Catrina Bragg v. Munster Medical Research Foundation Inc., d/b/a COMMUNITY HOSPITAL

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 21-2913
C ATRINA B RAGG ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MUNSTER MEDICAL R ESEARCH FOUNDATION I NC., d/b/a
C OMMUNITY HOSPITAL ,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.
No. 2:19-cv-00209 — James T. Moody, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED SEPTEMBER 8, 2022 — D ECIDED J ANUARY 17, 2023
____________________
Before WOOD, ST . EVE , and J ACKSON-A KIWUMI, Circuit
Judges.
WOOD, Circuit Judge. After completing a 90-day orienta-
tion program for newly licensed nurses, Catrina Bragg was
denied a fulltime position as a Registered Nurse (RN) at Com-
munity Hospital, which is operated by Munster Medical Re-
search Foundation. Community then transferred her to Harts-
field Village, another of Munster’s facilities, where her pay

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2 No. 21-2913
was lower. (As the parties do, we refer to the employer as
Community unless the context requires otherwise.) Bragg,
who is Black, believes that these adverse employment actions
were based on racially discriminatory evaluations of her per-
formance and were retaliatory. She sued Munster under Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq.,
but the district court granted summary judgment in favor of
the defendants.
We realize that Bragg’s reports of racial insensitivity are
typical of the challenges Black women face in the workplace.
See Kimberlé Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of
Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination
Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 1989 U. C HI.
LEGAL F. 139, 149–50 (explaining that the needs of Black
women in the workplace have been inadequately addressed
by current “discrimination discourse”). Nonetheless, we must
decide cases based on the record before us. And our evalua-
tion of the record here convinces us that Bragg failed to prof-
fer evidence that would allow a trier of fact to conclude that
Community denied her a fulltime position and transferred
her for impermissible reasons, rather than for its stated con-
cern about deficiencies in her performance. We therefore af-
firm the district court’s judgment.
I
Bragg began Community’s orientation program for its
acute care renal center on September 10, 2018. The program
was run by experienced RNs, who served as preceptors and
were responsible for training, supervising, and evaluating the
work of orientees. As part of that process, the preceptors filled
out Orientee Progress Forms, in which they graded orientees
in five categories using a 1–5 scale, for a total possible score of

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No. 21-2913 3
25 points, and recorded notes and goals for the orientee. Pre-
ceptors and orientees also attended bi-weekly Orientation
Progress Meetings with RN Manager Samantha Kranz, RN
Director Carla Meyer, and Educator Daniel Heredia. These
Progress Meetings were memorialized in forms that docu-
mented the orientee’s progress from the perspective of the ori-
entee, the preceptor, and the supervisors.
Bragg had three different preceptors during her 90-day
orientation; she describes racially charged incidents with all
three. She asserts that her first preceptor, Erin Wysocki, inten-
tionally race-matched patients, giving Bragg responsibility
for one Black and one Latinx patient while removing a white
patient from Bragg’s care. After Bragg objected, Wysocki be-
gan treating Bragg differently, sometimes ignoring her and at
other times getting disproportionately irate with her over
small mistakes. Wysocki also tried to blame Bragg for an
IV-line disconnection that Bragg contends was not her fault.
Bragg reported her concerns about Wysocki to Heredia and
Kranz, who promptly assigned her to another preceptor. Be-
fore the reassignment, Wysocki filled out one Progress Form
in which she gave Bragg a score of 12 out of 25. Wysocki also
attended one Progress Meeting where she reported that Bragg
needed to work on managing IV tubing, in an apparent refer-
ence to the IV-line disconnection for which Bragg denied re-
sponsibility.
Bragg’s next preceptor was Brittany Arrigo. Bragg asserts
that Arrigo played rap and hip-hop music, containing sex-
ually explicit language, at the nurses' station when Bragg was
present and would make graphic dance moves and hand ges-
tures. Bragg felt this was targeted at her because Arrigo con-
nected rap music to Black people. When white nurses were

