Stephen Byrd v. Brittnee Smith

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted December 3, 2025*
Decided December 16, 2025
Before
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2663
STEPHEN BYRD,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
BRITTNEE SMITH,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Indiana, Terre Haute Division.
No. 2:20-cv-00504-JPH-MKK
James Patrick Hanlon,
Judge.
O R D E R
Stephen Byrd, who was incarcerated at Wabash Valley Correctional Center, sued
Brittnee Smith, alleging that she retaliated against him because of his protected speech.
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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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The district court entered summary judgment for Smith. We vacate the judgment and
remand for further proceedings.
We review the record in the light most favorable to Byrd as the non-moving
party. See Jones v. Van Lanen, 27 F.4th 1280, 1284 (7th Cir. 2022). Smith, who was
employed by a company contracted by the Indiana Department of Corrections,
supervised the prison’s kitchen staff. Byrd worked as a sanitation clerk in the prison’s
dining room, which was well compensated for a prison job. One of Smith’s coworkers
began a sexual relationship with Byrd in September 2019. Byrd later initiated an
investigation under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”), 34 U.S.C. §§ 30301-
30309. His allegations were substantiated, and Smith’s colleague resigned in May 2020.
Byrd attests that Smith then started harassing him. Although Smith oversaw only
the kitchen and did not supervise Byrd or other dining-room staff, prisoners were
required to follow orders from any employees of a contractor. Under this authority,
Smith would come into the dining area and require Byrd to do extra work. For example,
Byrd previously helped other prisoners with legal work during his breaks. But after her
colleague resigned, Smith began ordering Byrd to clean the trash on the dock during
this time. This involved moving approximately 50 trash bags, some of which had been
ripped open by cats or birds, into the dumpster. No other sanitation clerks were given
similar directives. Smith also ordered Byrd to help kitchen workers clean dishes when
the dishwasher broke down. This happened multiple times a month, requiring Byrd,
who came to work at 5:30 a.m., to stay until 9:00 p.m., cleaning hundreds of trays. Smith
never instructed any other dining-room sanitation clerks to help. And the directives
came from a single source: Smith. Byrd worked seven days a week, but he was required
to perform additional work outside the dining area only on the five weekdays that
Smith worked.
Apart from the extra work, Byrd attested that Smith began making negative
comments toward him. Smith once said to him and two others in the dining area, “Byrd
wants to go around telling on everyone.” Smith’s staff also became hostile toward Byrd.
Another colleague, who was close friends with both Smith and the former colleague,
saw Byrd and said that she was going to “get his ass,” which Byrd understood as a
threat toward him. Byrd complained about Smith and her staff to his caseworker, who
then escalated the issue to the PREA coordinator. The PREA coordinator emailed Smith
in June 2020, stating, “Byrd is afraid of retaliation from [the] previous incident” and that
staff members should “leave it alone” because Byrd should be promoted to the “Sewing
Shop soon.” Byrd also filed multiple grievances against Smith for retaliation.

