Kellie Wilson v. Aim Specialty Health

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-3418
K ELLIE WILSON ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
AIM S PECIALTY HEALTH ,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:21-cv-01929 — Sara L. Ellis, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED F EBRUARY 4, 2025 — DECIDED M AY 27, 2026
____________________
Before HAMILTON , JACKSON -A KIWUMI , and PRYOR , Circuit
Judges.
JACKSON -A KIWUMI , Circuit Judge. In 2012, Kellie Wilson, a
Black woman, started working full-time for AIM Specialty
Health. Throughout her tenure, she received merit-based sal-
ary increases, but it took eight years for her to be promoted.
Some of her non-Black colleagues received higher salaries
from the start and were promoted more quickly. Witnessing
this, Wilson sued AIM for disparate pay and failure to

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2 No. 23-3418
promote under three statutes: Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and
the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA). AIM moved for sum-
mary judgment on all Wilson’s claims, which the district court
granted.
Reasonable jurors could find that Wilson’s former super-
visor disliked and, on at least one occasion, mistreated her.
Reasonable jurors could also question, as faulty or mistaken,
the reasoning behind AIM’s pay and promotion decisions.
But neither finding would be enough under our employment
discrimination caselaw to merit a trial. For Wilson’s case to
proceed to trial, there must be evidence from which a jury
could infer that AIM’s justifications for its pay and promotion
decisions were falsehoods designed to hide racial discrimina-
tion—in other words, pretext. This is where Wilson’s evi-
dence falls short, so we are compelled to affirm.
I
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment
de novo, granting Wilson a favorable assessment of the record
and all reasonable inferences. Johnson v. Accenture LLP, 142
F.4th 536, 542 (7th Cir. 2025).
AIM is a medical benefits management company. The
company’s IT department houses several business analyst po-
sitions under the Business Support umbrella. These positions,
in order of increasing salary range, are BA, BAII, BAIII, and
Business Consultant. The chart below outlines the experience
required for each position.

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No. 23-3418 3
Position Experience
BA Entry-level role, no prior business analyst
experience
BAII Mid-level role, 3 to 5 years of baseline-
type experience and some technical un-
derstanding
BAIII 5 to 7 years of experience and deep tech-
nical understanding
Business
Consultant
BA who also functions as team lead
AIM’s parent company, Anthem, Inc., sets a salary range
for each position. For each role, AIM uses market research and
third-party consultants to set the starting compensation
within the salary range based on data available for similar po-
sitions. All BAs and Business Consultants at AIM receive a
salary that falls within the assigned range. Managers there-
fore cannot propose a salary outside of Anthem’s range. They
may, however, propose starting a candidate at a higher salary
within the range depending on the position being offered, the
candidate’s experience, and the salary the candidate requests.
AIM does not generally post promotion opportunities or
internal openings on its website. When it does, employees do
not receive automatic notification of the new postings. More
commonly, it is up to employees to either look for job postings
or speak with their supervisors to seek promotion opportuni-
ties. In some instances, a supervisor may seek to promote an
employee without the employee first expressing an interest.
The supervisor’s recommendation is then subject to review
and approval by higher-level management and Anthem.

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4 No. 23-3418
In June 2011, Kellie Wilson began working as a BA con-
tractor for AIM at an annual salary of $60,000. She had about
three years of experience at that point. Approximately one
year later, in August 2012, AIM hired Wilson as a full-time
BAII employee, increasing her annual salary to $66,000.
Early in her tenure as a BAII, Wilson discussed career pro-
gression with her then supervisor, Lori Hess. But by 2014,
Wilson began reporting to a different supervisor, Stefani
Opasinski, a white woman. At this point, Wilson believed she
should have been promoted to BAIII. When she did not re-
ceive a promotion in 2014 (now with approximately four
years of BA experience and two years of BAII experience), she
talked to Opasinski about a role outside of the BA team, which
she learned was already filled.
Throughout Wilson’s BAII tenure, she received merit-
based salary raises almost every year. The lone exception was
2018, in part because of Opasinski’s performance review for
that year. Wilson also received recognition while a BAII: in
2018, her colleagues nominated her for an award granted by
the IT department’s chief for embodying the department’s
values. Between 2016 and 2018, Wilson believed she should
have received another promotion beyond the BAIII level to
Business Consultant (now with more than eight years of BA
and BAII combined experience).
In June 2019, Wilson filed a charge with the U.S. Equal Em-
ployment Opportunity Commission alleging race discrimina-
tion. The next month, she emailed AIM’s CEO complaining
about her 2018 performance review and explaining her belief
that she was being racially discriminated against with respect
to her title and compensation. AIM’s CEO did not respond to
Wilson’s email.

