Cases & Developments - National Association of College and University Attorneys

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Date:
12/15/2023
Rasheed v. Mt. San Antonio Coll. (9th Cir. Dec. 12, 2023)
Memorandum affirming summary judgment in favor of the College. Plaintiff, a former student at Mount San Antonio College, brought Title IX retaliation claims after she was “expelled, in part, for continuing to accuse an administrator of ‘sexual assault’ after the College’s internal Title IX investigation found that the evidence indicated that the administrator had not engaged in the alleged conduct.” In affirming summary judgment in favor of the College, the Ninth Circuit held that continuing to make the accusations after the investigation was no longer protected activity because plaintiff “failed to produce any evidence indicating that she had a reasonable belief that the administrator had engaged in unlawful conduct.”
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
12/15/2023
Dennison v. Ind. Univ. of Pa. (3rd Cir. Dec. 12, 2023)
Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, a former Executive Director of Housing, Residential Living and Dining at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, brought discrimination and First Amendment retaliation claims against the University and University officials after she was first demoted to Director of Residence Life and then had her position eliminated with staff reductions at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Plaintiff alleged that she was terminated for unilaterally implementing a contactless checkout process when the University closed its residential facilities in March 2020. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the University on her First Amendment retaliation claim, the Third Circuit held that plaintiff’s speech defending her decision to implement the checkout process was not protected because it was pursuant to her duties as a University employee. Her sex discrimination claim failed because she should not show that the University’s decision in favor of flatter, streamlined organization in her demotion was pretextual and because her responsibilities were given to another woman. Her age discrimination claim similarly failed because she was unable to show that the University’s preference for efficiency or her supervisor’s ultimate loss of confidence in her leadership were pretextual.
Topics:
Age Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Employment Separation, RIFs, ERIPs & Retrenchment | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment
Date:
12/8/2023
Skoorka v. Kean Univ. (D. N.J. Dec. 4, 2023) (unpub.)
Opinion and Order denying Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former professor at Kean University, brought retaliation claims against the University after it shifted him from a teaching role to a nonteaching assignment in order to give him more time to complete evaluations he had not completed and to permit him to focus on his research and scholarship. In denying the University’s motion for summary judgment, the court held that (1) the shift from a teaching to a nonteaching role may constitute an adverse employment action and (2) plaintiff’s testimony that he was told his reassignment was because he failed to attend required professional development sessions was sufficient to raise a material question of fact as to causation.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment
Date:
12/8/2023
McKinley v. Princeton Univ. (D. N.J. Dec. 1, 2023) (unpub.)
Memorandum Opinion granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former employee of Princeton University who had been granted a religious exemption to the University’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after it denied her request for a religious exemption to its masking, testing, and contract tracing policies and terminated her shortly thereafter. In dismissing her amended complaint, the court found that plaintiff failed to identify a religious belief preventing her from complying with the policy. It found that her assertion that “her body is a temple, that she decries and does all that she can to abolish any and all abuse against life and Mankind, and that she decries the suppression of knowledge, wisdom, philosophy, or data which would help Mankind” stated a personal moral code and lacked information regarding religious belief or other formal and external signs of religion.
Topics:
Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Coronavirus | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation | Retaliation
Date:
12/8/2023
Peyton v. Kuhn (W.D. Va. Dec. 1, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion denying Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former baseball player at Radford University, brought a First Amendment retaliation claim against the University’s baseball coach after the coach did not play him in any games during the 2020-2021 season and then cut him from the team causing him to lose his scholarship and subsequently to transfer from the University. Plaintiff alleged that these actions were in retaliation for complaints he, his parents, and a group of student-athletes made about the coach’s treatment of plaintiff and other players. In denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss, the court found that cutting plaintiff from the team was an adverse action and that the temporal proximity between the complaints and plaintiff’s removal from the team was sufficient to plead a causal relationship.
