Cases & Developments - National Association of College and University Attorneys

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Date:
8/18/2023
Williamson v. Univ. of Louisville (W.D. Ky. Aug. 9, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion and Order granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former student at the University of Louisville who was approved for 1.5x time for assignments as an accommodation for a learning disability, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after he failed to complete assignments for a summer online course with no time limits other than the end of the term. Less than four hours before that deadline, he emailed the professor that he was having trouble with his auto-reader. When she required him to document this issue with technical support, he accused her of refusing to provide the accommodation and eventually filed a grievance. When the fall term began, he dropped two of his four courses to “focus” on the grievance process, which resulted in ineligibility for his Pell Grant, a balance due, and a block on future registration. In granting summary judgment to the University, the court held that plaintiff’s discrimination claim failed for lack of evidence that the University held animus toward the disabled or that it treated comparable non-disabled students differently. Though the court found plaintiff had satisfied his prima facie case of retaliation because his Pell Grant was revoked shortly after he filed his grievance, it held he failed to show that his loss of eligibility due to his shift to a part-time schedule was pretextual.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
8/11/2023
Kluge v. Brownsburg Cmty. Sch. Corp. (7th Cir. July 20, 2023)
Order vacating the court’s opinion and judgment and remanding to the district court. Plaintiff, a former high school music teacher with the Brownsburg Community School Corporation who asserted that his sincerely held religious beliefs prevented him from engaging in any action to “promote gender dysphoria,” brought discrimination and retaliation claims against Brownsburg after he was forced to resign rather than comply with the school’s Name Policy requiring teachers to call students by their first names as listed in the school’s database. The school initially permitted him to refer to all students by their last names only, but it withdrew the accommodation, asserting that it was harming students and disrupting the learning environment. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Brownsburg. Initially, the Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding the school had sufficiently demonstrated that continuing the accommodation posed an undue burden on its mission of educating students according to its established theory and practice. However, “[i]n light of the Supreme Court’s clarification in Groff v. DeJoy … of the standard to be applied in Title VII cases for religious accommodation,” the Seventh Circuit vacated its Opinion and Judgment and “remanded for the district court to apply the clarified standard to the religious accommodation claim in the first instance.”
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Gender Identity & Sexual Orientation Discrimination | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation | Retaliation
Date:
8/4/2023
Puccinelli v. S. Conn. State Univ. (D. Conn. July 28, 2023)
Ruling and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend. Plaintiff, a former student in the Special Education Teacher Certification program at Southern Connecticut State University who suffers from PTSD and anxiety, brought disparate treatment, failure to accommodate, and retaliation claims against the University and constitutional claims against multiple officials after she was removed from her student teaching assignment and dropped from the program. The court permitted plaintiff to proceed in her disparate treatment claim, finding she had sufficiently alleged that she was held to a higher standard than her peers in her student teaching assignment as a result of her anxiety. The court also permitted plaintiff to proceed in her due process claims under §1983, finding that she had sufficiently alleged that her dismissal was disciplinary, rather than academic, that it resulted when she raised concerns that a child at her placement was not receiving appropriate support, and that officials did not adequately explain the evidence against her in the process that resulted in her expulsion. Her failure to accommodate claim, however, was dismissed as conclusory, and her retaliation claim failed because the only adverse action she pleaded with specific facts was reversed before it took effect.
Topics:
Academic Performance and Misconduct | Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation | Students
Date:
8/4/2023
Massey v. Va. Polytechnic Inst. & Commonwealth of Va. (4th Cir. July 31, 2023)
Opinion vacating and remanding dismissal. Plaintiff, a former employee of Virginia Tech who had taken medical leave in April 2019 to recover from surgery, sued the University after it eliminated his position in October 2019 for financial reasons. He originally filed suit in Virginia state court under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. He took a voluntary nonsuit of that action and filed a federal action in January 2021. The district court granted the University’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that the claim was barred under the one-year statute of limitations from the Virginia Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. The Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that under Virginia law a nonsuit tolls the statute of limitations even when, as here, sovereign immunity bars the claims in state court and that it was sufficient that the state court had potential jurisdiction even though it lacked active subject matter jurisdiction.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Retaliation
Date:
8/4/2023
Sherman v. Itawamba Cmty. Coll. (N.D. Miss. Aug. 1, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion denying Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former residence hall director and manufacturing extension partnership coordinator at Itawamba Community College, brought retaliation, malicious interference with employment, and whistleblower claims against the College and multiple officials after she was placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP) and then terminated. Plaintiff alleged that her PIP and termination were a result of her report to college officials and the State Auditor of regulatory noncompliance and other violations in the College’s Workforce Training Program. In permitting plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation claim to proceed, the court found that her reports of wrongdoing to the State were sufficiently outside of her ordinary job duties to demonstrate that she spoke as a citizen. The court also permitted her malicious interference and whistleblower claims to proceed, holding that she had presented sufficient evidence to raise questions of material fact as to whether her termination resulted from her report to the State Auditor.