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No. 23-3418 5
In December 2019, Wilson began reporting to yet another
supervisor, Joneasha Snow, a Black woman. Approximately
one year later, in December 2020, Snow recommended Wilson
for promotion to BAIII. Opasinki, by then in a new role, had
to approve the promotion and did, as did Anthem after that.
AIM then promoted Wilson to BAIII. By that time, she had
gained eight years of experience at AIM as a BAII (in addition
to her four years’ BA experience before that).
Under Opasinski’s supervision, other AIM employees
who were not Black obtained BAIII promotions more quickly
than Wilson. Seeing this, Wilson filed a federal complaint
against AIM for disparate pay and failure to promote under
Title VII, Section 1981, and the IHRA. AIM moved for sum-
mary judgment on all claims. The district court found that,
based on the statute of limitations, Wilson’s claims were lim-
ited to those arising on or after April 12, 2017. The court then
granted summary judgment in AIM’s favor.
As to disparate pay, the court found that Wilson had not
succeeded in presenting non-Black comparators who received
better treatment. In addition, the court concluded that even if
she had presented such evidence, she could not establish that
AIM’s non-discriminatory reason for the pay differential was
pretextual. The court held these same reasons proved fatal to
her failure to promote claim. We agree with the court’s latter
conclusion that Wilson’s claims fail because she has not pro-
vided evidence from which a reasonable jury could infer that
the stated reasons for AIM’s employment decisions were pre-
textual.

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6 No. 23-3418
II
Because the same standard applies for discrimination
claims under Title VII, Section 1981, and the IHRA, our anal-
ysis proceeds under Title VII. Baines v. Walgreen Co., 863 F.3d
656, 661 (7th Cir. 2017); Volling v. Kurtz Paramedic Servs., Inc.,
840 F.3d 378, 383 (7th Cir. 2016). Title VII prohibits employers’
intentional discrimination based on race. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-
2(a)(1). In this circuit, Title VII plaintiffs may choose to pre-
sent their evidence under either of two frameworks. See David
v. Bd. of Trs. of Cmty. Coll. Dist. No. 508, 846 F.3d 216, 224 (7th
Cir. 2017).
Under McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802
(1973), the plaintiff has “the initial burden to establish a prima
facie case of discrimination, after which the burden shifts to
the defendant to provide a legitimate justification, before fi-
nally shifting back to the plaintiff to establish that such justi-
fication was pretextual.” Dunlevy v. Langfelder, 52 F.4th 349,
353 (7th Cir. 2022). Under Ortiz v. Werner Enterprises, Inc., 834
F.3d 760, 764–66 (7th Cir. 2016), we place all evidence in “a
single pile” and evaluate it “as a whole” to determine whether
the employer would have taken the same action had the plain-
tiff had a different race or ethnicity, “and everything else had
remained the same.”
In the district court, Wilson presented her claims using the
McDonnell Douglas framework. On appeal, she says she also
proceeded in the district court under Ortiz by citing the case
twice in her response to AIM’s motion for summary judg-
ment.1 Regardless, we are free to assess the evidence under
1 The district court likewise identified that Wilson framed her claims
under McDonnell Douglas and proceeded to analyze them only under that

