Jennings v. State of Illinois Department of Corrections , 496 F.3d 764 ( 2007 )

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,

concurring.

This case presents the anomaly of a prison manager (the warden) without the ultimate power of management: the power to discharge employees. Perhaps this apparent anomaly is merely a by-product of the circumstances of litigation — a failure of proof on Jennings’ part — and the authority exercised by the Department of Central Management Services is essentially a “liability shield,” despite whose obscuring effect the warden’s influence is in fact decisive. Shager v. Upjohn Co., 913 F.2d 398, 405 (7th Cir.1990). But on this record it really seems that Illinois has bifurcated the management of the personnel in its Department of Corrections in the interest of insulating the exercise of certain management prerogatives against the influence of improper motives.

I must agree with my colleagues that Jennings has not offered any evidence that Wyant had sufficient influence over the decision of the Department of Central Management Services (the ostensible decision-maker) to make Wyant’s motives decisive or even relevant; the suggestion that he controlled the outcome “rests on surmise.” Wallace v. SMC Pneumatics, Inc., 103 F.3d 1394, 1401 (7th Cir.1997). How the warden’s lack of influence can be reconciled in the real world with the need for efficient prison administration is a bit mysterious, but it is not our task for present purposes to unravel that mystery.