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Two days after Smith received the email from the PREA coordinator, Smith
approached Byrd and requested that he sign some paperwork. Smith attested that the
prison was consolidating all of its dining staff under her supervision and that the prison
instructed her to have all dining employees sign reclassification paperwork. Byrd
refused to sign because he was not comfortable working under Smith. Smith attested
that the prison classification supervisor, a deputy warden, and a sergeant told her to file
a work evaluation for Byrd because he refused to sign the appropriate paperwork.
The next day, Byrd received a negative work evaluation from Smith. She wrote
that Byrd “violates” rules, is “resentful,” “easily-led,” “inattentive,” “indifferent,” and
has “average” initiative. She said that his work was “acceptable,” that he treated the job
as “a-job-to-do,” and that he completed his work “as required.” Further, he followed
safety protocols and required “moderate” supervision. Smith wrote in the comments
that Byrd refused to sign the paperwork because he did not feel comfortable working
for her staff. Byrd attested, and Smith does not dispute, that Smith did not discuss the
evaluation with Byrd before giving it to him, even though she indicated on the form
that she did so.
Smith’s negative evaluation of Byrd was an outlier. Byrd attested, and Smith
does not dispute, that less than a month before Smith’s evaluation, his direct
supervisors gave him a positive work evaluation. And Byrd had other positive
evaluations predating Smith’s as well. He provided an October 2019 evaluation
showing that he had “exemplary” conduct, was “helpful,” “self-reliant,” “energetic,”
and “stable”; that his work was “conscientious,” “outstanding,” “excellent”; that he was
“safety-conscious” and required only “moderate” supervision. The record contains no
negative work evaluations of Byrd other than Smith’s.
Because of Smith’s “bad work evaluation,” the prison reclassified Byrd to idle-
without-pay status. This meant Byrd could not obtain new employment for 90 days. He
was transferred from the workers’ housing to a non-working unit, which he called
“disciplinary” and “pretty bad” because it was more violent. Byrd appealed his
reclassification, stating that he feared Smith was retaliating against him for his earlier
complaints. The appeal was denied because Byrd “refused a work assignment” and so
was reclassified “per policy.” Byrd attested, and again Smith does not dispute, that
there is another form Smith could have used to reclassify him that would accomplish
the reclassification without rendering him idle without pay.
Byrd invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and sued Smith, alleging that she retaliated
against him in violation of his First Amendment rights. The district court entered
summary judgment for Smith, concluding in relevant part that Byrd provided no

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evidence from which a jury could find that Smith’s poor evaluation was retaliatory: his
refusal to sign the reclassification form justified it.
On appeal, Byrd asserts that the district court gave short shrift to the suspicious
timing between his complaints and Smith’s evaluation, as well as the discrepancies
between Smith’s work evaluation and those of his direct supervisors. To survive
summary judgment, Byrd needed to provide enough evidence that a reasonable jury
could conclude he engaged in protected First Amendment activity, suffered a
deprivation that would likely deter future protected activity, and the protected activity
was a motivating factor in the defendant’s retaliation. Jones, 27 F.4th at 1284 (quoting
Walker v. Groot, 867 F.3d 799, 803 (7th Cir. 2017)). Smith does not dispute that Byrd’s
PREA complaint and grievances were protected activity. The parties dispute the
sufficiency of the evidence with respect to only the second and third elements.
With respect to the second element, Byrd asserts that Smith’s bad evaluation
prevented him from obtaining employment for 90 days and that this is a consequence
that would dissuade “a person of ordinary firmness” from engaging in protected
activity. See FKFJ, Inc. v. Village of Worth, 11 F.4th 574, 585 (7th Cir. 2021) (quoting
Douglas v. Reeves, 964 F.3d 643, 646 (7th Cir. 2020)). We agree. Byrd provided evidence
of a concrete difference between his pre-evaluation housing assignment and a relatively
well-paying job in the prison’s dining room, and the post-evaluation reassignment to a
non-working housing unit and prohibition from getting another prison job for 90 days.
A reasonable jury could find that losing a prison job for three months is itself sufficient
to deter First Amendment activity. See Douglas, 964 F.3d at 648 (noting denial or
removal from a prison job can deter protected speech). But here Byrd was not just
barred from employment for three months, he was also transferred to a more violent
housing unit—a point Smith does not contest. The withdrawal of physical safety can
also be sufficient to chill speech. See NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449,
462–63 (1958).
Smith contends that a work evaluation reflecting Byrd’s refusal to sign the
reclassification paperwork would not deter other prisoners from engaging in protected
activity. Smith relies on Rodriguez v. Briley, 403 F.3d 952, 952 (7th Cir. 2005), where we
concluded there was no violation of a prisoner’s Eighth Amendment rights when he
was punished for refusing to follow a valid rule. Smith argues that reasoning applies
here because Byrd could have simply elected to sign the reclassification paperwork. As
an initial matter, conduct sufficient to chill protected speech, even in the prison context,
need not rise to the level of cruel and unusual punishment for Eighth Amendment
purposes. And, in any event, the mere application of a generally applicable rule, such as