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4 No. 21-2913
there, Arrigo would play pop and country music that was less
explicit. Bragg also described an incident in which Arrigo
laughingly called a Black patient’s amputated limb a “skinny,
brown stick,” alluding to the patient’s skin color.
Arrigo filled out a Progress Form in which she gave Bragg
a score of 14 out of 25. The two also attended three Progress
Meetings together. In all three meetings, Arrigo expressed
concerns about Bragg’s progression through the orientation
program, describing issues with workflow awareness, mili-
tary time, recognizing critical potassium levels, IV admin-
istration, insulin medication, and patient safety. Bragg con-
tests some of Arrigo’s accounts, saying that Arrigo was mis-
representing what happened in an effort to make Bragg look
bad.
Bragg’s final preceptor was Kim Raddatz, who Bragg al-
leges also attempted to blame her for errors that she did not
commit. Worse, Bragg thought that Raddatz made an inap-
propriate reference to lynching when an oxygen line got
wrapped around a Black patient’s neck and Raddatz re-
marked “let’s not have a hanging tonight.” Raddatz wrote
two Progress Forms about Bragg and gave her a score of 12
out of 25 on both forms. Bragg attended two Progress Meet-
ings with Raddatz, where the reports of Bragg’s poor perfor-
mance continued. In Bragg’s final meeting, Bragg was in-
formed that the next two weeks were critical and that she
needed to make big strides, with the goal of being able to
manage five patients independently as soon as possible.
Bragg’s orientation ended on December 12, when Kranz
and Meyer informed her that she was not going to be offered
a fulltime position at Community. Instead, they had orga-
nized her transfer to Munster’s Hartsfield affiliate (a facility

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No. 21-2913 5
for retirees who need continuous care). On December 20,
Bragg submitted a written complaint to Community’s Human
Resources department, detailing many of the concerns she
raises in this lawsuit. HR determined that further action was
not warranted since Bragg was no longer an employee at
Community.
Bragg filed a complaint with the EEOC and received a
right-to-sue notice dated March 12, 2019. She followed up
with this lawsuit, alleging that she was transferred to Harts-
field because of her race and as punishment for objecting to
racially derogatory conduct in the workplace. The district
court granted summary judgment across the board. For the
discrimination claim, it found that, in the face of Commu-
nity’s robust evidence that Bragg’s performance consistently
fell below expectations, Bragg had not pointed to enough ev-
idence to permit a trier of fact to conclude that her transfer to
Hartsfield was motivated by her race. The court was troubled
by the allegations of Wysocki’s race-matching practice, but it
found that the limited, six-day pattern was not sufficient to
create a dispute of material fact in light of Bragg’s perfor-
mance problems. The district court also found that Bragg had
no evidence that would support a retaliation claim. Bragg
then appealed.
II
We consider the district court’s decision de novo, viewing
all disputed facts and drawing all reasonable inferences in fa-
vor of Bragg as the nonmoving party. Sublett v. John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 463 F.3d 731, 735 (7th Cir. 2006).

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6 No. 21-2913
A
A plaintiff asserting a Title VII claim for race discrimina-
tion must present enough evidence to “permit a reasonable
factfinder to conclude that [her] race … caused the … adverse
employment action.” Ortiz v. Werner Enterprises, Inc., 834 F.3d
760, 765 (7th Cir. 2016). The plaintiff may accomplish that task
in several ways, including by use of the indirect method of-
fered by the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.
See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802–03
(1973). That is the route Bragg has chosen. It requires her to
establish that “(1) she is a member of a protected class, (2) she
performed reasonably on the job in accord with her em-
ployer[’s] legitimate expectations, (3) despite her reasonable
performance, she was subjected to an adverse employment
action, and (4) similarly situated employees outside of her
protected class were treated more favorably by the em-
ployer.” David v. Board of Trustees of Community College Dist.
No. 508, 846 F.3d 216, 225 (7th Cir. 2017) (quoting Andrews v.
CBOCS West, Inc., 743 F.3d 230, 234 (7th Cir. 2014)). Once the
plaintiff makes this initial showing, the burden shifts to the
employer to “articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory rea-
son for the adverse employment action, at which point the
burden shifts back to the plaintiff to submit evidence that the
employer’s explanation is pretextual.” Id. (internal quotations
omitted).
Where “the issue of satisfactory performance and the
question of pretext overlap” because the employer has raised
the employee’s performance as the reason for the adverse em-
ployment decision, the court “may skip the analysis of the
prima facie case and proceed directly to the evaluation of

