Terry L. Lymon v. United Auto Workers Union, Local 2209

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted October 18, 2024*
Decided November 14, 2024
Before
ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1584
TERRY L. LYMON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
UNITED AUTO WORKERS UNION,
LOCAL 2209,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.
No. 1:20-CV-169-HAB
Holly A. Brady,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
This is our second time reviewing claims—about events from over a decade
ago—that Terry Lymon brought against the United Auto Workers Union, Local 2209.
Lymon, who is African American, alleges that at three different times his Union
mishandled an employment grievance because of his race. See Title VII of the Civil
* This appeal is successive to case no. 20-3022 and is decided under Operating
Procedure 6(b) by the same panel. After examining the brief and record, we have
concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2. The district court initially dismissed the three
claims as time-barred or unexhausted. In our first decision, Lymon v. United Auto
Workers Union, Loc. 2209, 843 F. App’x 808 (7th Cir. 2021), we concluded that Lymon
alleged grounds that, if proven on remand, could justify equitable tolling for the first
two claims, and that the third claim was exhausted and timely. On remand, the court
granted the Union’s motion for summary judgment. Because the record does not
support the grounds that Lymon raised for tolling the time to sue on his first two
claims, and he did not provide sufficient evidence of discrimination for his third claim,
we affirm.
The following facts are recounted in the light most favorable to Lymon, as the
non-moving party. Palmer v. Indiana Univ., 31 F.4th 583, 587 (7th Cir. 2022). The first
claim arose in 2004, when Lymon lost his job at General Motors and he asked the Union
to contest his discharge. A union representative submitted a grievance, but the Union
did not process it. The second claim arose in 2007, when the union representative
withdrew the grievance, contending that Lymon did not have a meritorious claim
against General Motors. The union representative states that three days after he
withdrew the grievance, he called Lymon to notify him of the withdrawal. Lymon
maintains that he never received this call (and the Union concedes that it did not mail
him notice of the withdrawal). For the purposes of this appeal, we accept Lymon’s
view.
The third claim arose in 2011, when, after waiting seven years to ask about his
grievance and learning that the Union had withdrawn it, Lymon appealed to the local
and international levels of the Union to challenge the withdrawal. Both appeals were
denied as untimely. Under the Union’s constitution, members have 60 days to appeal,
beginning when they learn or reasonably should have learned of the contested action.
The Union ruled that Lymon missed this deadline because, regardless of whether the
representative called Lymon in 2007, Lymon should have inquired and learned of the
withdrawal well before 2011.
Litigation came next. After Lymon learned in 2011 that his grievance had been
withdrawn, he waited a year, until 2012, to file with the proper agency his charge of
race discrimination about events from 2004, 2007, and 2011. The agency inexplicably
took eight years to send Lymon his right-to-sue letter, and after Lymon filed this suit in
2020, the district court dismissed the first two claims (from 2004 and 2007) as untimely,
and the claim about the internal appeal (from 2011) as unexhausted. In vacating the
dismissal of these claims, we explained that the claim from 2011 was exhausted and

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No. 24-1584 Page 3
“[i]f Lymon can prove his allegation that, through no fault of his own, the union
intentionally kept him in the dark … equitable tolling can save his [earlier two] race-
discrimination claims.” Lymon, 843 F. App’x at 808. But we warned that, on remand,
“the union may dispute Lymon’s allegations, and fact development may reveal that his
inquiries were insufficient or that the union’s responses were more revealing.” Id.
at 810.
The record developed in precisely this way, and the district court granted the
Union’s motion for summary judgment. First, it considered Lymon’s claim that the
Union ignored his grievance in 2004 and wrongly withdrew it in 2007, ruling that those
two claims were time-barred by 2020. It also rejected Lymon’s plea for equitable tolling,
reasoning that the evidence showed that Lymon failed to pursue those claims diligently.
It also rejected Lymon’s resort to the continuing-violations doctrine because Lymon
described two discrete acts of discrimination. Finally, it addressed Lymon’s claim that
the Union discriminated against him in 2011 when it denied his internal appeal. This
claim failed, the court explained, because Lymon did not present sufficient evidence of
discrimination.
On appeal, Lymon contests the summary judgment ruling, which we review
de novo. Palmer, 31 F.4th at 587. Title VII prohibits a union from engaging in race
discrimination. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(c). For a claim to be timely under Title VII, the
plaintiff must file a charge of discrimination within 300 days of the alleged wrong.
Id. § 2000e-5. Lymon argues that the Union discriminated against him when it (1) failed
to pursue his grievance adequately in 2004 after he was discharged, (2) withdrew his
grievance without notice in 2007, and (3) denied his internal appeal in 2011.
The district court correctly ruled that the first two claims are untimely. The
events in 2004 and 2007 occurred far more than 300 days before Lymon filed his agency
charge in 2012. The court also properly rejected equitable tolling, which requires a
plaintiff to diligently seek information about his claim. Palmer, 31 F.4th at 588. Although
Lymon cannot be faulted for the years of agency inaction after 2012, the undisputed
record reflects that Lymon was not diligent before then: To begin, he did not inquire
about his 2004 grievance for seven years. The first time he did so was in 2011, four years
after its withdrawal in 2007. Second, no evidence suggests that anything prevented
Lymon from inquiring sooner, and he does not offer any valid reason why he let his
grievance languish for years. Third, and in any event, to receive equitable tolling once
he learned in 2011 about the inaction in 2004 and withdrawal in 2007, he had to file his
agency charge within a reasonable time (such as days or weeks). Id. But Lymon did not

