Keisha Lewis worked in INDOT's Real Estate Division from December 2014 until she was fired on December 20, 2022, for poor performance and insubordination. Her job involved approving and mailing federal relocation-assistance checks to people displaced by highway projects. After receiving a remote-work accommodation tied to a kidney transplant and compromised immune system, Lewis stopped processing checks for the Finance Department, emailed the Finance Operations Manager to say she would no longer assist with relocation vouchers, and accumulated a backlog that exceeded 400 outstanding parcels — a shortfall that cost the Department over $150,000 to rectify. Her supervisor documented multiple instances of meeting tardiness, disputed work logs, and refusals to produce required weekly data reports before Director William Geibel recommended termination.
Lewis sued INDOT, Geibel, and supervisor Julie Foreman, asserting disability discrimination and retaliation under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, race discrimination and retaliation under Title VII, and claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The court granted a joint motion to dismiss the claims against Foreman. The district court, Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson of the Southern District of Indiana, then granted summary judgment for the remaining defendants on all remaining counts.
Writing for a panel that also included Circuit Judges Rovner and Hamilton, Chief Judge Brennan held that Lewis's disability was not the sole cause of her termination, as the Rehabilitation Act requires. The opinion explained the distinction between the two statutes: the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, while Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act bars discrimination solely by reason of disability — a standard the Seventh Circuit described as more stringent than the ADA's but-for inquiry, citing Royan v. Chicago State University, which itself cited Swain v. Wormuth and Conners v. Wilkie. Because Lewis did not dispute that Geibel recommended her firing based on deficient performance and insubordination, she could not satisfy sole causation.
On the Rehabilitation Act retaliation claim, the court noted that circuit precedent is inconsistent on whether a plaintiff must show the protected activity was the but-for cause of the adverse action or merely that retaliatory intent played a part — but declined to resolve that split because Lewis's claim failed under either standard. The Department had legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for the termination that Lewis did not rebut.
Lewis's Title VII race-discrimination theory rested primarily on a pay-raise disparity: she, a Black employee, received a 9 percent raise while a white colleague received a 12 percent raise. The court held that she failed to establish the colleague as a proper comparator and did not rebut the undisputed explanation that the white employee's lower base salary drove the higher percentage. The court also held the argument waived because Lewis did not engage with the district court's reasoning on appeal, citing the circuit's rule that perfunctory and underdeveloped arguments are forfeited.
The Title VII retaliation claim fared no better. The court noted that Geibel had actually advocated for Lewis's promotion and raise, undermining any inference of racial animus, and that Lewis raised no material dispute about whether her supervisors sincerely believed she was insubordinate and underperforming.