O R D E R
Nicole Traphan, an African-American woman, sued the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, and a former co-worker, Charles Adams, on various theories of workplace harassment and discrimination on account of her race and gender. * 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. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. APP. P. 32.1
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See 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 2000e-2(a). The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, concluding that no reasonable jury could connect the harassment Traphan experienced to her protected classes. We affirm.
I
We construe the facts in the light most favorable to Traphan as the non-moving party at the summary judgment stage, construing all facts and reasonable inferences in her favor. Dunlevy v. Langfelder, 52 F.4th 349, 353 (7th Cir. 2022). Traphan was hired in May 2021 as a Senior Nuclear Safety Specialist in the Department's Nuclear Safety Section. As part of her job, she participated in radiological emergency-response exercises designed to prepare emergency workers and government agencies for any dangers or disasters that may unfold at nuclear facilities. These exercises are overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. If the Department's performance is unsatisfactory, the nuclear facility may be subject to increased oversight or even shut down. Although Traphan had participated in more than a dozen radiological emergency-response exercises as part of her previous job, Traphan had not yet spearheaded an exercise. Her new role in the Department required her to help plan and lead such exercises. Much of the basis for her claims arises from her participation in the exercises that were part of the Department's training.
A. Adams's Conduct Towards Traphan
In September 2021, the Department conducted an emergency preparedness exercise at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant in Two Creeks, Wisconsin. Traphan's boss, David LeClear, told her that he wanted to prepare her to lead later exercises. LeClear assigned Traphan to shadow Adams, another Senior Nuclear Safety Specialist who happened to be leading the Point Beach exercise. Adams is a white man. According to Traphan, Adams assigned her most of her work while she shadowed him. Traphan asserts that Adams hazed her during the leadup to the Point Beach exercise by giving her what she described only as "completely inaccurate information"
to embarrass her in front of other colleagues. She also asserts that Adams withheld data that was important to the exercise, did not invite her to relevant meetings, refused to let her observe him during key leadership moments, and screamed at her over a minor matter. Despite her requests to attend these meetings and otherwise observe his preparation, Adams largely relegated Traphan to secretarial work. And on the day of the exercise, she says that Adams assigned her to a "messenger/courier" role instead of
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letting her watch him coordinate the exercise. LeClear, however, testified that Adams did not decide the roles and Traphan's assignment was decided in advance. Adams continued to denigrate Traphan's work after the Point Beach exercise. She describes another embarrassing incident at a group training presentation where she answered a presenter's question using the term "interdiction." Adams, in a mocking tone, yelled that the term was not used in Wisconsin. A few weeks later, Traphan was assigned to help lead an exercise in Manitowoc County at Holy Family Hospital. Traphan asserts that Adams failed to tell her key details about the equipment to be used in the exercise and staffing restrictions at the hospital. The exercise went poorly. As LeClear recounted it, FEMA was dissatisfied with Traphan's work and deemed the exercise a failure. Despite FEMA's assessment, the Department held the hospital responsible for the failure. At another exercise that Traphan led, Adams arrived late. His late arrival delayed operations significantly, and Traphan believes the delay hurt her reputation as a leader. She adds that Adams summarily dismissed her suggestions to improve exercise preparedness and repeatedly screamed at her over staffing decisions she made for an upcoming exercise.
B. Adams's Conduct Towards Other Employees
Traphan was not the only employee to clash with Adams. Once, after Traphan complained to LeClear about Adams's behavior, LeClear told her that he had received complaints from many other Department employees that Adams was argumentative, would "rip into" others, and could not appropriately handle stressful situations. At least one employee refused to work with Adams because of his behavior. LeClear also told her that he saw Adams frequently be defensive and speak over people, even Mark Paulson—LeClear's supervisor. Separate from Adams's own communication style, LeClear noticed that Adams was quick to construe others' disagreements or innocent questioning as contentious. And LeClear recalled instances during his start at the Department when Adams—who trained him—was combative and quarrelsome. In LeClear's view, it was "apparent" to everyone at the Department that Adams's communication was "overly combative." Adams himself acknowledges that his communications can come out "very flat and harsh."
