel’s appeal before his death June 16, and he did not participate in the decision.
According to court documents, Runkel started working for Springfield’s Office of Budget and Management in 2007 as a clerk, earning a promotion to buyer in 2008 and becoming assistant purchasing agent in 2015. The woman whose promotion precipitated the lawsuit started with the city’s public utilities office in 2005 but didn’t join the budget office until 2015, under Runkel’s supervision.
“There is some debate over just what happened after Runkel learned she would not be promoted, but it is clear that she became very upset,” Hamilton wrote, noting Langfelder personally chose the other woman. “The city eventually disciplined her for saying ‘offensive or profane’ things during” a phone call with William McCarty, budget office director.
To avoid summary judgment, Hamilton explained, Runkel didn’t need to argue race was the only cause of the promotion decision, just that it be one motivation in the incident she challenged. And she did indeed provide evidence Langfelder made his choice “at least partly because he wanted to appoint a Black person as purchasing agent for political and/or policy reasons,” Hamilton wrote.
That evidence included an interview the mayor gave indicating the promotion showed his administration “moving toward reflecting the city’s demographics” and that Langfelder first offered the job to a Black man who declined the position. One “particularly telling” detail, Hamilton continued, was evidence Langfelder didn’t see the appointee’s resume until after he’d offered her the job, which the panel said “might support a reasonable jury’s inference” the mayor paid more attention to race than qualifications.
Although the panel Hamilton noted the woman who got the job had “substantial” qualifications, it also acknowledged Runkel adequately provided evidence of her own fitness for the role, including McCarty’s plan to name her acting purchasing agent should the hiring process become protracted. Although Runkel can’t show a formal rejection, as the city didn’t take applications, she did offer evidence of expressing interest in the promotion and following up on the selection process.
The panel further looked at the qualifications of both women, and said, although there are differing opinions on who had a better resume, “a reasonable jury could find that the two were at least similarly qualified. For purposes of summary judgment, Runkel has supported a prima facie case for racial discrimination in the promotion decision, shifting the burden to the city to explain its decision.”
Hamilton explained Springfield’s response to Runkel’s EEOC complaint conflicted with other evidence involved, but even so Runkel adequately alleged the city’s non-discriminatory explanations for the promotion are pretextual, which could let a jury determine the city’s true intent. Chief among those is an admission from Langfelder he never considered Runkel.
“Add all of Runkel’s evidence together and the city’s different stories for the hiring appear inconsistent as to both the procedure used (was there a comparison of candidates or not?) and the substantive reasons for the hiring (was race part of the decision?),” Hamilton wrote. “In addition to some direct evidence of race being a factor, the inconsistencies in the evidence permit the inference” the city’s explanations are dishonest.
With regard to the retaliation complaint, the panel also agreed Runkel offered enough evidence for her allegations to survive a motion for summary judgment, including that Langfelder testified he didn’t recall rescinding her raise.
“The city has no written documentation for Runkel’s offensive conduct other than McCarty’s vague recollection of events” that McCarty emailed to human resources the day after she retired, Hamilton wrote.
"... Giving Runkel the benefit of reasonable inferences from the evidence, McCarty’s written recollection from 2018 would tend to support a finding that one of the reasons the City took disciplinary action against Runkel, including rescinding the promised raise, was because she accused the city of choosing the new purchasing agent based on race," Hamilton wrote.
The case was sent back to Myerscough in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois for further proceedings.
Runkel has been represented in the action by attorney John A. Baker, of the firm of Baker, Baker & Krajewski, of Springfield.
The city of Springfield and Langfelder have been represented by the city's assistant corporation attorneys Steven Rahn and Robert V. Hogue.