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No. 21-2913 7
pretext.” Everroad v. Scott Truck Sys., Inc., 604 F.3d 471, 477–78
(7th Cir. 2010). In this case, Community asserted subpar per-
formance as its reason for transferring Bragg to Hartsfield.
That was enough to shift the burden of production back to
Bragg, who needed to offer evidence that Community’s stated
reason was pretextual in order to defeat the motion for sum-
mary judgment. Pretext is “[a] lie, specifically a phony reason
for some action,” not “‘just faulty reasoning or mistaken judg-
ment on the part of the employer.’” Barnes v. Board of Trustees
of Univ. of Ill., 946 F.3d 384, 389–90 (7th Cir. 2020) (quoting Ar-
gyropoulos v. City of Alton, 539 F.3d 724, 736 (7th Cir. 2008)).
Community had abundant evidence of Bragg’s substand-
ard performance, documented in the Progress Meetings and
Progress Forms. Bragg responds with several arguments for
why a factfinder could nonetheless determine that Commu-
nity was lying about its reasons for transferring her. First, she
says that Community did not keep her adequately apprised
of the concerns with her performance and did not clearly com-
municate the reasons for her transfer to Hartsfield. An opaque
or nonexistent explanation can raise an inference of pretext to
the extent that it creates the appearance of post-hoc rationali-
zation by the employer. See Peirick v. Indiana Univ.-Purdue
Univ. Indianapolis Athletics Dep’t, 510 F.3d 681, 692–93 (7th Cir.
2007) (finding sufficient evidence of pretext where employer
never warned employee of performance concerns and did not
promptly address those concerns as they happened).
Bragg did not show, however, that Community’s commu-
nications with her left any room for doubt. The hospital pro-
duced four Progress Forms and records from six Progress
Meetings, dating between October 1 and December 9, 2018.
Bragg’s signature is on the first three Progress Forms but

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8 No. 21-2913
missing from the last one; her signature is on the first three
Progress Meetings but missing from the last three. Bragg asks
us to infer from the absence of her signature that Community
never discussed the four unsigned forms with her.
Even if we give Bragg the benefit of the doubt, however,
the record is still devoid of evidence that would permit a rea-
sonable jury to find that Community failed to alert her to the
performance problems that led to the denial of a position at
the hospital. There is too much other evidence that Bragg
knew of Community’s concerns with her performance. One of
the more pointed notes from Bragg’s preceptors was written
by Raddatz on the back of a November 26 Progress Form. This
form was signed by Bragg and in the note, Raddatz opined
that, even though Bragg’s training was scheduled to end in
two weeks, Bragg needed “no less than eight more weeks of
orientation.” Raddatz explained that Bragg still required
prompting to complete basic tasks, had never completed a pa-
tient admission, still needed to develop critical thinking skills
to anticipate patient needs, and was not yet managing a full
patient load. Bragg signed this form, which means that two
weeks before her dismissal in December, she was aware of
Raddatz’s critical feedback. That timeline also rules out any
suggestion that Community fabricated its criticism of Bragg’s
performance after the fact.
Moreover, the three sets of Progress Meeting notes that
Bragg did not sign cannot bear the weight Bragg assigns to
them. She does not appear to dispute the fact that these meet-
ings occurred. Indeed, she admitted in her deposition that she
had “several meetings” with her preceptors and supervisors,
and she recalled the discussions from the November 9 Pro-
gress Meeting even though she did not sign that form.

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No. 21-2913 9
Furthermore, while it is odd that, as Bragg neared the end of
her orientation program, her supervisors stopped reviewing
the Progress Meeting notes with her, Bragg cannot claim gen-
eral unawareness of the concerns with her performance. The
Progress Meeting forms that Bragg did sign up until early No-
vember also discuss deficiencies, including the note from a
November 1 meeting at which everyone present recognized
Bragg as being “off schedule from the standardized orienta-
tion progression.” In short, Bragg has not pointed to a dispute
of material fact over how and when Community informed her
about her performance deficiencies.
Bragg’s next argument for why a jury might find that
Community’s proffered explanation is pretextual rests on the
fact that it ultimately chose to transfer rather than fire her. In
Bragg’s view, if Community really believed that she could not
perform the job of an RN, then it made no sense to transfer
her to another facility where her responsibilities were largely
the same. Community responds that it informed Bragg that
she had not met its standards, was apparently ill-suited to the
pace of acute care, and might do better in a long-term care
facility such as Hartsfield. It encouraged her to apply for po-
sitions at Community after she had more experience. Bragg
disputes that she received such a detailed explanation of the
transfer. She contends instead that she was told only that she
was being transferred to Hartsfield and she had no choice in
the matter.
But, transfer or no transfer, Bragg cannot avoid the records
Community provided—records that stand unrebutted. Bragg
testified that she exceeded expectations at Hartsfield, but
there is no analogous evidence of her satisfactory (or better)
performance at Community. As a result, even taking as true

