But the comparator must still be similar enough “to eliminate confounding variables, such as differing roles, performance histories, or decision-making personnel, [so as to] isolate the critical independent variable: complaints about discrimination.” Filar v. Bd. of Educ. of City of Chi, 526 F.3d 1054, 1061 (7th Cir.2008) (second insertion in original) (quoting Humphries, 474 F.3d at 405). As Assistant Superintendent, Malito was directly under Simpson and he had many of the same responsibilities as Simpson. He even seemed to have “fraternized” with the same juvenile detainee that Simpson did. And we have tended to look more broadly for appropriate comparators when an employee holds an arguably unique job description. See McNabola v. Chi. Transit Auth., 10 F.3d 501, 514 (7th Cir.1993) (<HOLDING>). But the Audit Report makes Malito far from
holding a pro per litigant to the same standard as an attorney holding that violation of state law was not a per se constitutional violation holding that the maximum statutory damages available to plaintiffs under the fdcpa is limited to 100000 per plaintiff per proceeding holding such agreements to be per se illegal holding that a per diem physician could be adequately compared to per diem attorneys in an organization with a limited number of per diem physicians