Maria N. Gracia v. Sigmatron International, Inc .

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 19-1526
M ARIA N. GRACIA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
S IGMATRON I NTERNATIONAL, I NC ., et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:16-cv-7297 — John Z. Lee, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED S EPTEMBER 16, 2020 — DECIDED F EBRUARY 3, 2021
____________________
Before EASTERBROOK, M ANION , and S CUDDER , Circuit
Judges.
SCUDDER , Circuit Judge. Thirteen years ago, Maria Gracia’s
former employer SigmaTron International, Inc. fired her after
she filed a sexual harassment and hostile work environment
complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Com-
mission. Gracia’s fortunes improved when she prevailed in a
2014 trial against SigmaTron on a Title VII retaliation claim
and found new work at a different company.

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2 No. 19-1526
This appeal stems from SigmaTron’s decision in 2015 to
describe Gracia’s earlier litigation against the company in
public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Gracia responded to SigmaTron’s SEC disclosures with a sec-
ond lawsuit advancing a new Title VII retaliation claim, along
with claims for retaliation under the Illinois Human Rights
Act, defamation, and invasion of privacy. The district court
dismissed Gracia’s defamation and false light invasion of pri-
vacy claims, and later granted SigmaTron’s motion for sum-
mary judgment on the Title VII and Illinois Human Rights Act
claims.
We conclude that Gracia failed at summary judgment to
present the district court with specific facts to show any injury
in fact. The failure stems from Gracia’s express admission that
SigmaTron’s disclosures in no way have affected her current
employment, which she explained she is content with. This
admission left the district court without subject matter juris-
diction—without the authority to consider the Title VII claim
on the merits. As for Gracia’s state law claims, while she
pleaded enough to clear the Article III standing hurdle, the
district court was right to conclude that the allegations failed
to state a claim on which relief could be granted.
I
A
The adversarial relationship between Maria Gracia and
her former employer SigmaTron International, Inc. dates to
2008. It was then that Gracia filed complaints with the EEOC
and the Illinois Department of Human Rights alleging sexual
harassment and a hostile work environment. SigmaTron
learned of the complaints on November 19, 2008 and fired

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No. 19-1526 3
Gracia two weeks later. That action led to Gracia’s first Title
VII lawsuit, alleging that SigmaTron fired her in retaliation
for filing the complaints. The case proceeded to trial and a
jury found in Gracia’s favor. We affirmed the judgment on ap-
peal. See Gracia v. SigmaTron Int’l, Inc., 842 F.3d 1010 (7th Cir.
2016) (“Gracia I”). In the meantime, Gracia found new em-
ployment at a company called Imagineering. She continues to
work there and testified that she is content with her job and
has no interest in leaving the company.
Gracia I is final. This appeal arises from and relates solely
to SigmaTron’s decision—following the Gracia I trial and de-
nial of the company’s post-judgment motions—to disclose
Gracia’s name and provide its own explanation for her termi-
nation in its July 24, 2015 Form 10-K filing with the SEC:
In November 2008, the company received notice of an
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(“EEOC”) claim based on allegations of discrimination,
sexual harassment, and retaliation filed by Maria Gra-
cia, a former employee. On December 5, 2008, Ms. Gra-
cia’s employment as an assembly supervisor was ter-
minated after she knowingly permitted an assembly
line to run leaded boards in a lead-free room with lead-
free solder, contrary to the customer’s specifications
and prohibited by Company policy. The use of lead-
free solder for leaded components can lead to devices
that fail and significant penalties to the Company and
its customers from regulatory bodies. The parts were
quarantined and were not shipped. Ms. Gracia openly
admitted to permitting this to take place.
After learning from her counsel of SigmaTron’s disclo-
sure, Gracia filed a second EEOC complaint on September 2,

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4 No. 19-1526
2015. She alleged that the company’s disclosure constituted
further retaliation and falsely questioned her competency.
What followed was a second lawsuit in which Gracia ad-
vanced a new Title VII retaliation claim, a related claim under
the Illinois Human Rights Act, and claims for defamation per
se and false light invasion of privacy. SigmaTron moved to
dismiss each claim.
B
Ruling on SigmaTron’s motion to dismiss, the district
court first observed that Illinois courts assessing retaliation
claims under the Illinois Human Rights Act have adopted the
framework governing Title VII retaliation claims. See Volling
v. Kurtz Paramedic Servs., Inc., 840 F.3d 378, 383 (7th Cir. 2016).
Under the Title VII framework, a plaintiff must plausibly al-
lege three elements: a statutorily protected activity, a materi-
ally adverse employment action, and a causal connection be-
tween the two. See Cervantes v. Ardagh Grp., 914 F.3d 560, 566
(7th Cir. 2019).
SigmaTron contended that Gracia suffered no adverse em-
ployment action and alleged no plausible causal link between
her first EEOC complaint and the company’s SEC disclosures.
The district court disagreed, relying on our decision in Green-
grass v. International Monetary Systems Limited, where we held
that listing a plaintiff’s name in a public SEC filing can consti-
tute a materially adverse employment action. See 776 F.3d
481, 485 (7th Cir. 2015). As the district court saw the new com-
plaint, Gracia alleged enough to support a causal inference of
retaliatory harm because SigmaTron did not name her in its
disclosures until after the company lost its post-trial motions
in Gracia I. So the district court denied the motion to dismiss,
and the retaliation claims proceeded to discovery.