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10 No. 21-2913
Bragg’s contention that Community never adequately ex-
plained the reasoning behind her transfer to Hartsfield, Bragg
has provided no evidence to establish that Community was
lying about her performance or about its reasons for transfer-
ring her.
Bragg’s final argument for why Community’s reasoning is
pretextual is a direct attack on the substance of the evalua-
tions. That is a nonstarter, in the absence of any evidence in-
dicating that Community had reason to doubt their accuracy.
Bragg points us to a comparator, Mary Anderson, who is
white and scored higher in her evaluations despite having
more severe performance deficiencies. But the comparison
falls short because Anderson, even with her higher scores,
failed the orientation program and was (like Bragg) denied a
fulltime position at Community.
B
Bragg also asserts a cat’s-paw theory of liability. “[W]hen
a biased subordinate lacks decision-making power to fire an
employee, but ‘uses a formal decision maker as a dupe in a
deliberate scheme to trigger a discriminatory employment ac-
tion,’ we will consider the biased subordinate’s actions as di-
rect evidence of discrimination.” Nichols v. Michigan City Plant
Planning Dep’t, 755 F.3d 594, 600 (7th Cir. 2014) (quoting John-
son v. Koppers, Inc., 726 F.3d 910, 914 (7th Cir. 2013)). This the-
ory required Bragg to show that: (1) the biased subordinate
“actually harbored discriminatory animus against [her]”; and
(2) “[the subordinate’s] input was a proximate cause” of the
adverse employment decision. Id. at 604. Bragg argues that
her preceptors’ racial animus led to the negative evaluations
upon which the Community supervisors based their decision
not to offer her a fulltime position.

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No. 21-2913 11
Bragg’s cat’s-paw theory does not fill the evidentiary gap,
no matter which of her three preceptors we consider. Looking
first at Wysocki, the problem is that Bragg has no evidence
indicating that Wysocki’s input caused her transfer. Wysocki
filled out only one Progress Form and attended one Progress
Meeting at the very beginning of Bragg’s training. Commu-
nity provided unrefuted evidence that the most important
evaluations were the ones at the end of Bragg’s orientation
period. Bragg has presented no evidence that Wysocki col-
luded with Arrigo or Raddatz and tried to affect their evalua-
tions negatively. At oral argument, Bragg suggested that her
deposition did provide evidence linking the preceptors and
permitting the inference that there was collusion, but this ex-
aggerates the nature of the relationships described in Bragg’s
testimony. The fact that the preceptors were co-workers who
may have interacted at work does not indicate that they
schemed against Bragg.
Ultimately, Wysocki’s evaluations were completed over
two months before Bragg’s transfer, and they were super-
seded by weightier reviews from Arrigo and Raddatz. Those
evaluations are therefore “too remote … or indirect” to sup-
port an inference of causation, regardless of whether Wysocki
was racially biased against Bragg. See Woods v. City of Berwyn,
803 F.3d 865, 869–70 (7th Cir. 2015) (quoting Staub v. Proctor
Hospital, 562 U.S. 411, 419 (2011)).
As for Arrigo and Raddatz, Bragg’s evidence does not per-
mit a finding that they harbored discriminatory animus
against Bragg. This is not to say that they were perfect: Bragg
asserts that Arrigo and Raddatz each made a racist comment
to or about Black patients—Arrigo mocked a patient’s ampu-
tated limb on racial grounds, and Raddatz allegedly made a

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12 No. 21-2913
reference to lynching. Such comments are deeply regrettable.
But Bragg does not show that Arrigo and Raddatz’s alleged
animus was pervasive or that it infected their evaluations of
her. Often, in a successful cat’s-paw case, the plaintiff pro-
vides evidence of racial bias that was directed specifically at
the plaintiff. See Schandelmeier-Bartels v. Chicago Park Dist., 634
F.3d 372, 378, 381 (7th Cir. 2011) (reinstating a jury verdict in
favor of the plaintiff because a supervisor’s “racial tirade”
made it clear she was biased against the plaintiff and “only
[her] biased voice mattered” in the termination decision).
That is not Bragg’s theory. Instead, she argues that racial bias
directed at others in Bragg’s racial class is sufficient to support
an inference of bias directed against her in particular. Such
circumstantial evidence might support a racial discrimination
claim in other cases, but Bragg’s evidence falls short of mak-
ing that connection here.
We acknowledge that there was some evidence that Rad-
datz wanted to get Bragg fired. Raddatz closely monitored
and documented Bragg’s work for the purpose of developing
a legal record in the event of Bragg’s termination. But the crit-
ical question is why? For racially discriminatory reasons, or
for performance-based reasons? On that point, Bragg did not
proffer evidence that would allow a factfinder to connect Rad-
datz’s close supervision to an unlawfully discriminatory mo-
tive. The record shows that Arrigo and Raddatz both ex-
pressed repeated concerns about Bragg’s performance and
that both possibly engaged in racist behavior. But Bragg’s ev-
idence did not show that her race motivated their evaluations
and Raddatz’s overbearing attitude.
Finally, Bragg argues that a trier of fact can infer animus
because she has identified falsehoods in Arrigo’s and