Topics:
Compliance & Risk Management | Compliance Programs, Policies & Procedures | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
7/28/2023
Oross v. Kutztown Univ. (E.D. Pa. July 25, 2023)
Memorandum granting-in-part and denying-in-part Plaintiff’s and Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a tenured associate professor at Kutztown University who had recently undergone a heart transplant, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University and multiple officials after they denied his request to teach remotely for Fall 2021. The court granted summary judgment to plaintiff on his intentional discrimination and failure to accommodate claims. In this, it rejected the University’s assertion that plaintiff’s request to teach remotely was a fundamental alteration and an undue burden, noting that the University regularly offered at least some courses online and had successfully offered all of its courses online during the COVID-19 closure. Citing deposition testimony suggesting that the University adopted its stance that rescheduling in-person courses for online delivery would pose an undue hardship only after receiving several individual requests, the court also found that this policy was more likely than not pretextual. Turning to plaintiff’s retaliation claims, the court found a triable issue of fact as to the denial of requests made after he began to publicize his complaints, but it awarded summary judgment to the University as to his requests made prior to this protected activity. The court also ordered a trial on damages in plaintiff’s discrimination and failure to accommodate claims.
Topics:
Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Coronavirus | Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
7/28/2023
Ruizhu Dai v. Le, et al. (W.D. La. July 20, 2023)
Memorandum Ruling granting Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former graduate student and graduate assistant at Louisiana Tech University, brought constitutional and contract claims against multiple University officials after she received negative feedback on a public presentation and a low grade in a related class, was terminated from her assistantship, and resigned from the program when she was unable to form a dissertation committee. After the presentation, plaintiff emailed her professors taking issue with their critique of her research methodology. She also unsuccessfully appealed both her grade and the termination of her assistantship. In granting summary judgment to the defendants, the court held that plaintiff’s First Amendment claims failed because her email addressed neither the public nor a matter of public concern. Her due process claim failed because the continuation of her assistantship was contingent upon satisfactory performance and because she was afforded sufficient process upon its termination. Finally, her contract claim failed (1) because her contract was between her and the University, rather than the individual officials, and (2) because her assistantship letter provided that unsatisfactory performance could result in termination.
Topics:
Academic Performance and Misconduct | Constitutional Issues | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation | Students
Date:
7/28/2023
Hartley v. Univ. of Holy Cross (La. App. July 19, 2023)
Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, a former administrator at the University of Holy Cross who is white, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after he was not selected for an interview for a vacant faculty position and then terminated for insubordination when he refused to attend a scheduled committee meeting. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the University, the Court of Appeals of Louisiana held that plaintiff’s disparate impact claim failed because (1) he failed to identify a specific policy or employment practice at issue in his challenge and (2) three of the four candidates who were selected for interviews were also white. In holding that his retaliation claim also failed, the court found that plaintiff’s email refusing to attend a required meeting out of concern that he “would say something [he] would later regret” broke the causal link between his discrimination complaint and subsequent termination.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation
Date:
7/21/2023
Patra v. Pa. State Sys. of Higher Educ. (3rd Cir. July 19, 2023)
Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the defendants. Plaintiffs, two former tenure-track professors at Bloomsburg University who are married and originally from India, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University and multiple officials after the University, citing poor student evaluations and lack of progress in securing external research funding, denied them tenure and declined to renew their contracts. Plaintiffs alleged that the University did not provide promised relocation costs, changed their teaching assignments, and retaliated against them for filing complaints and reporting alleged inaccuracies in reported graduation rates. They also alleged that offensive comments created a hostile work environment. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the defendants, the Third Circuit held that plaintiffs’ discrimination claims failed (1) because they identified no similarly situated comparator who was treated differently and (2) because they did not show that the University’s concerns about evaluations and research were pretextual. The court also held that the offensive comments plaintiffs cited were too isolated to affect a condition of employment. Their retaliation claims similarly failed both (1) because the temporal proximity between their EEOC charges and their nonrenewal was insufficient to suggest causation and (2) because they were unable to demonstrate pretext.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation
Date:
7/21/2023
Maramante v. Del. Tech. Cmty. Coll. (D. Del. July 17, 2023)
Report and Recommendation granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a full-time 10-month science instructor and former Science Department Chair at Delaware Technical Community College who had taken FMLA leave to care for a son with a serious medical condition, brought FMLA interference and retaliation claims against the College after it rescinded her appointment as Department Chair upon her return from leave. The College cited that plaintiff had over-delegated her duties and attempted to have the Chair of the Medical Laboratory Technician Department conduct a blood draw from her son for medical testing. In recommending that the court deny summary judgment on plaintiff’s retaliation claim, the magistrate judge found (1) a factual dispute as to when the decision to demote plaintiff was made and (2) a question of pretext raised by the fact that the other department chair, who had previously conducted blood draws for plaintiff, was not similarly investigated. Plaintiff conceded, however, that there is no evidence in the record to support her FMLA interference claim.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) | Retaliation

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