Sarah Schoper v. Board of Trustees of Western Illinois University

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-2825
S ARAH S CHOPER ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF WESTERN I LLINOIS U NIVERSITY ,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
No. 4:20-cv-04232 — Sara Darrow, Chief Judge.
____________________
A RGUED S EPTEMBER 5, 2024 — DECIDED O CTOBER 17, 2024
____________________
Before EASTERBROOK, K IRSCH , and K OLAR , Circuit Judges.
K OLAR , Circuit Judge. In January 2015, Plaintiff-Appellant
Sarah Schoper suffered a traumatic brain injury. At the time
of her injury, Schoper worked as a tenure-track assistant pro-
fessor at Defendant-Appellee Western Illinois University. Af-
ter the University denied her tenure application in 2017,
Schoper filed suit, asserting claims of disability discrimina-
tion and failure to accommodate in violation of the Americans
with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq. The district

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2 No. 23-2825
court granted summary judgment in favor of the University
on both claims. We affirm.
I. Background
On January 6, 2015, Sarah Schoper suffered a life-
threatening pulmonary embolism that caused a traumatic
brain injury. Schoper spent 46 days in the hospital. Because of
the severity of the illness, she developed high-functioning
mild aphasia—a condition that causes difficulty in retrieving
words—as well as other physical disabilities.
After her injury, Schoper’s neurologist told her that com-
plex intellectual activities would hasten her recovery. Thus,
Schoper sought to return to teaching as quickly as possible,
and her doctor indicated that she was healthy enough to re-
turn to work on May 28, 2015. The University provided her
with physical accommodations, and, on her neurologist’s rec-
ommendations, allowed her to teach the same courses she had
previously taught and to refrain from serving on University
committees.
Before and after her injury, Schoper continued to work to-
wards tenure at the University. A collective bargaining agree-
ment between the faculty union and the University governed
the tenure process generally but each Department could add
specific criteria for evaluating applications. Tenure-track fac-
ulty received retention evaluations during their first five years
at the University. In their sixth year, faculty could apply for
tenure. The collective bargaining agreement contained a
“stop-the-clock” provision that allowed an individual to re-
quest an extra year to apply for tenure due to significant ill-
ness. This meant that an applicant could apply for tenure in
her seventh year. To take advantage of this provision, an

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No. 23-2825 3
individual had to request the extension before the tenure ap-
plication due date in year six.
The University’s process for evaluating tenure applica-
tions was multistep. First, a committee made up of Depart-
mental peers reviewed each application and made a recom-
mendation to the Department chair and the Department dean.
The chair and dean then made independent recommenda-
tions. If anyone—committee, dean, or chair—recommended
that the application be denied, two additional committees (the
College Personnel Committee and the University Personnel
Committee) reviewed the application and issued recommen-
dations. After these steps, the University President, the Aca-
demic Vice President, and the Provost all reviewed the appli-
cation and decided whether to recommend the applicant for
tenure before the Board of Trustees. Candidates not recom-
mended for tenure were issued a terminal contract for the fol-
lowing year.
Reviewers analyzed candidates’ contributions in three cat-
egories: (1) teaching and primary duties, (2) professional ac-
tivities, like published scholarship, and (3) service, such as
committee assignments. Primarily at issue here is the first re-
quirement, teaching. In that category, Schoper’s department,
the Department of Educational Studies, listed five criteria for
evaluating a candidate: (1) English proficiency; (2) peer and
chair evaluations; (3) student evaluations; (4) syllabi; and (5)
primary duties assigned by the chair.
In Schoper’s case, students completed anonymous evalu-
ations at the end of each of her courses. The evaluations had
two parts. In Part A, students signaled agreement or disagree-
ment on a scale of one to five with a list of statements. The
Department averaged these scores; a higher average score