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No. 23-3418 7
either framework. See David, 846 F.3d at 224. We conclude that
Wilson’s claims do not fare well under either one.
A. Disparate Pay
As foreshadowed above, even if we concluded that Wilson
proffered sufficient comparators—and therefore that she has
made a prima facie case of disparate pay—Wilson’s claim fal-
ters at a step beyond the prima facie case.2 Namely, she does
not present evidence from which a reasonable jury can infer
that AIM’s reasons for the pay disparity were pretextual.
For Wilson’s disparate pay claim to proceed to trial, she
would need to produce evidence from which a jury reasona-
bly could find that AIM’s stated explanation for her salary
was untrue and that the real reason was discriminatory.
framework. On appeal, Wilson did not contest this determination in her
briefing. It was not until after oral argument that Wilson filed a Rule 28(j)
letter asserting that she and the district court had both invoked Ortiz.
2 As Wilson points out, we need not reach her comparator evidence
for the additional reason that AIM cites her performance as the basis for
its promotion and (by extension) salary decisions. Vichio v. US Foods, Inc.,
88 F.4th 687, 691 (7th Cir. 2023) (“We may skip the McDonnell Douglas
prima facie analysis if the employer raises the employee’s performance as
the reason for the adverse employment decision.”). Having skipped the
prima facie analysis, we also do not reach AIM’s arguments under Box v.
A & P Tea Co., 772 F.2d 1372 (7th Cir. 1985), that Wilson never applied for
or sought a Business Consultant promotion and so could not prove she
would have taken the job had AIM offered it to her. See Box, 772 F.2d at
1377 (“When an employer uses a promotion system in which employees
do not apply for promotions but rather are sought out by managers, the
application requirement of the prima facie case is loosened somewhat. In
this situation, the plaintiff can establish the application element of a prima
facie case by showing that, had she known of an assistant manager open-
ing, she would have applied.” (internal citations omitted)).

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8 No. 23-3418
Duncan v. Fleetwood Motor Homes of Ind., Inc., 518 F.3d 486,
491–92 (7th Cir. 2008) (citations omitted). Notably, the wis-
dom of an employer’s decision is not a consideration under
the pretext analysis, which looks only to the “veracity” of the
decision. Barnes v. Bd. of Trs. of Univ. of Ill., 946 F.3d 384, 390
(7th Cir. 2020). As such, it is not enough for Wilson to assert
that AIM’s decisions were based on “faulty reasoning or mis-
taken judgment.” Argyropoulos v. City of Alton, 539 F.3d 724,
736 (7th Cir. 2008). Rather, to demonstrate pretext, Wilson
must show that AIM justified its actions with a “lie” or
“phony reason.” Barnes, 946 F.3d at 389–90 (citation omitted).
At the same time, our employment discrimination cases
have long recognized that courts need not take at face value
an employer’s stated reasons if a jury could find them unwor-
thy of belief. Circumstantial evidence of falsity—including
the fact that a stated reason is just improbable or unreasonable
—can support a reasonable inference of pretext. E.g., Huff v.
Buttigieg, 42 F.4th 638, 648 (7th Cir. 2022) (reversing summary
judgment: “A jury may infer pretext when an employer en-
forces a policy in an objectively unreasonable
way.”); Loudermilk v. Best Pallet Co., 636 F.3d 312, 315 (7th Cir.
2011) (reversing summary judgment; “an employer who ad-
vances a fishy reason takes the risk that disbelief of the reason
will support an inference that it is a pretext for discrimina-
tion”); accord, e.g., Galvan v. Indiana, 117 F.4th 935, 946 (7th
Cir. 2024) (“[W]hen the basis for the termination is objectively
unworthy of belief, a jury may infer pretext”); Hobgood v. Illi-
nois Gaming Bd., 731 F.3d 635, 646 (7th Cir. 2013) (reversing
summary judgment: “We do not second guess an employer’s
business decision, but neither do we ‘abandon good reason
and common sense in assessing an employer’s ac-
tions.’”); Stalter v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 195 F.3d 285, 290 (7th