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No. 19-1526 5
But the district court did dismiss Gracia’s Illinois defama-
tion and false light invasion of privacy claims. Under Illinois
law, a defamatory statement is not actionable if reasonably
capable of an innocent construction. See Chapski v. Copley
Press, 442 N.E.2d 195, 199 (Ill. 1982). The district court deter-
mined that SigmaTron’s statements in its SEC filings could be
understood as ones either on Gracia’s job performance or the
company’s litigating position in Gracia I. And when a false
light invasion of privacy claim follows an unsuccessful defa-
mation claim, the false light claim must also fail, leading the
court to dismiss both claims. See Madison v. Frazier, 539 F.3d
646, 659 (7th Cir. 2008).
C
Following discovery, SigmaTron moved for summary
judgment on Gracia’s Title VII and related state law retalia-
tion claims. This time the district court focused on the pres-
ence or absence of any adverse employment action taken
against Gracia, turning again to Greengrass. See 776 F.3d 481.
There we observed that “naming EEOC claimants in publicly
available SEC filings could ‘dissuade[ ] a reasonable worker
from making or supporting a charge of discrimination’—the
essence of a materially adverse employment action.” Id. at 485
(alteration in original). SigmaTron sought to distinguish
Greengrass on the ground that the statements in its SEC dis-
closures did nothing to affect Gracia’s employment at Imagi-
neering and indeed only notified investors of Gracia I’s sta-
tus—information otherwise publicly available.
The district court agreed and entered summary judgment
for SigmaTron. Unlike the plaintiff in Greengrass, who offered
evidence that she “struggled to find and maintain regular em-
ployment” following the challenged SEC disclosure, id. at 485,

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6 No. 19-1526
the record here showed that “Gracia has been steadily em-
ployed, that she is happy in her job and has no plans to change
jobs, and that her employer is satisfied with her job perfor-
mance and expects the employment relationship to continue.”
The district court concluded that no reasonable jury viewing
this evidence in the light most favorable to Gracia could con-
clude that she suffered an adverse employment action.
Gracia now appeals, challenging the district court’s entry
of summary judgment on her Title VII claim and dismissal of
her state law claims.
II
What stood out from our review of the parties’ briefs was
a substantial question about whether Gracia had demon-
strated the requisite Title VII “adverse employment action.”
See Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 67–
68 (2006). This question arose because Gracia testified in her
deposition that she is pleased with her work at Imagineering
and has no plans to change jobs. All the more, Gracia added
that she could not think of any damages she could be seeking
from SigmaTron as a result of the company’s SEC disclosures.
While these admissions may doom Gracia’s Title VII claim
on the merits, they also raise a threshold question of Article
III standing—whether we even have a justiciable controversy
before us. We sought supplemental briefing on the question.
And we did so knowing the question inhered with the addi-
tional layer of complexity that Gracia’s state law claims were
resolved on the pleadings while the Title VII claim was dis-
missed on summary judgment. The difference matters be-
cause each element of Article III standing “must be supported
in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff

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No. 19-1526 7
bears the burden of proof, i.e., with the manner and degree of
evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.”
Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992). In short, Gra-
cia’s burden to demonstrate standing changes as the proce-
dural posture of the litigation changes.
As for her Title VII claim, which progressed to summary
judgment, Gracia was not able to lean on mere allegations of
injury; rather, she “must ‘set forth’ by affidavit or other evi-
dence ‘specific facts,’ which for purposes of the summary
judgment motion will be taken to be true.” Id. (quoting Fed.
R. Civ. P. 56(e)). But as for her state law claims, which the dis-
trict court dismissed at the pleading stage, “general factual al-
legations of injury resulting from the defendant's conduct
may suffice.” Id.
These observations are not pedantic legalisms. To the con-
trary, they control whether and how we may proceed on ap-
peal, for the Supreme Court made plain in Steel Co. v. Citizens
for a Better Environment that we cannot skip the Article III sub-
ject matter jurisdiction inquiry to get to what may be any easy
answer on the merits of a particular claim. See 523 U.S. 83, 101
(1998).
A
Article III limits a federal court’s authority to the resolu-
tion of “Cases” or “Controversies.” “To enforce this limita-
tion, we demand that litigants demonstrate a ‘personal stake’
in the suit”—one that exists “not only at the outset of litiga-
tion, but throughout its course.” Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S.
692, 701 (2011) (quoting Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S.
488, 493 (2009)). The familiar “triad of injury in fact, causation,