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4 No. 23-2825
was better. In Part B, students provided qualitative feedback
in the form of written comments.
The Department preferred Part A averages above 4.0 for
tenure candidates, although it instructed those reviewing ten-
ure applications to consider other performance indicators in
addition to the Part A scores. This was consistent with the col-
lective bargaining agreement, which stated that reviewers
should consider more than the numerical scores. The collec-
tive bargaining agreement also instructed reviewers to look
for patterns in scores, rather than rendering decisions based
on outlier scores given the full context of an applicant’s teach-
ing history. Before her injury, Schoper’s Part A scores stayed
above a 4.0.
When Schoper returned to work in 2015, she was a fifth-
year assistant professor and her Department committee ap-
proved her retention for a sixth year. In the fall of 2015,
Schoper met with a member of the Department committee,
who asked Schoper if she had considered taking time off.
Schoper viewed taking time off as equivalent to medical leave
and believed that doing so would be inconsistent with her
neurologist’s instructions to return to work. The interaction
disturbed Schoper and she eventually reported it to the De-
partment chair, who told her to follow her neurologist’s ad-
vice.
In late October, the Department chair approached Schoper
and told her that students had begun complaining about
Schoper’s teaching skills. The Department chair told Schoper
that she believed the students were being unfair. But Schoper
knew that her disability affected her teaching. She could no
longer see the left side of the classroom, so students were re-
quired to raise their hands before speaking. She also struggled

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No. 23-2825 5
to read non-verbal cues and track discussions, so she deliber-
ately slowed the pace of class and began writing out an
agenda on the dry erase board to stay on task. This slowing
also applied to responding to student requests to change cer-
tain assignments. Students reacted differently to these
changes: some appreciated the structure, while others found
that it stifled the discussions. When the Department chair ob-
served one of Schoper’s classes that semester, she nonetheless
gave Schoper superior ratings.
At no point did Schoper request to stop her tenure clock.
She did not know the procedure existed and believed that her
options were to take a leave of absence or continue teaching.
She did not discuss the stop-the-clock option with anyone in
her Department, and the Provost’s office informed her that
there was no reason not to move forward with her tenure ap-
plication if it met the requirements.
In January 2016, Schoper received her Part A scores for Fall
2015, her first semester teaching in-person following her in-
jury. Her average Part A score had dropped dramatically to a
3.8. In Fall 2014, that score had been a 4.6. And, for the first
time in her teaching career, students left negative comments
in Part B of their evaluations.
Schoper met with the new interim Department chair a few
days later to discuss the evaluations. Schoper told the chair
that she felt that the students were reacting poorly to her dis-
abilities and had potentially made discriminatory comments.
According to Schoper, one student described Schoper as a
“weed that needed to be plucked.” Another compared her
abilities to a preschooler, while some others suggested that
she was “not the teacher [she] used to be and that [she]
needed more time to recover.” The interim Department chair

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6 No. 23-2825
told Schoper that she would need to make some adjustments
in response to the feedback, and Schoper did not bring up the
student comments again.
In January 2017, Schoper submitted her application for
tenure to the Department committee. That same month, the
committee recommended that Schoper not receive tenure
based on her teaching scores. In particular, the committee
noted that Schoper’s average score for seven of her ten most
recent courses fell below the recommended 4.0 threshold, in-
stead averaging between a 3.14 and 3.78.
The Department committee also looked at the Part B com-
ments from Schoper’s recent courses and found them trou-
bling. The representative comments stated that Schoper had
favorites in class and graded based on personal preference;
that she focused too much on getting her students to like her;
that she did not know how to take feedback; made class feel
like a waste of time; and that she would regularly complain
about not having tenure and bad-mouth other teachers. The
committee noted other positive student comments, as well as
positive faculty (both peer and chair) review, but unani-
mously concluded that Schoper did not meet the require-
ments for tenure.
Schoper requested reconsideration, pointing out that her
average Part A score over five years was 4.26. For the first
time, she also raised the issue of her disability, acknowledg-
ing that it currently impacted her teaching but stating that
those impacts should—based on her neurologist’s analysis—
lessen with time. In her reconsideration packet, Schoper in-
cluded a letter from her neurologist recommending that she
be reconsidered for tenure and allowed to continue to work.

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No. 23-2825 7
The Department committee unanimously affirmed its deci-
sion.
The Department chair reached a similar conclusion upon
reviewing Schoper’s application and recommended that she
not be awarded tenure. He based this decision on her poor
teaching evaluations in year six, during which her Part A av-
erage remained under 4.0. Schoper again requested reconsid-
eration, but the chair affirmed his decision, finding that
Schoper had fallen short of the required criteria. At this point,
Schoper asked for more time to achieve tenure, but the De-
partment chair noted that he simply did not have the power
to grant that request under the collective bargaining agree-
ment. His only suggestion was to investigate long-term disa-
bility benefits.
Schoper’s application continued to make its way through
the process. The College Personnel Committee recommended
denying tenure on the same bases as the Department commit-
tee and the Department chair: Schoper’s teaching evaluations
did not meet expectations. Schoper’s request for reconsidera-
tion did not change the College Personnel Committee’s deci-
sion either. The University Personnel Committee, on the other
hand, recommended that Schoper receive tenure. The com-
mittee emphasized that the evaluation period covered
Schoper’s average scores for her entire time at the University
and cautioned against giving the most recent scores undue
weight. At this point, the negative recommendations outnum-
bered the positive ones three to one.
The Dean and the President of the University agreed with
the Department committee, the Department chair, and the
College Personnel Committee. Neither recommended