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No. 23-3418 9
Cir. 1999) (reversing summary judgment; employer claimed
it fired plaintiff for “theft” after he ate a few taco chips from
apparently abandoned open bag in break room). In this case,
there was nothing inherently “fishy” about AIM’s stated rea-
sons for its decisions, and Wilson has not offered other evi-
dence that would support a reasonable inference of pretext.
AIM argues that its pay practices were objectively reason-
able because it uses a neutral process to set employees’ start-
ing salaries, merit increases, and bonuses, which is then re-
viewed by several management and corporate executives at
AIM and Anthem. Even when supervisors use their discretion
to adjust, for example, merit increases, their managers must
review these determinations.
As to setting new hire salaries specifically, AIM explains
that it is HR, and not supervisors, who has the final say. Un-
der this pay regime, AIM offered Wilson a starting salary of
$66,000 for a full-time permanent BAII position. At that time,
the salary range for a BAII in the same office was between
$52,184 and $78,276. AIM’s research also showed that the me-
dian market pay for the position was $65,230. As such, Wil-
son’s annual starting salary exceeded the median pay and fell
within the office’s salary range.
Wilson does not dispute AIM’s process for setting her pay.
She also admits that from April 2017 to December 2020, she
was making more money than some of the other BAIIs. Not-
withstanding, she offers several pieces of evidence she argues
show that the stated reasons for AIM’s decisions about her
pay were pretexts for race discrimination. But the evidence
she presents, even considered “as a whole,” would not permit

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10 No. 23-3418
a reasonable jury to infer that AIM’s pay decisions were pre-
textual.3 Ortiz, 834 F.3d at 765.
First, Wilson points us to Drisia Sankara Narayanan, an
Indian woman, who, like Wilson, first worked as a BA con-
tractor for AIM for several years before joining the company
full-time. Narayanan became a full-time permanent BAII at a
salary of $67,500. Wilson argues the fact that Narayanan’s
starting BAII salary of $67,500 was higher than Wilson’s
$60,000 salary as a BAI contractor is evidence of pretext. But,
Narayanan’s BAII starting salary as a full-time employee next
to Wilson’s salary as an independent BA contractor can
hardly be a point of comparison.
Second, Wilson directs our attention to Kimberly Louis, a
white woman who also worked as a contractor before joining
AIM full-time. Louis had three and a half years of BA experi-
ence before she became a BAIII contractor for AIM earning
$77,000 per year. After about six months as a BAIII contractor,
Louis became a full-time permanent BAII, a one level decrease
which dropped her salary to $75,000. Later that same year,
AIM promoted Louis from full-time BAII to BAIII. The fol-
lowing year, AIM promoted Louis once more, this time to
Business Consultant.
Wilson highlights Louis’s “meteoric rise through the
ranks” as evidence of pretext because Wilson provided evi-
dence suggesting that Louis was a less than stellar employee
at the time of some of her promotions. As Wilson sees it, it
3 Wilson presents the same evidence of pretext for both her disparate
pay and failure to promote claims. We take Wilson’s argument, in present-
ing her evidence this way, to be that AIM’s promotion of other employees
over her resulted in her disparate pay.