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giving out work evaluations, does not necessarily shield prison officials from liability if
there is a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse action.
See, e.g., Whitfield v. Spiller, 76 F.4th 698, 710–11 (7th Cir. 2023). Smith focuses on the
evaluation, but the adverse action included the consequences that flowed from the
negative evaluation: Byrd’s disqualification from paid work for three months and
transfer to a more violent housing unit. Even considering the “harsh realities of a prison
environment,” Holleman v. Zatecky, 951 F.3d 873, 880 (7th Cir. 2020), these actions are
sufficient to dissuade a person of ordinary firmness from engaging in protected activity.
With respect to the third element, relating to causation, Byrd maintains that there
is a dispute of material fact. On this point, Byrd needed to provide evidence that his
protected activity was at least a motivating factor in Smith’s decision to write the
negative evaluation. Douglas, 964 F.3d at 646. Causation may be inferred through
circumstantial evidence, such as when the adverse action “follows close on the heels of
protected expression” and “the person who decided to impose the adverse action knew
of the protected conduct.” FKFJ, Inc., 11 F.4th at 586 (quoting Lalvani v. Cook Cnty.,
269 F.3d 785, 790 (7th Cir. 2001)). Here, the reclassification purportedly leading to
Byrd’s negative work evaluation occurred only two days after Smith received an email
about Byrd claiming retaliation for filing the PREA complaint. Byrd also provided
evidence of events leading up to the negative work evaluation that a jury could find
bear on Smith’s motivation. Byrd averred that after Smith’s coworker resigned, Smith
told other prisoners that Byrd “wants to go around telling on everyone”—which, in the
prison context, could be understood as tacitly endorsing violence against him—and that
Smith’s friend told Byrd that Smith would “get his ass.”1 He also gave concrete
examples of undesirable and lengthy work assignments that Smith singled him out to
perform. See Valentino v. Village of South Chicago Heights, 575 F.3d 664, 673–74 (7th Cir.
2009) (singling out of the plaintiff’s work desk to be searched on the same day the
defendants learned about her protected activity was one factor among others that
created a genuine issue of fact regarding the true reason for the defendants’ actions).
Smith argues that she was motivated only by the instructions of prison officials,
who told her to consolidate the dining and kitchen workers through reclassification
paperwork and to write a work evaluation for Byrd. Byrd argues that Smith’s proffered
reasoning is pretextual because she lied about what she was told to do and what she
1 The district court concluded that these events in and of themselves did not amount to kinds of
retaliation. Because Byrd appeals only the negative work evaluation as the vehicle for Smith’s retaliation,
we instead consider them as potential evidence of Smith’s motivation for the negative work evaluation,
which, in turn, resulted in the loss of paid work privileges and transfer to a more violent housing unit.

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wrote in the evaluation. As supporting evidence, Byrd relies on a prior work evaluation
from his direct supervisor that states he is “helpful,” “self-reliant,” “energetic,” “stable,”
“conscientious,” and “outstanding,” as well as his own testimony that Smith did not go
over the evaluation with him, as she wrote she did, and which she does not contest.
Evidence of an “unfairly drafted performance evaluation” strengthens the inference of
improper motive, especially when it was written by the person alleged to have
committed the retaliation. Massey v. Johnson, 457 F.3d 711, 719–20 (7th Cir. 2006).
Further, retaliation needs to be only a motivating factor, not the motivating factor, so a
jury could find that Smith followed prison directions by completing an evaluation yet
also retaliated against Byrd by writing a negative one that did not accurately reflect his
performance of his job duties. Taken together, the suspicious timing, substantive
differences with the performance reviews drafted by direct supervisors, incorrect
information regarding whether it was discussed with Byrd, and the availability of a
different form that would not have resulted in placing Byrd in idle-without-pay status
would be sufficient for a jury to conclude that the negative evaluation was at least in
part retaliatory. See Jones, 27 F.4th at 1284–85.
For these reasons, the district court’s judgment is VACATED and the case is
REMANDED for further proceedings.

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