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8 No. 23-2825
Schoper for tenure. The University therefore issued Schoper a
terminal contract.
Schoper then filed this suit alleging that the University dis-
criminated against her on the basis of her disability and failed
to offer her reasonable accommodations in violation of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101–213. At
summary judgment, the district court ruled in favor of the
University. The district court found that Schoper could not
demonstrate that a genuine dispute of material fact existed as
to whether her disability was the but-for cause of her negative
tenure recommendation. As for Schoper’s failure-to-accom-
modate claim, the district court found that Schoper had failed
to show how her preferred accommodations—a delay in con-
sidering her tenure application—would allow her to perform
the essential functions of her position. Schoper appealed.
II. Analysis
We review the district court’s summary judgment decision
de novo, construing the evidence and taking all inferences in
the non-moving party’s favor. Pain Ctr. of SE Ind. LLC v. Origin
Healthcare Sols. LLC, 893 F.3d 454, 459 (7th Cir. 2018). We may
affirm “on any ground supported by the record as long as it
was adequately addressed in the district court and the losing
party had an opportunity to contest it.” EEOC v. Wal-Mart
Stores E., L.P., 46 F.4th 587, 593 (7th Cir. 2022).
A. Failure to Accommodate
Schoper urges us to reverse the district court’s grant of
summary judgment to the University on her failure-to-
accommodate claim. “[T]o establish a claim for failure to
accommodate, a plaintiff must show that: (1) [s]he is a
qualified individual with a disability; (2) the employer was

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No. 23-2825 9
aware of her disability; and (3) the employer failed to
reasonably accommodate the disability.” Bunn v. Khoury
Enters., Inc., 753 F.3d 676, 682 (7th Cir. 2014) (citation omitted).
Schoper’s falling Part A scores and the bearing that had on
her tenure decision belie a fundamental problem with her
case: the impact that her disability had on whether she was a
qualified individual. See Li v. Fresenius Kabi USA, LLC, 110
F.4th 988, 995 (7th Cir. 2024) (failure-to-accommodate claims
require that individuals are “qualified”). To determine
whether an individual is qualified, we first evaluate “whether
the individual satisfies the necessary prerequisites of the po-
sition” before considering “whether the individual can per-
form the essential functions of the position with or without a
reasonable accommodation.” Leibas v. Dart, 108 F.4th 1021,
1025 (7th Cir. 2024).
The University’s tenure policy states that reviewers pre-
ferred Part A scores above 4.0. Before her injury, Schoper was
a superior teacher. Her Part A scores exceeded the recom-
mended minimum threshold for tenure. After her injury,
though, her scores slipped below that recommended mini-
mum threshold. This is not entirely surprising, since Schoper
had to make substantial changes to her teaching, including
slowing down classroom discussion.
To the extent that tenured positions at the University re-
quired a certain measure of teaching ability—here, a Part A
average above 4.0—Schoper was required to demonstrate that
she possessed the required skills for tenure. See Bombard v.
Fort Wayne Newspapers, Inc., 92 F.3d 560, 563 (7th Cir. 1996)
(“First, we consider whether ‘the individual satisfies the pre-
requisites for the position, such as possessing the appropriate
educational background, employment experience, skills,

