Employee loses disability‐discrimination claim

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nba.30785
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020

NONPROFIT BUSINESS ADVISOR JUNE 2020

10 © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC, A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

DOI: 10.1002/nba

Employment Law

Here’s a look at several recent notable lawsuits involving nonprots. Nonprots should regularly review

employment laws and their compliance efforts to avert similar issues.

Hostile work environment

Employee loses disability-discrimination

claim

The plaintiff began working at the U.S. Depart-

ment of Transportation in 2009.

In 2010, his physician strongly recommended ma-

jor back surgery. However, the doctor also said the

plaintiff would have to attend three physical therapy

appointments per week for six consecutive weeks

before the surgery could be performed.

The plaintiff scheduled the surgery for September.

However, he was forced to cancel several phys-

ical therapy appointments to avoid missing “dif-

cult-to-predict” meetings because his supervisor

“harassed” and “reprimanded” him whenever he was

absent from a meeting.

The plaintiff’s August promotion to information

technology development chief led to increased work

responsibilities that made it even more difcult for

him to attend physical therapy appointments three

times each week.

Eventually, the plaintiff had to reschedule the

surgery for January 2012.

He made a formal complaint of disability discrim-

ination in 2011.

The plaintiff had to again reschedule the surgery

because his December reassignment to business in-

telligence advisor made it impossible for him to get

the requisite physical therapy.

After the plaintiff nally underwent the surgery in

January 2013, he led a suit claiming a hostile work

environment because management: (1) insisted on

unreasonably detailed medical documentation, (2)

harassed him about his disability and use of leave,

(3) denied his request to work from home, (4) once

listed him as AWOL, (5) accused him of shouting

at a co-worker and interrogated him about it rather

than trying to nd out if something was wrong, (6)

asked him to withdraw his discrimination complaint,

(7) assigned him a poor midyear evaluation, (8)

didn’t timely reimburse his travel expenses and (9)

denied him the necessary training to perform his job

successfully.

The DOT led a motion for summary judgment.

EMPLOYER WINS ➔ The district court judge

gave several reasons for ruling that the claimed

mistreatment wasn’t sufficiently severe or perva-

sive to have altered the conditions of the plaintiff ’s

employment.

First, he said they were spread out over approximate-

ly two years and involved two different supervisors.

He also ruled that the incidents weren’t the kind

of extreme conditions that constituted a hostile work

environment. He explained that the AWOL charge,

the shouting accusation, the delayed travel reimburse-

ment and the failure to train didn’t amount to more

than ordinary tribulations of the workplace.

Similarly, the judge ruled that the demands for high-

ly detailed medical documentation to justify his leave

requests, and the pressure to attend staff meetings, were

far from severe and were never physically threatening.

The judge acknowledged that management had

denied the request to work from home, but said in

mitigation that he was offered a standing desk, an

ergonomic chair and a cot for his ofce.

He also said that even though the midyear evalua-

tion contained criticism, it also recommended areas

of improvement, which was hardly the stuff of severe

or pervasive workplace hostility.

The judge granted a summary judgment in favor

of the DOT.

[Coady v. Chao, U.S. District Court for the District

of Columbia, No. 16-cv-2010, 02/26/2019].

Title VII

Judge rules against employee in racial

discrimination case

The plaintiff was a black woman.

In 2013, the American Institutes for Research

hired her as a senior database engineer. She was

eventually promoted to lead database engineer II at

an unspecied date.

According to the plaintiff, she reported to her staff

manager in her rst year that she was being subjected

to “abusive discriminatory behavior” from a technical

project manager from India.

In September 2015, the plaintiff reported to the

human resources department that the project man-

ager was creating a workplace conict because of his

disrespectful and abusive behavior toward her in front