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No. 21-2913 13
Raddatz’s evaluations of her. But “[a] false report …, standing
alone, is insufficient to establish discriminatory animus.” See
Johnson, 726 F.3d at 915. Without some evidence that Arrigo
and Raddatz expressed racial bias towards Bragg, Bragg does
not get past the first step in the cat’s-paw theory. We conclude,
therefore, that she did not present enough evidence to permit
a trier of fact to find that her transfer to Hartsfield was the
result of impermissible racial bias.
III
Bragg also alleges that she faced unlawful retaliation after
she complained to her supervisors about Wysocki’s practice
of race-matching patients. In order to survive summary judg-
ment on this theory, she needed to present evidence that
would permit a finding that her statutorily protected activity
led to a materially adverse action. See Robinson v. Perales, 894
F.3d 818, 830 (7th Cir. 2018).
Bragg complained to her supervisors about both Wysocki
and Raddatz, but only her complaints about Wysocki’s prac-
tice of race-matching connect the complained-of discrimina-
tion to her membership in a protected class. See Tomanovich v.
City of Indianapolis, 457 F.3d 656, 663 (7th Cir. 2006) (explain-
ing that, to be “protected activity under Title VII,” complaints
filed with employers “must indicate the discrimination oc-
curred because of sex, race, national origin, or some other pro-
tected [characteristic]”). Bragg accused Raddatz of lying and
being mean to her, but those assertions do not, as presented,
have any relation to her membership in a protected class.
Therefore, we consider only the adverse actions against Bragg
that might have flowed from her early complaints about
Wysocki’s race-matching.

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14 No. 21-2913
After Bragg complained, Wysocki gave Bragg a low score
on her Progress Form and gave negative feedback in a Pro-
gress Meeting. These comments included the alleged false-
hoods about Bragg’s comfort with IV lines. All this happened
over a six-day period between September 26 and October 1.
That is enough to permit a plaintiff to “establish … a causal
link … through evidence that the [adverse action] took place
on the heels of protected activity.” Spiegla v. Hull, 371 F.3d 928,
943 (7th Cir. 2004) (quoting Adusumilli v. City of Chicago, 164
F.3d 353, 363 (7th Cir. 1998)). But the causal chain becomes
more tenuous almost immediately. In response to Bragg’s
complaint, Community assigned Bragg to Arrigo. Bragg pro-
vides no evidence permitting the inference that Arrigo was
motivated by Bragg’s complaints about Wysocki. She pre-
sented no evidence suggesting that Arrigo knew of Bragg’s
complaints. Nor did Bragg put forth circumstantial evidence,
such as a close friendship between Arrigo and Wysocki, that
would fill this gap. The same evidentiary shortcomings
plague any argument about Raddatz’s motivations.
Because the causal chain breaks after Bragg was removed
from Wysocki’s supervision, Bragg can prevail on her retalia-
tion claim only if her first two negative evaluations qualify as
a materially adverse employment action. An action is materi-
ally adverse if “the employee would be dissuaded from en-
gaging in the protected activity.” Roney v. Illinois Dep’t of
Transp., 474 F.3d 455, 461 (7th Cir. 2007). Such a determination
depends on “the circumstances of a particular case … ‘judged
from the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s
position.’” Burlington N. & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White, 548
U.S. 53, 71 (2006) (quoting Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs.,
Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 81 (1998)).

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No. 21-2913 15
Under this standard, Wysocki’s negative evaluations do
not amount to a materially adverse action. Bragg was trans-
ferred to another preceptor shortly after complaining and did
not continue working with Wysocki. Bragg provided no evi-
dence indicating that this first set of bad reviews from
Wysocki was fatal to Bragg’s future with Community or per-
manently colored any decisionmaker’s perceptions of Bragg.
Nor does Bragg sufficiently establish that a reasonable person
in her position would have felt silenced. The district court
thus correctly concluded that Bragg did not present enough
evidence to permit a finding of retaliation.
IV
We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

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