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10 No. 23-2825
licenses, etc.’” (quoting 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(m)). Simply put, the
Act “does not shelter disabled individuals” if they are unable
“to fulfill the requirements of the position as prescribed by the
employer or fail[] to meet [their] employer’s expectations.”
Hammel v. Eau Galle Cheese Factory, 407 F.3d 852, 862 (7th Cir.
2005) (cleaned up). “This is true even if, after further inquiry,
an employer determines that the employee’s inability to per-
form the job is due entirely to a disability.” Id. at 865 (cleaned
up). The requirements for tenure at the University included
having superior teaching ability, and the University was not
required to change these requirements for Schoper. See Wil-
liams v. United Ins. Co. of Am., 253 F.3d 280, 282 (7th Cir. 2001)
(employer “is not required to … waiv[e] his normal require-
ments for the job in question”).
The undisputed evidence demonstrates that the average
scores for Schoper’s most recent classes fell below a 4.0,
strongly suggesting she failed to meet the essential require-
ments for the job of tenured professor. If Schoper was not a
qualified individual in the meaning of the Act, then the Uni-
versity had no obligation to accommodate her in the first in-
stance.
Even if she was qualified, though, summary judgment was
still appropriate. Schoper contends that the University failed
to reasonably accommodate her traumatic brain injury by
denying her additional time to demonstrate that she met the
tenure criteria for teaching. During the application review
process—after two negative recommendations, one from the
Department chair and another from the Department
committee—Schoper requested additional time to
demonstrate that her Part A scores would once again rise
above the 4.0 threshold. According to Schoper, the University

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No. 23-2825 11
should have paused her tenure clock as soon as she submitted
the recommendation from her neurologist. In that note, her
neurologist wrote that he believed Schoper would be capable
of returning to work at full capacity within a few months, and
that she should be reconsidered for tenure at that point.
“A ‘reasonable accommodation’ is one that allows the dis-
abled employee to ‘perform the essential functions of the em-
ployment position,’” and we have recognized that “the con-
cept of ‘reasonable accommodation’ is flexible.” Severson v.
Heartland Woodcraft, Inc., 872 F.3d 476, 481 (7th Cir. 2017)
(quoting 42 U.S.C. § 12111(8)). We have previously stated,
though, that employers need not “excuse the inability” of an
individual to perform the “job’s essential tasks” or promote
disabled individuals who do not meet the requirements for a
promotion. Byrne v. Avon Prods., Inc., 328 F.3d 379, 381 (7th
Cir. 2003); Li, 110 F.4th at 996 (“[A] promotion is not a reason-
able accommodation.”). It is worth noting here that the Uni-
versity did provide Schoper some requested accommoda-
tions, including allowing her to teach the same classes she had
previously taught, refrain from serving on faculty commit-
tees, and giving her certain physical accommodations. None
of these are at issue here.
What is at issue here is Schoper’s straightforward request
for more time to achieve tenure. But what Schoper requested
is not a reasonable accommodation. Instead, she effectively
requested a do-over. This is evidenced by the fact that she did
not request any accommodation until it became apparent that
she would receive a negative tenure recommendation.
Schoper made the conscious decision to return to teaching
quickly to hasten her recovery, taking the risk that her teach-
ing scores could fall until she fully recovered. The evidence

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12 No. 23-2825
indicates that Schoper was recovering: her Spring 2017 Part A
scores showed a definitive upward trajectory, and it is entirely
possible that, given more time, she would have once again
met the teaching requirements for tenure. Nonetheless,
Schoper points us to no authority that requires the University
to insulate her from her chosen strategy. In fact, we have pre-
viously stated that requesting a second chance is not a reason-
able accommodation when it does not request that the em-
ployer change anything, but rather simply requests an oppor-
tunity for the employee to change their behavior. See, e.g.,
Siefken v. Village of Arlington Heights, 65 F.3d 664, 666–67 (7th
Cir. 1995).
Accordingly, summary judgment was appropriate on
Schoper’s failure-to-accommodate claim.
B. Disability Discrimination
We now move to Schoper’s disability discrimination
claim. To prevail on a disability discrimination claim, a plain-
tiff “must show (1) she is disabled; (2) she is otherwise quali-
fied to perform the essential functions of the job with or with-
out reasonable accommodation; (3) she suffered an adverse
employment action; and (4) the adverse action was caused by
her disability.” Brooks v. Avancez, 39 F.4th 424, 433 (7th Cir.
2022). At this stage, our task is straightforward: we ask
whether the evidence, taken in the light most favorable to
Schoper, would allow a reasonable factfinder to conclude that
disability caused her termination. Ortiz v. Werner Enters., Inc.,
834 F.3d 760, 765 (7th Cir. 2016). Here, Schoper contends that
the district court impermissibly made credibility determina-
tions and ignored evidence. She is mistaken.

