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  • Date:

    Denham v. Ala. State Univ. (11th Cir. May 16, 2024) (unpub.)

    Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, who is a white female and a former professor of Occupational Therapy at Alabama State University, brought discrimination claims against the University after she was not hired for an Associate Dean position. The position required qualifications appropriate for the rank of associate professor, and though the successful candidate had only one year of teaching experience, the provost deemed him qualified by virtue of his clinical experience. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the University, the Eleventh Circuit found plaintiff’s assertion that she was more qualified for the position by virtue of her teaching experience insufficient to raise a question of pretext regarding the University’s explanation that it valued the successful candidate’s clinical experience and strong performance in his interview. 

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment

  • Date:

    U.S. Dep’t of Education Dear Colleague Letter on Discrimination Based on Shared Ancestry (May 7, 2024)

    U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) on the Obligation to Address Discrimination Based on Shared Ancestry and Ethnic Characteristics. The DCL outlines institutions’ Title VI obligations to ensure nondiscrimination as they “extend to students and school community members who are or are perceived because of their shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu, Palestinian, or any other faith or ancestry.” The guidance notes relevant First Amendment considerations and describes the analysis under the hostile environment and different treatment legal frameworks the Department uses to determine if an institution engaged in discrimination in violation of Title VI. The DCL also discusses when views about a particular country may implicate Title VI protections.  

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination

  • Date:

    ACE Summary of the Antisemitism Awareness Act (May 3, 2024)

    American Council on Education (ACE) Bill Summary of the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (H.R. 6090/S. 4127). The summary highlights key features of the Act, which has passed the House and has been introduced in the Senate, that “would codify a reference to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism including its contemporary examples and would require the Department of Education to take it ‘into consideration’ when ‘reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of Title VI’ of the Civil Rights Act.” The summary restates the definition and highlights several of the IRHA contemporary example.  

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation

  • Date:

    Adebiyi v. S. Suburban Coll. (7th Cir. Apr. 17, 2024)

    Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the College. Plaintiff, a former Vice President of Student Services at South Suburban College who is African American, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the College after a new president declined to renew her contract, citing in her nonrenewal recommendation to the board numerous managerial lapses and leadership concerns. After performance concerns began to emerge, plaintiff filed a charge of harassment with the EEOC and the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR), and she was terminated three days before a scheduled meeting with the IDHR and the College. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the College, and plaintiff appealed with respect to her retaliation claim. In affirming summary judgment on that claim, the Seventh Circuit first held that plaintiff failed to present a theory or evidence as to why the timing of her termination prior to the IDHR meeting was suspicious. It further held that plaintiff failed to raise a question of pretext, noting that (1) her overall rating of “satisfactory” on her most recent annual evaluations did not outweigh the specific performance concerns and (2) the director, two managers, and faculty member plaintiff proposed as comparators were not similarly situated. 

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Farah v. W.Va. Univ. Bd. of Governors (N.D. W.Va. Mar. 26, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Partial Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a tenured Associate Professor of Public Administration at West Virginia University who is Jewish and of Italian national origin, brought discrimination claims against the University related to his initial denial of tenure in 2017, denial of promotion to full professor in 2023, and several asserted irregularities in the administration of a research grant for which plaintiff was principal investigator. The court dismissed plaintiff’s claims related to the 2017 initial tenure denial and the alleged irregularities in the grant administration as time barred. Although he had not listed the claim in his EEOC charge and was eventually promoted to full professor, the court permitted plaintiff to proceed on his failure to promote claim, finding at this stage that he might have been harmed by not being promoted in February 2023 and that the claim was within the scope of what would follow from a reasonable administrative investigation into his allegations.   