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file his charge until a year after learning about his grievance’s status. He replies that he
had to finish his Union appeals before he could initiate litigation. But Title VII has no
exhaustion requirement for internal union processes. Donaldson v. Taylor Prods. Div. of
Tecumseh Prods. Co., 620 F.2d 155, 158 (7th Cir. 1980). And exhausting union remedies
does not toll the statutory period for filing an agency charge. Int’l Union of Elec., Radio &
Mach. Workers, AFL-CIO, Loc. 790 v. Robbins & Myers, Inc., 429 U.S. 229, 236 (1976).
Lymon offers three more responses, but they are unavailing. First, he contends
that the district court disregarded our prior decision in which, he insists, we ruled that
equitable tolling saves his claims. We did not. We explained that “[i]f Lymon can prove
his allegation that, through no fault of his own, the union intentionally kept him in the
dark … equitable tolling can save his race-discrimination claims.” Lymon, 843 F. App’x
at 808. As discussed above, because of his unexplained seven-year delay, Lymon has
not shown that he was diligent.
Second, Lymon argues that the Union has not produced undisputed evidence
that it contacted him about his grievance in 2007. But we have assumed in Lymon’s
favor that the Union did not call him then, and even with that assumption, Lymon did
not meet his burden of showing that despite his diligence some extraordinary
circumstance prevented him from filing charges. See Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408,
418 (2005) (citing Irwin v. Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 498 U.S. 89, 96 (1990)).
Third, Lymon argues that the continuing-violations doctrine renders these claims
timely, but he is incorrect. He contends that discriminatory acts of the internal appeal
process in 2011 fell within the 300 days before he filed his agency charge and relate back
to the events of 2004 and 2007. But this doctrine can revive his earlier claims only if
Lymon could not have known that he was injured until the events of 2011 had
transpired. See Nat’l R.R Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 114–15 (2002); Stepney v.
Naperville Sch. Dist. 203, 392 F.3d 236, 240 (7th Cir. 2004). That is not the case here:
Lymon was capable of learning many years earlier that the Union was not pursuing his
grievance and had withdrawn it.
In Lymon’s final claim, he argues that the Union discriminated against him when
it denied as untimely his internal appeal in 2011. He maintains that the Union accepted
untimely appeals from a comparable white union member, Linda Berning, and from
this differential treatment a jury could infer discrimination. To make a prima facie case
of discrimination with comparators, the comparators must be similar “in all material
respects,” such as having the same decisionmakers and engaging in similar conduct.

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Coleman v. Donahoe, 667 F.3d 835, 846–47 (7th Cir. 2012). But here, different union
members decided Lymon’s appeal and Berning’s appeal, and the events underlying
each internal appeal were different. Further, Lymon must furnish evidence suggesting
that the Union’s proffered reason for denying his appeal—that it was untimely and he
should have known to appeal sooner—was pretext for discrimination. A pretext is a lie,
id. at 852, and other than the evidence about Berning, which as we just said is
insufficient, Lymon offered no evidence that the Union lied.
We note one final matter. The Union defends the judgment on a ground raised
but not addressed in the district court: Lymon did not disclose the claims of this suit in
his bankruptcy case, which he filed in 2014, and he is therefore judicially estopped from
raising them here. Because we have resolved this appeal on other grounds, we too need
not reach this issue.
AFFIRMED

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