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No. 23-2825 13
As a preliminary matter, we note that Schoper’s disability
discrimination claim faces the same uphill battle regarding
whether she was qualified to perform the job of tenured pro-
fessor. The record suggests Schoper was not a qualified indi-
vidual in the meaning of the Act because she could not meet
the essential requirements for the job of tenured professor.
Even if Schoper was a qualified individual, though, her
claim still fails. Neither party disputes that Schoper was disa-
bled or that she suffered an adverse employment action when
the University denied her tenure application. Rather, the par-
ties dispute whether Schoper’s disability caused the Univer-
sity to deny her tenure application. Schoper must show us rec-
ord evidence indicating that her traumatic brain injury was
the “determinative factor” in the University’s decision to
deny her tenure. Serwatka v. Rockwell Automation, Inc., 591 F.3d
957, 961 (7th Cir. 2010). “[P]roof of mixed motives will not suf-
fice.” Id. at 962.1
Schoper tells us that the reviewers’ focus on her negative
Part A scores reveals that they discriminated against her.
There is no doubt that Schoper’s disability affected these
scores. Indeed, the traumatic brain injury required Schoper,
by her own admission, to make substantial changes to the
classroom experience, which caused some students to
1 As we recognized in Serwatka, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008
changed the relevant language in the ADA, prohibiting discrimination
“on the basis of” rather than “because of” a disability. Id., 591 F.3d at 961
n.1. The parties do not argue that the statutory language alters our causa-
tion standard, so we leave the resolution of any such argument for another
case.

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14 No. 23-2825
complain. The various reviewers in this case explicitly relied
on the negative Part A scores.
But, to succeed on appeal, Schoper must demonstrate that
a reasonable juror could find that her disability was the “but-
for” cause of the reviewers’ negative recommendations. Here,
the reviewers did not look at Schoper’s slipping Part A scores
in isolation, but rather considered them alongside the com-
ments left by students in Part B of their evaluations. None of
the comments highlighted by the reviewers in their recom-
mendations concerned Schoper’s disability. On the contrary,
reviewers highlighted comments identifying other shortcom-
ings, including that Schoper played favorites with students;
focused too much on students liking her; complained about
other teachers; and struggled to handle feedback.
Rather than address these comments, Schoper urges us to
focus on other supposedly disability-related comments that
students left in her Part B evaluations. It is true that some of
the student comments were quite troublesome, including
those that compared Schoper to a weed that should be
plucked from a garden and to a preschooler. Schoper con-
tends that both comments are plainly discriminatory. We
agree that the comments are problematic but cannot make the
logical jump that Schoper requests. These comments just as
easily could have been directed to teachers of questionable
quality who are not disabled. Put simply, drawing discrimi-
natory animus from two student comments—let alone ex-
panding that animus to all the student comments—requires a
speculative leap that no reasonable juror could make. And,
most importantly, there is no evidence in the record that the
reviewers relied on these comments in making their negative
recommendations.

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No. 23-2825 15
Schoper’s arguments regarding comments made by two
tenure reviewers fare no better. According to Schoper, the fact
that a member of the Department committee suggested that
she consider taking time off to recover indicates that he dis-
criminated when recommending against tenure. She similarly
contends that the Department chair’s suggestion that she look
into long-term disability benefits coverage after he recom-
mended against tenure evidences discrimination.
But Schoper fails to causally connect either of these
comments to the negative tenure decision. In the case of the
committee member, the interaction occurred more than a year
before Schoper applied for tenure. See Castetter v. Dolgencorp
LLC, 953 F.3d 994, 997 (7th Cir. 2020) (noting that “isolated
comments must be contemporaneous with termination or
causally related to the termination process in order to be
probative of discrimination”). As for the Department chair’s
comment, it was but one statement by a single reviewer in a
multistep process—a process in which the University
President had the final say on whether to recommend tenure.
See Adelman-Reyes v. Saint Xavier Univ., 500 F.3d 662, 667 (7th
Cir. 2007) (recognizing that “because tenure decisions
typically involve numerous layers of review by independent
and University-wide committees, the causal connection
between any possible discriminatory motive of a subordinate
participant in the tenure process and the ultimate tenure
decision is weak or nonexistent” (internal quotation marks
omitted)).
Accordingly, no reasonable jury could find that Schoper’s
disability was a but-for cause of the University’s decision not
to grant her tenure.

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16 No. 23-2825
III. Conclusion
For the reasons stated herein, we AFFIRM.

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