A federal judge has thrown out a race and gender discrimination suit by a White man who was terminated as Chicago State University’s human resources director.
Stephen Hosick also failed to show that the decision to terminate him in 2009 came in retaliation for filing complaints against the university about personnel matters, U.S. District Judge John Lee held.
According to the decision, CSU’s interim president hired Hosick in 2008 when the university was in dire financial straits due to mismanagement. It was under legislative scrutiny at the time, and the board of trustees was taking on a much more aggressive oversight role.
After the board chose a new permanent president, CSU terminated Hosick and five other administrators in a move intended to give the new president flexibility in selecting his own staff. All the others who lost their jobs were African-American: two men and three women.
The university argued that the board believed one of the incoming president’s priorities would be recruiting and organizing his staff, but Hosick’s Title VII and Illinois civil rights law claims contended that such a rationale was pretextual.
Lee sided with the university, saying that “Hosick provides no basis, not even his own personal observations, for the facts he asserts about CSU’s racial makeup, history or hiring preferences.”
For example, Lee said there was no statistical analysis to create “an inference of discrimination” based on race, nor does the board’s all-Black or almost all-Black composition create such an inference. As for the gender bias claim, Hosick “provides no explanation or analysis as to who or how CNS discriminated against him” because he is male, other than the fact that a woman replaced him.