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation

  • Date:

    Zapata v. Tex. Tech. Univ. (N.D. Tex. Mar. 11, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion and Order granting Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a Fall 2021 graduate of the Ph.D. program in Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University who is of Columbian national origin, brought discrimination, retaliation, and constitutional claims against the University and multiple officials, alleging that (1) his advisor yelled at him for speaking Spanish and required post-defense dissertation revisions delaying his graduation by two semesters; (2) officials enforced, but later waived, a two-publication requirement; (3) the Dean refused to make his girlfriend, who had joined the faculty, his hooding professor so he could propose marriage on stage; and (4) the University denied his post-graduation request for a non-thesis master’s degree. In dismissing his Title VI discrimination claim, the court found (1) that his factual assertions about actions officials took to move him toward graduation undercut his deliberate indifference claim, and (2) no assertion that a comparator who had already matriculated out requested and received a non-thesis master’s degree. In dismissing his Title VI retaliation claim, the court noted that by October 2021 when plaintiff filed his first grievance, he had satisfied all but the two-publication requirement, which the University then waived. It further found that plaintiff’s allegation that the Dean refused to let him propose marriage on stage was insufficient to allege a retaliatory University policy or deliberate indifference to retaliation. The court also found plaintiff’s equal protection and due process claims against individual officials barred by qualified immunity.   

    Topics:

    Academic Performance and Misconduct | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation | Students

  • Date:

    McCarter v. The Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill (M.D. N.C. Mar. 15, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a graduate of the Ph.D. program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and former post-doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is African American, brought discrimination, retaliation, and equal protection claims against the University and several former advisors, alleging that they delayed his progress and subsequently plagiarized his work. Of note, though the court granted summary judgment to the University on most of his claims, plaintiff also alleged (1) that his advisors imposed “last minute” requirements on a manuscript he was completing toward fulfillment of the curricular requirement, which they later waived, of submitting work for professional publication and (2) that after he resigned his fellowship, they falsely attributed work contained in his unpublished manuscript to another graduate student. The court granted summary judgment to the defendants regarding the alleged new requirements, citing insufficient evidence that the additional requirements were the result of race-based discrimination. It permitted him to proceed regarding the plagiarism allegation, however, finding that (1) plaintiff’s side-by-side comparison of his manuscript with another student’s dissertation was sufficient to raise a question of plagiarism and (2) evidence of previous allegations against the professors of publishing the work of another student of color without attribution was sufficient to raise a question of pretext.   

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Research | Research Misconduct

  • Date:

    U.S. Dep’t of Education Dear Colleague Letter on the Obligation to Address Discrimination (Mar. 14, 2024)

    U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) on the obligation to address discrimination, including harassment, against Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu, and Palestinian Students. The DCL reminds schools of their obligation under Title VI “to address discrimination against students, including Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu, and Palestinian students, when the discrimination: involves racial, ethnic, or ancestral slurs or stereotypes; is based on a student’s skin color, physical features, or style of dress that reflects both ethnic and religious traditions; or is based on the country or region where a student is from or is perceived to have come from, including, for example, discrimination based on a student’s accent or name, a student’s limited English proficiency, or a student speaking a language other than English.” The DCL also reiterates that harassment need not be direct at a particular individual to create a hostile environment.   

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination

  • Date:

    Cooper v. Yale Univ. (D. Conn. Feb. 29, 2024)

    Ruling granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former administrator in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Yale University who is African American, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after a series of negative audit findings and performance issues led successively to a demotion, a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), which she failed, a phased retirement agreement, and her termination when her attorney wrote the University claiming the agreement was void. In granting summary judgment in favor of the University on her discrimination claims, the court held that plaintiff failed to raise a question as to pretext, noting that of the five comparators she suggested only one had the same title, supervisor, and similar functions, but that comparator lacked plaintiff’s extensive history of unfavorable audits and unsatisfactory performance evaluations. Turning to her retaliation claim, the court found that even though plaintiff’s PIP was implemented a month after she expressed that she felt increased oversight of her work was discriminatory, she was unable to demonstrate pretext given that the long-standing concerns about her performance predated this complaint.   

    Topics:

    Age Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Greig v. Tex. A&M Univ. Texarkana (E.D. Tex. Jan. 26, 2024)

    Report and Recommendation to deny Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs at Texas A&M University Texarkana, proceeding pro se, brought a discrimination claim against the University after a new supervisor reduced his job responsibilities, gave him a “not meeting expectations” performance evaluation for the first time in his career, and told him to resign or face termination. Plaintiff alleged that this turn followed significant campus backlash to his decision not to discipline a student who was accused of using a racially offensive word months earlier during a trip to a mall with a fellow student with whom she had a history of interpersonal conflict. In recommending that his claim be permitted to proceed, the magistrate judge found that plaintiff had sufficiently alleged “two times when either a supervisor or a faculty member suggested [he] should be replaced by a person of color or could not relate to students of color.” 

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination

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