C. Retaliation
Shortly after Traphan complained in early 2022 to LeClear about Adams and linked Adams's harassment to her race and gender, LeClear gave Adams a pointed annual performance review. The review said that Adams needed to improve his
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communication with peers (working on listening, tone management, and not accusing or blaming others) and that Adams was expected to seek training for "health equity, racial injustice … and other current social issues." The review did not mention Traphan or anyone's complaints.
Weeks after this review, Adams spoke to a FEMA official and expressed concerns about Traphan's lack of experience and poor performance at the Holy Family exercise. The FEMA official then insisted on speaking with Traphan about an upcoming exercise that she was leading—a conversation that, Traphan believed, signaled that she would face heightened scrutiny.
D. Failure to Promote
Starting in 2021, Traphan sought to join the Department's radiological coordinator team. This was a leadership role that required her to be approved by Paulson (the chief of nuclear safety for the Department and LeClear's supervisor), and also, as a matter of practice, required approval from the other coordinators at the Department, which included Adams, LeClear, and another man named Paul Schmidt. Becoming a coordinator would be professionally advantageous and, if put in an
"on-call" role, would include a pay increase. A coordinator opening was set to become available in January 2022, when Schmidt was slated to retire. Traphan competed with a white man named Luther Loehrke for the upcoming coordinator position. In August 2021, both Traphan and Loehrke took part in a formal coordinator training simulation. After observing their performance, Paulson and the other coordinators agreed that Loehrke, who had been employed by the Department since 2015, was best suited to fill the upcoming position. In Paulson's opinion, it would have been "inappropriate to place Traphan, or anyone else who had only been with [the Department] for four months" in an on-call coordinator position that "required making high pressure and time-sensitive decisions." Adams then provided Loehrke with a
"Qualification Card" that helped him track the requirements needed to join the coordinator team. Separately, Adams told Traphan, without explanation, that he opposed her joining the coordinator team. Once Schmidt retired in January 2022, Loehrke was appointed to the coordinator team. The team agreed that Traphan would be a good fit for the next opening and gave her a Qualification Card.
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E. Traphan's Resignation
In April 2025, after Adams screamed at Traphan over a missing key, Traphan sent LeClear an email that she was considering resigning. LeClear asked her to stay, as did Paulson. Paulson additionally asked Traphan if she would consider working in a different department unit away from Adams. Traphan resigned later that day.
II
Traphan, acting pro se, sued Adams and the Department under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a), and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She asserted that both defendants discriminated against her based on race and gender, in violation of Title VII and her right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, by failing to promote her to a coordinator position and by subjecting her to a hostile work environment that culminated in her constructive discharge. She also asserted that Adams retaliated against her by treating her worse after she complained to LeClear about discrimination. Soon thereafter, Traphan retained counsel and the case proceeded to summary judgment.
The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants. In relevant part, the court explained that no reasonable jury could conclude that Adams's harassment could be connected to Traphan's race and gender, as required to succeed on her theories of a hostile workplace or constructive discharge. The court also concluded that Traphan could not succeed on her failure-to-promote claim because she presented no evidence that the defendants' stated reason for giving Loehrke the coordinator designation ahead of her was pretextual. Finally, the court ruled that no jury could find that Traphan was subjected to retaliation because she could not identify an adverse action taken by the Department after she filed her complaint of discrimination. (Because she had not submitted sufficient proof of constructive discharge, the court explained, this could not be the basis for her retaliation claim.)
III
Traphan, also proceeding pro se on appeal, challenges the summary judgment entered against her claims. We review the district court's order awarding summary judgment de novo. Dunlevy, 52 F.4th at 353.
