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  • Date:

    McGowan v. Univ. of Mich. (E.D. Mich. Nov. 4, 2025)

    Opinion and Order Granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former cook at the University of Michigan dining hall, sued the university claiming discrimination and retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), retaliation under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and breach of contract and wrongful termination under state law, after she was terminated following her failure to submit forms required to request unpaid medical leave prior to the submission deadline. The court dismissed plaintiff’s claims, holding that the university was entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity because the dining hall was “a department of the university and not a separate third-party entity” and therefore, was entitled to the same immunity as the university itself.

    Topics:

    Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Santa Maria v. Loyola Univ. of Chi. Stritch Sch. of Med. (N.D. Ill. Sep. 9, 2024)

    Opinion and Order granting in part and denying in part Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former medical student at Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, who suffers from depression, anxiety, and ADHD brought claims of disability discrimination, retaliation, breach of implied contract, IIED, and negligence against the University and The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), after she failed a required exam three times, and was dismissed from the program. After a successful administrative appeal, Plaintiff was reinstated at the University with conditions to ensure she passed the exam during a subsequent attempt. Prior to retaking the exam, Plaintiff sought and received accommodations from NBME, about which she notified the University. Plaintiff alleges that as part of her reinstatement the University agreed to set up an eight-week study period and monthly meetings with the Dean to help her prepare to retake the exam, but that these supports were either only partially provided or were not provided in a timely manner, which meant that she could not utilize the NBME’s accommodation allowing her to space the two modules of the exam out by 14 days, causing her to fail the exam, and leading to a second dismissal for failure to complete the terms of her readmission. The court declined to dismiss the discrimination claims, reasoning that based upon the language of the reenrollment letter, the University recognized Plaintiff as a well-performing student except for when her disabilities presented challenges, and that if Plaintiff had no disability, she would not have failed her exams, and the University would not have offered reenrollment on specified terms. The court permitted Plaintiff’s contract claim to proceed, stating that the University “cannot use [the provision requiring plaintiff to pass the exam on her first attempt] to argue that [plaintiff] failed to perform an obligation it could not require her to fulfill.” The court dismissed Plaintiff’s negligence claim as duplicative of her claim for breach of contract, and her IIED claim reasoning that she failed to demonstrate that the University’s actions were “extreme and outrageous.” 

    Topics:

    Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Garcia v. AMTC-1, Inc. (M.D. Pa. Sep. 9, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion Denying Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former phlebotomy student at Fortis Institute (the Institute), which is a for-profit institution, brought Title VI claims of race-based harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and breach of contract, as well as claims for nonpayment of wages against both the Institute and her former externship placement site. After completing her coursework, Plaintiff was assigned to an externship, where she claims she experienced racially discriminatory harassment from one of the site’s paid employees, which she reported to the externship site’s coordinator. Subsequently, Plaintiff allegedly received a threatening message from the employee via social media, and then, the next day the Institute’s program director notified Plaintiff that the site had dismissed her from her externship placement. The court permitted her Title VI claim to proceed reasoning that Plaintiff sufficiently alleged a prima facie case via both direct and indirect evidence by asserting that she is a Person of Color, who met the qualifications to be enrolled in the Institute’s phlebotomy program and was dismissed from her externship after reporting experiencing discrimination at the site placement, and that although the Institute “had the authority to take remedial measures … [it] choose not to do so.” The court found that discovery was required to parse the nuance of the relationships between the Plaintiff on the one hand, and the Institute and site placement on the other, to evaluate her claims that she enjoyed employee status and was entitled to wages for her externship hours under the FLSA, and therefore, declined to dismiss those claims. 

    Topics:

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

  • Date:

    Josephson v. Ganzel (6th Cir. Sep. 10, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion affirming the district court’s denial of Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former professor of psychiatry and Division Chief at the University of Louisville School of Medicine (the Medical School) brought claims alleging retaliation in violation of his First Amendment rights against multiple administrators at the Medical School. In 2017, after plaintiff shared his thoughts on treating childhood gender dysphoria during a panel discussion sponsored by a conservative think tank, which led to dissention amongst faculty, the Medical School first demoted him and then, did not renew his employment contract. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rejection of the Medical School’s immunity defenses, finding that Plaintiff’s request for reinstatement as a faculty member and expungement of any reference to nonrenewal from him personnel file, are prospective in nature, and thus, not barred by Eleventh Amendment. The Circuit also found the Medical School was not entitled to qualified immunity since protections for Plaintiff’s speech were clearly established at the relevant time, and that a reasonable jury could find retaliation occurred where (1) Plaintiff participated in the off campus, privately funded panel in his individual rather than official capacity, which a moderator specifically advised attendees about prior to Plaintiff voicing his own views regarding treatment of children with gender dysphoria, which is a matter of public concern; (2) limited evidence supported that Plaintiff’s remarks yielded disharmony amongst his colleagues, including when he stormed out of a contentious faculty meeting, but that the Medical School produced no evidence that the remarks otherwise impacted either patient care or recruitment of other personnel and thus no “significant disruption” occurred; and (3) genuine factual disputes remained regarding whether Plaintiff’s demotion and subsequent termination was due to poor performance or his protected speech.  