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No. 23-3418 11
was unreasonable for AIM to keep promoting Louis even
though she was one of Opasinski’s bottom performers in June
2017, just a few months before her promotion to BAIII. Wilson
also takes issue with what she describes as AIM’s main ra-
tionale for promoting Louis: Louis had become a “point per-
son,” handling work outside of her regular responsibilities.
According to Wilson, she also possessed these work qualities,
as evidenced by the award she received in 2018.
Even with all inferences drawn in her favor, Wilson’s ref-
erence to Louis falls short of showing that AIM fabricated the
reasons for any pay disparity. Indeed, although Wilson chal-
lenges AIM’s reasoning for promoting Louis (and therefore
increasing Louis’s salary), Wilson’s arguments show, at most,
“mistaken judgment” on AIM’s part. Barnes, 946 F.3d at 389
(citation omitted). Wilson does not challenge the sincerity of
AIM’s belief at the time that Louis was better suited for the
promotion and higher pay. Id. at 389–90. Yet that sincerity is
the heart of the pretext inquiry. What’s more, the record sup-
ports AIM’s decision insofar as Wilson placed below Louis on
Opasinski’s June 2017 list of bottom performers. Wilson’s
comparison to Louis therefore does not show pretext.
Third, Wilson recalls a meeting in 2019, not long after she
filed her EEOC charge (which Wilson alleges Opasinski knew
about), where Opasinski raised her voice and became irate
when Wilson questioned her negative performance evalua-
tion. From this, a jury could reasonably infer that Opasinski
mistreated Wilson. However, without more, we cannot treat
this as evidence that AIM was lying about its reasons for pay-
ing Wilson less than some of her colleagues. Recall, AIM’s pay
and promotion decisions underwent several levels of man-
agement review; Opasinski was just one level of that process

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12 No. 23-3418
when she was Wilson’s supervisor. Thus, that Opasinski mis-
treated Wilson in 2019 falls short of demonstrating that AIM
lied about its reasons for not increasing Wilson’s pay before
2018.
Fourth, Wilson cites an instance, sometime after Opasinski
ranked Wilson as the poorest performer, when Opasinski di-
rected Snow to test Wilson—and no other employee—on her
knowledge of what she learned that week. Snow testified that
this was racial discrimination on Opasinski’s part—a position
Wilson also takes on appeal.
A jury could reasonably infer that Opasinski was invent-
ing additional requirements to assess Wilson’s performance
and, by doing so, holding her to a higher standard. But that
inference could not support a finding of discrimination re-
lated to Wilson’s pay. This is because the imposition of addi-
tional assessment requirements after the ranking does not call
into question the validity of the ranking itself. In other words,
Wilson cannot rely on this incident to show pretext because
she does not challenge the veracity of Opasinski’s ranking of
her as the poorest performing analyst.
Where an employer relies on ranking employees to sup-
port its employment decisions, it is not our job to second-
guess that ranking even if the “employer’s reasoning is incor-
rect.” Brooks v. Avancez, 39 F.4th 424, 436 (7th Cir. 2022). Our
role is not one of a “super-personnel department[] … sit[ting]
in judgment of management decisions.” Id. Rather we assess
only whether a reasonable jury could infer that the em-
ployer’s decisions were based on lies to shroud discrimina-
tory behavior. For this reason, Opasinski’s required test of
Wilson (and Wilson alone), after the ranking, does not render

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No. 23-3418 13
AIM’s proffered reasons for Wilson’s pay as compared to that
of other employees untrue.
Fifth, Wilson argues she very clearly languished for years
under Opasinki’s supervision, whereas other non-Black col-
leagues’ pay and rank rose rapidly. And it was not until Wilson
filed her EEOC charge and Snow became her supervisor, Wil-
son explains, that she finally received the recognition she de-
served. A jury could reasonably infer that AIM reacted to Wil-
son’s EEOC charge by removing Wilson from Opasinski’s su-
pervision. Likewise, a reasonable jury could conclude Opasin-
ski was not a good supervisor for Wilson. But the timing of
Wilson’s long-in-coming recognition alone does not show that
AIM lied about Wilson’s performance being the reason
Opasinski did not recommend her for higher pay.
In sum, Wilson’s evidence is insufficient to create an issue
of fact as to the central inquiry: whether AIM used its neutral
processes to hide a discriminatory reason for her lower pay.
See Cardoso v. Robert Bosch Corp., 427 F.3d 429, 436 (7th Cir.
2005) (“The aggrieved employee may seek recourse in federal
court for discrimination only for the forbidden reasons set
forth in Title VII, not for common workplace disputes or poor,
nonsensical, or even heavy-handed management techniques
or decisions.”). As such, even assessing her evidence “as a
whole,” a jury could not reasonably conclude that AIM’s pro-
cesses were phony in order to set Wilson’s pay based on her
race. Ortiz, 834 F.3d at 765. Her disparate pay claim cannot
succeed.
B. Failure to Promote
Wilson argues that AIM should have promoted her to
BAIII sometime in 2014 or 2015, and then again to Business