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8 No. 19-1526
and redressability constitutes the core of Article III’s case-or-
controversy requirement.” Steel Co., 523 U.S. at 103–04.
Any alleged injury must be “concrete and particularized”
and “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical” in
nature. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561 (internal quotation marks omit-
ted). A “particularized” injury is one that “affect[s] the plain-
tiff in a personal and individual way.” Id. at 560 n.1. And the
injury must be “real” rather than “abstract.” Spokeo, Inc. v.
Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1548 (2016). “The party invoking fed-
eral jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing these ele-
ments.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561.
B
Turning first to Gracia’s Title VII claim, we conclude that
Gracia did not meet her burden on summary judgment of
demonstrating any injury in fact. None of the injuries that
most often accompany employment litigation—suspension,
demotion, termination, lost wages, and the like—is present
here. In that absence, Gracia posits emotional injury. To be
sure, “[w]e have long recognized that humiliation, embarrass-
ment, and like injuries” do indeed “constitute cognizable and
compensable harms.” Kyles v. J.K. Guardian Sec. Servs., Inc.,
222 F.3d 289, 300 (7th Cir. 2000).
Gracia’s complaint alleged, and her supplemental briefing
reiterated, that the SEC disclosures have caused her mental
anguish, emotional distress, humiliation, and other conse-
quential damages. In response to SigmaTron’s motion for
summary judgment, however, Gracia had to move beyond al-
legations and point to evidence establishing a concrete and
particularized injury. Right to it, “[r]epeating the conclusory
allegations of a complaint is not enough.” Tex. Indep. Producers

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No. 19-1526 9
& Royalty Owners Ass’n v. EPA, 410 F.3d 964, 973 (7th Cir.
2005).
The summary judgment record contains no showing that
the SEC disclosures had any impact on Gracia—emotional or
otherwise. Indeed, she testified that she has not looked for an-
other job since joining Imagineering, does not see herself
changing jobs, and is pleased with her current role. And there
otherwise is no evidence that SigmaTron’s SEC disclosures
prevented Gracia from obtaining a different job or that any
prospective employer denied her an employment oppor-
tunity. Nor is there evidence that Gracia’s position at Imagi-
neering is at risk. Gracia directs us to no evidence, for exam-
ple, that the SEC disclosures have caused her to underper-
form in her current job, invited unrest within her workplace,
or brought any chance of progression within Imagineering to
a standstill. For that matter, Gracia has not even suggested
that anyone at Imagineering has said a word to her about Sig-
maTron’s disclosures. Even if a coworker or supervisor had
seen the disclosures, Gracia would only need to point to our
2016 opinion in Gracia I to correct any misimpression that she
was somehow at fault for what transpired at SigmaTron.
On this record, the only tenable conclusion is that Gracia
lacks standing. And the absence of any injury in fact leaves us
with no choice but to vacate the district court’s ruling on the
merits of Gracia’s Title VII and to order the claim dismissed.
C
We come in closing to Gracia’s state law claims, which the
district court dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6). And we begin by
addressing subject matter jurisdiction. The analysis entails
some complexity on subtle points at the intersection of

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10 No. 19-1526
supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1367 and federal
question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
Return to the beginning. Gracia brought claims under Ti-
tle VII and Illinois law. The federal question statute, 28 U.S.C.
§ 1331, supplied jurisdiction over the Title VII claim, and our
decision in Kyles confirms that Gracia’s allegations that Sig-
maTron’s SEC disclosures caused her emotional harm in the
form of distress and humiliation sufficed as a pleading matter
to establish the requisite injury in fact for Article III standing.
See 222 F.3d at 300. We also know that the district court de-
nied SigmaTron’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss Gracia’s Ti-
tle VII claim for pleading shortcomings.
These conclusions about the initial jurisdictional footing
for the Title VII claim in the district court inform the analysis
of the state law claims. The existence of subject matter juris-
diction over the Title VII claim meant that the district court
possessed supplemental jurisdictional over Gracia’s state law
claims. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) (“[I]n any civil action of which
the district courts have original jurisdiction, the district courts
shall have supplemental jurisdiction over all other claims that
are so related to claims in the action within such original ju-
risdiction that they form part of the same case or controversy
under Article III of the United States Constitution.”). And the
existence of supplemental jurisdiction over Gracia’s state law
claims meant in turn that the district court had the authority
to do what it did—to dismiss those claims on the merits under
Rule 12(b)(6).
So the question becomes whether Gracia’s failure at sum-
mary judgment to come forward with facts demonstrating Ar-
ticle III standing on her Title VII claim has any jurisdictional
consequence for her state law claims. Note the emphasis: the