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A. Hostile Workplace
To maintain a hostile work environment claim under either Title VII or § 1983, Traphan needed to provide evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude, among other things, that she was subjected to harassment because of her race or gender. Paterakos v. City of Chicago, 147 F.4th 787, 795 (7th Cir. 2025). Traphan faults the district court for not drawing a connection between her race and gender to the severity of Adams's public humiliation, exclusion, and interference. But we agree with the district court that no reasonable jury could make that connection. First, none of Adams's speech or conduct involved racist or sexist language or had racist or sexist undertones. Second, Adams was harsh and combative with other male and female coworkers to such a degree that at least one coworker refused to work with him. Unpleasant as his behavior was, "Title VII imposes no general civility code," and this kind of "equal opportunity" incivility strongly cuts against any inference that Traphan's race or sex motivated Adams. Smith v. Ill. Dep't of Transp., 936 F.3d 554, 560- 61 (7th Cir. 2019) (cleaned up); see also Yancick v. Hanna Steel Corp., 653 F.3d 532, 546 (7th Cir. 2011) (rejecting hostile work environment claim where colleague was hostile and aggressive but there was no evidence of racial animus).
Traphan also argues that the district court should have inferred discrimination because Adams withheld relevant information when training her but not when training LeClear. But LeClear explained that he also had issues with Adams's aggressive communication, and so this one difference is the kind of "mere … scintilla" of evidence that cannot stave off summary judgment. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242,
252 (1986).
B. Constructive Discharge
Traphan also challenges the court's summary judgment on her constructive- discharge claim, arguing that Adams's harassment was so severe that a reasonable person would be compelled to resign. But Title VII is implicated only when the reasonable person would be compelled to resign because of discriminatory harassment, see, e.g., Ziccarelli v. Dart, 35 F.4th 1079, 1091 (7th Cir. 2022), and, as we have explained, Traphan did not carry her burden to show evidence of discrimination.
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C. Failure to Promote
To sustain her failure-to-promote claim against the Department, Traphan needed to show, among other things, that the Department's race-and-gender neutral explanation for promoting Loehrke over her—his more extensive state-specific experience and performance during the exercise that the coordinator team oversaw— was a lie. See Barnes v. Bd. of Trs. of Univ. of Ill., 946 F.3d 384, 389 (7th Cir. 2020). Traphan faults the district court for not giving greater weight to what she perceives as an opaque selection process that lacked proper documentation. She also argues that the Department could not truly have relied on state-specific tenure because the Qualification Card did not list tenure as a requirement for the coordinator position. We agree with the district court that none of this shows the Department lied, especially where Paulson and LeClear preferred Loehrke's performance in the simulation and intended to promote Traphan to the next coordinator opening. Unstructured or poorly documented decisions might be unwise business practices, but they do not suggest pretext. See id. at 389-90. And even if tenure was not specifically required, it is a common-sense consideration that does not suggest a lie absent additional evidence.
D. Retaliation
For her retaliation claim, Traphan needed to provide evidence suggesting a causal connection between her statutorily protected activity—her complaint of race- and-gender discrimination—and her suffering an adverse employment action. Scaife v. U.S. Dep't of Veterans Affs., 49 F.4th 1109, 1118 (7th Cir. 2022). She argues generally that the district court should have recognized that Adams's disparagement of her to the FEMA official was an adverse action, and that a jury could infer Adams's knowledge of (and was thus motivated by) her complaint because of the critical performance review that LeClear gave him just weeks earlier.
Even if we assume that disparagement can be an adverse action, no jury could conclude that Adams knew of Traphan's race-and-gender complaint. The review never mentioned her name nor anyone's complaint. And racial sensitivity was just one of many issues for him to improve. Also, that Adams made his disparaging comment two weeks after her complaint is merely the kind of suspicious timing we have held is rarely enough to survive summary judgment. See, e.g., Khungar v. Access Cmty. Health Network,
985 F.3d 565, 578 (7th Cir. 2021). Moreover, Adams had criticized Traphan in much the same way before the performance review. Without some "ratcheting up or increased
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harassment," a factfinder cannot infer a causal connection. Boumehdi v. Plastag Holdings, LLC, 489 F.3d 781, 793 (7th Cir. 2007).
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We have considered Traphan's remaining arguments, and none merits discussion.
AFFIRMED
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