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14 No. 23-3418
Consultant between 2017 and 2018. Because the statute of lim-
itations ended on April 12, 2017, her only viable claim relates
to her expected promotion to Business Consultant. Still, her
failure to promote claim suffers from the same weaknesses as
her disparate pay claim: she does not present evidence for a
jury to infer pretext.
To promote employees internally, AIM primarily relied on
employees seeking the positions themselves. Employees
would have to search for an online post or speak with their
supervisor about promotion opportunities. In some instances,
it was also possible for managers to promote an employee,
without the employee initiating the conversation. Using these
processes, AIM promoted three employees to Business Con-
sultant positions in 2018. According to AIM, those employees,
including Louis, were top performers overseeing a broad
spectrum of complex projects and had experience supervising
other associates. AIM argues that Wilson, unaware of her col-
leagues’ duties during this time, cannot say whether her per-
formance was better than her three colleagues who became
Business Consultants more quickly.
Wilson offered the same evidence of pretext for both her
disparate pay and failure to promote claims. So our analysis
above of pretext as to Wilson’s disparate pay claim, see ante,
at 7–12, applies here too. Although there are several indica-
tions that Opasinski disliked Wilson, Wilson is unable to
point to any evidence from which a jury could infer that
AIM’s justifications for promoting other employees, but not
Wilson, to Business Consultant in 2018 were dishonest. See
Duncan, 518 F.3d at 492. As such, Wilson’s failure to promote
claim also fails.

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No. 23-3418 15
III
We conclude by addressing Wilson’s argument that the
district court committed reversible error by applying the
wrong causation standard in its summary judgment opinion.
Here, Wilson refers to the court’s assertion that: “A jury,
therefore, could not conclude that Wilson did not receive a
promotion solely due to her race.” Wilson v. AIM Specialty
Health, No. 21 C 1929, 2023 WL 8372041, at *9 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 4,
2023) (emphasis added); see also id. at *8 (“Without any such
evidence, a jury could not conclude that Wilson’s race alone—
rather than her qualifications—was the source of the compen-
sation differences.” (emphasis added)).
According to Wilson, the court erred in requiring that she
show the employment action was “solely due to her race,” as
opposed to her race being a “but for” cause of the action. Wil-
son is correct that, under Section 1981, “a plaintiff must
demonstrate that, but for the defendant’s unlawful conduct,
its alleged injury would not have occurred.” Comcast Corp. v.
Nat’l Ass’n of Afr. Am.-Owned Media, 589 U.S. 327, 331–32
(2020). Indeed, elsewhere in its opinion, the district court cited
the correct “but for” standard. Wilson, 2023 WL 8372041, at *6
(quoting Joll v. Valparaiso Cmty. Schs., 953 F.3d 923, 929 (7th
Cir. 2020), for the proposition that “better treatment of people
similarly situated but for the protected characteristic” can
serve as circumstantial evidence of intentional discrimina-
tion). So, although the district court misstated the law, its mis-
statement does not merit reversal given the weaknesses in
Wilson’s claims already addressed.

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16 No. 23-3418
IV
We recognize Wilson’s frustration in witnessing non-Black
colleagues rise more quickly through AIM’s ranks, with
higher pay. We do not pass judgment on the veracity of her
claims that it took AIM much longer to recognize her efforts.
However, based on the evidence Wilson presented, a reason-
able jury could not find that AIM’s reasons for setting her pay
or failing to promote her were really meant to discriminate
against her based on her race, so we must AFFIRM.

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