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No. 19-1526 11
lack of Article III subject matter jurisdiction at summary judg-
ment over the Title VII claim of course had a consequence for
that claim—it requires us to vacate the district court’s judg-
ment and to order claim dismissed. But the issue before us
now is whether that outcome somehow spills over to Gracia’s
state law claims.
We think not. The district court’s summary judgment rul-
ing on the Title VII claim did not unwind its authority to have
considered the Illinois claims under Rule 12(b)(6). The proper
analysis works another way. Because the district court pos-
sessed subject matter jurisdiction over Gracia’s Title VII claim,
and because the requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) otherwise
were satisfied, the court had the authority necessary to con-
sider and ultimately dismiss Gracia’s Illinois claims under
Rule 12(b)(6)—a merits ruling. As Wright and Miller explain:
“There is an important distinction between dismissal of the
underlying claim and a finding that the claim failed to invoke
subject matter jurisdiction. Section 1367(c)(3) applies only if
the underlying claim actually invoked federal subject matter
jurisdiction and then is dismissed. If that claim failed to in-
voke an independent basis of subject matter jurisdiction, then
there was nothing to which supplemental jurisdiction could
have attached.” 13D Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller,
Federal Practice and Procedure § 3567.3 (3d ed. 2020).
At the motion to dismiss phase, Gracia’s Title VII claim
properly invoked federal question jurisdiction, so at that mo-
ment the district court properly considered the supplemental
state law claims pursuant to § 1367. And nothing about loss at
summary judgment of subject matter jurisdiction over Gra-
cia’s Title VII claim means that we are now without authority

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12 No. 19-1526
on appeal to review the district court’s judgment for Sigma-
Tron on Gracia’s state law claims.
In no way, moreover, do we part ways with our prior de-
cision in Rivera v. Allstate Insurance Co., 913 F.3d 603 (7th Cir.
2018). Indeed, Rivera presented the opposite circumstance.
There—but not here—we faced a scenario in which the dis-
trict court never had subject matter jurisdiction in the first in-
stance over the plaintiff’s federal claim. See id. at 606, 617–18.
That, in turn, meant that the district court never acquired sup-
plemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s state law claims. We
therefore had no choice on appeal but to adhere to the limita-
tions embodied in § 1367 and order the entire action dis-
missed, notwithstanding the many resources expended on
the trial in the district court. See id. at 618.
Here, however, the district court did possess subject mat-
ter jurisdiction over Gracia’s Title VII claim when it dismissed
her state law claims. That distinction marks the difference be-
tween supplemental jurisdiction and no supplemental juris-
diction. And it is that difference that allows us on appeal to
review the district court’s dismissal decision of the state law
claims on the merits.
Our logic finds further support in broader precedent. The
Supreme Court has counseled that if a once valid federal
claim suffers from jurisdictional defects down the road—for
example, if the federal claim becomes moot—the loss of sub-
ject matter jurisdiction over that claim does not deprive the
district court of authority to resolve any remaining supple-
mental state law claims. See Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397,
404 (1970) (“We are not willing to defeat the commonsense
policy of pendant jurisdiction—the conservation of judicial
energy and the avoidance of multiplicity of litigation—by a

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No. 19-1526 13
conceptual approach that would require jurisdiction over the
primary claim at all stages as a prerequisite to resolution of
the pendant claim.”); accord Capeheart v. Terrell, 695 F.3d 681,
686 (7th Cir. 2012) (reasoning that the court does not “dismiss
the supplemental state-law claims automatically just because
our decision [to dismiss the federal claim] is based on unripe-
ness rather than the merits” as “this is different from a case
where there was never federal jurisdiction”).
From here we can make short work of the remaining anal-
ysis. The district court dismissed Gracia’s defamation and
false light invasion of privacy claims at the pleading stage, as
it rightly saw SigmaTron’s SEC disclosures as subject to an
innocent construction. By their terms, the statements describe
SigmaTron’s litigation position in Gracia I. On this construc-
tion, the statements are not actionable. See Muzikowski v. Par-
amount Pictures Corp., 477 F.3d 899, 907 (7th Cir. 2007) (“Most
jurisdictions do not use an innocent construction rule as fa-
vorable to defendants as Illinois’s rule is. But it is Illinois law
that governs ….” (citation omitted)). At the time SigmaTron
issued the disclosures in 2015 and early 2016, the company’s
Gracia I appeal was pending. SigmaTron did not repeat the
statements after we resolved that appeal, and we need not
consider whether doing so would have been tortious under
Illinois law.
* * *
For these reasons, we VACATE the district court’s judg-
ment on Gracia’s retaliation claims and REMAND with in-
structions to dismiss for lack of standing. We AFFIRM the dis-
trict court’s dismissal of Gracia’s state law claims.

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