    Topics:

    Academic Freedom & Employee Speech | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Sloan-Brown v. Meharry Med. Coll. (M.D. Tenn. Mar. 26, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former lab coordinator at Meharry Medical College, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the College after she was terminated for alleged insubordination and unsatisfactory performance. The court granted summary judgment to the College on plaintiff’s Equal Pay Act claim after rejecting portions of two affidavits, finding affiants failed to articulate any basis for personal knowledge supporting their conclusory assertion that plaintiff and a male comparator with a different job description actually performed the same work. In denying summary judgment on her retaliation claims, the court found that although it was undisputed that her 2017 complaint with the EEOC lacked temporal proximity to her December 2019 termination, there was a material question as to whether plaintiff had made other complaints to College personnel after July 2019. Plaintiff abandoned her Title VII discrimination claim.   

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment

  • Date:

    Zow v. Bd. of Governors of the Univ. of N.C. (E.D. N.C. Mar. 26, 2024)

    Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former Chief of Staff to the Chancellor and Assistant Secretary to the Board at North Carolina Central University, brought First Amendment retaliation and other claims against the University after he was terminated in October 2021 for failure to comply with a requirement that unvaccinated employees who travel domestically self-quarantine and test negative for COVID-19 before returning to work. Plaintiff alleged that his termination was in retaliation for his participation on the University’s COVID-19 Operations Continuity Committee where he opposed the mandatory vaccination policy that was eventually adopted. In dismissing his First Amendment retaliation claim, the court found that plaintiff’s opposition to the proposed policy, which included his belief that the policy would violate federal and state laws, was not protected activity because it occurred during the normal course of his ordinary duties; and moreover, plaintiff claimed that in response to his concerns his supervisor paused adoption of the policy to seek further legal review. The court dismissed his ADA retaliation claim as untimely and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his state-law claims.   

    Topics:

    Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Constitutional Issues | Coronavirus | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Gardner v. Kutztown Univ. (E.D. Pa. Mar. 27, 2024)

    Memorandum granting-in-part and denying-in-part Plaintiff’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a tenured associate professor at Kutztown University who takes immunosuppressive medications to reduce the risk of permanent blindness from an incurable eye condition, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University and multiple officials after they denied her request for a remote work accommodation for Fall 2021 in favor of a blanket policy that any change to course modality would present an undue hardship to the University.  The court granted summary judgment to the plaintiff on her intentional discrimination, failure to accommodate, and interference claims, finding no evidence in the record that the University considered plaintiff’s individual circumstances in applying the preferred blanket policy. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the University on plaintiff’s retaliation claims, finding no reasonable jury could conclude that the University’s requirement that plaintiff submit additional medical documentation after she filed her suit was so severe as to dissuade an objectively reasonable employee from requesting an accommodation.   

    Topics:

    Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Coronavirus | Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Babinski v. Sosnowsky (5th Cir. Aug. 21, 2023)

    Opinion reversing and dismissing.  Plaintiff, a former Ph.D. student in the theatre program at Louisiana State University, brought due process claims against multiple professors in the department based on his assertion that he was “de facto expelled” from the program without a meaningful opportunity to be heard in his own defense.  Plaintiff had submitted a “performative writing” for a course term paper that expressed his disapproval of his professor’s views in a course on “Gender, Sexuality, and Performance.”  The chair of the department forwarded the paper to the LSU Police Department and the LSU Office of Student Advocacy and Accountability, though neither found an actionable violation.  Plaintiff alleged that his professors then conspired to refuse to teach him, serve on his dissertation panel, or administer his general examinations, thus impeding his ability to complete the doctoral program.  He subsequently earned a master’s degree in the philosophy department.  In reversing the district court’s denial of qualified immunity to the professors, the Fifth Circuit assumed a constitutional violation but nevertheless held that plaintiff failed to show a clearly established right, finding that he had not identified a case that was sufficiently analogous to his asserted “de facto expulsion” that “dealt with the alleged tainting of the process that a school or university provided to a student.” 

    Topics:

    Constitutional Issues | Due Process | Faculty & Staff | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Williams v. Morgan State Univ. (Md. Aug. 14, 2023)

    Opinion answering a certified question.  Plaintiff, a former Director of Broadcast Operations at Morgan State University, brought state-law wrongful termination and defamation claims and federal retaliation claims under the National Defense Authorization Act and the American Recovery Reinvestment Act against the University and multiple officials after she was terminated purportedly for alleging violations federal law.  The district court dismissed plaintiff’s federal claims, finding that the Maryland Tort Claims Act (MTCA) did not waive the State’s sovereign immunity with respect to the claims.  In answering a question certified to it by the Fourth Circuit, the Maryland Supreme Court held that “a tort action” under the MTCA does not include federal statutory claims, noting that “there is no evidence that the General Assembly intended to include federal statutory claims within the scope of the MTCA” and that a contrary approach “would produce results that are inconsistent with the MTCA’s main purposes.” 

    Topics:

    Faculty & Staff | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Retaliation | Tort Litigation

  • Date:

    Griffin v. Univ. of Me. Sys. (D. Me. Aug. 16, 2023)

    Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Partial Motion to Dismiss.  Plaintiff, a former tenured professor at the University of Southern Maine, brought First Amendment retaliation claims against the University and its President, after she was terminated in September 2021 for challenging the University’s COVID-19 vaccination and facemask policies.  The court permitted plaintiff to proceed in her claim against the President in his official capacity, finding she had sufficiently alleged her demands that the University provide evidence to counter her own assertions about the efficacy of vaccinations and masking was speech about a matter of public concern outside of the scope of her duties as a professor.  It held, however, that her constitutional claims against the President in his personal capacity were barred by qualified immunity. 

    Topics:

    Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Constitutional Issues | Coronavirus | Faculty & Staff | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation

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