Topics:
Constitutional Issues | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation | Student Athlete Issues | Students
Date:
12/8/2023
The Univ. of Hous. v. Kingsbury (Tex. App. Nov. 30, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion reversing and dismissing. Plaintiff, an unsuccessful candidate for a tenure-track position in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston who described herself as Canadian and of “Northern European extraction,” brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after it hired a white, Italian male instead. During her on-campus interview, a member of the search committee questioned her ability “as a white person” to understand the topic of her lecture presentation, which prompted another member of the search committee to initiate a complaint with the University’s Office of Equal Opportunity. In dismissing plaintiff’s national-origin discrimination claim, the Court of Appeals of Texas held that she was unable to raise a question as to whether the scores assigned to the successful candidate were pretextual. In dismissing her retaliation claim, it found she was unable to show denial of proper consideration of her application because (1) the committee member who had questioned her was reprimanded and (2) the University had also calculated her interview scores without those of the questioning committee member.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation
Date:
11/24/2023
McClendon-Lemman v. Tarrant Cnty. Coll. (N.D. Tex. Nov. 17, 2023)
Order accepting the Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendation of the U.S. Magistrate Judge and granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former part-time instructor with the Tarrant County College District (TCCD), proceeding pro se, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against TCCD alleging that after she complained to HR that an African American instructor had allegedly bullied special needs students, she began receiving fewer hours than African American instructors. Plaintiff’s discrimination claim failed because her asserted comparator was not similarly situated and because she otherwise failed to refute TCCD’s evidence that her hours varied greatly and that she sometimes worked more hours than non-white instructors. Her retaliation claim similarly failed because her asserted reduction of hours was not in close temporal proximity to when she filed her complaint.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Retaliation
Date:
11/17/2023
Hughes v. Pacific Univ. (D. Or. Nov. 13, 2023)
Opinion and Order granting Defendant’s Partial Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former Coordinator for Experiential Compliance in the School of Pharmacy Office of Experiential Education at Pacific University, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after she was terminated for allegedly unprofessional communications and failures to follow policies on remote work and use of comp time. Plaintiff alleged that the University discriminated against her by limiting her ability to work remotely to only days when another coordinator would be present in the office and retaliated against her for participating in an assessment committee project that used qualitative research methods to investigate the working environment at the school. In granting summary judgment to the University on her discrimination claim, the court found that male comparators who had greater discretion in when they could work remotely were not in positions similar to plaintiff’s and that her supervisor’s desire to have at least one coordinator in the office every day in case students dropped by was a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the policy. In granting summary judgment to the University on her retaliation claims, the court held that her participation in designing the methodology for a survey that found feelings of sexism among the staff was not itself a report or disclosure of wrongdoing and not protected activity.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment
Date:
11/10/2023
Doe v. The Pa. State Univ. (M.D. Pa. Nov. 3, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former employee of the Nittany Lion Inn, which is owned by Penn State University, alleged that she became pregnant after she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker, who then harassed her, demanding she terminate the pregnancy. Plaintiff reported the harassment and requested to work different shifts than her alleged harasser. Her manager reduced the number of shifts they worked together and offered to transfer her from dishwashing shifts to housekeeping, but plaintiff quit, saying she felt she was being pushed out. She brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the University under Titles VII and IX. The court ruled that a reasonable juror could find that the alleged harassment was severe or pervasive. The court then permitted plaintiff’s discrimination claim under Title VII to proceed, finding a question as to whether the manager took sufficient measures to end the alleged harassment, but it granted summary judgment in favor of the University on her claim under Title IX, finding no juror could conclude that the manager was deliberately indifferent. It granted summary judgment to the University on plaintiff’s retaliation claims, finding no evidence to suggest that the proposed transfer was motivated by discriminatory animus.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment
Date:
11/10/2023
Pepper v. Brown Univ. (D. R.I. Nov. 2, 2023)
Memorandum and Order granting Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, pro se, a former food service employee at Brown University who was diagnosed with ADHD, which he asserted included sensitivity to sounds and hypervigilance, brought disability discrimination and retaliation claims against the University after he was fired for violently assaulting a co-worker. The co-worker admitted to managers that he had previously antagonized plaintiff by sneaking up on him and making loud noises. Prior to the unprovoked assault, the University admonished the co-worker, took steps to limit his interactions with plaintiff, and began a process to find plaintiff a new work location on campus. In granting summary judgment to the University on his hostile work environment claim, the court found that plaintiff offered no evidence of disability-based discriminatory animus, noting that the co-worked had no knowledge of plaintiff’s ADHD. Turning to his failure to accommodate claim, the court found that (1) plaintiff had produced insufficient evidence that his ADHD caused a substantial limitation of a major life activity; (2) he was not an otherwise qualified individual because compliance with the University’s Workplace Violence Policy was an essential job function; and (3) the University took steps to stop the inappropriate behavior and provided him with information on the accommodations process, but that plaintiff himself had not yet provided necessary documentation. Plaintiff’s retaliation claim failed because he provided no evidence of continued harassment after he initially complained to managers about the co-worker’s behavior.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Employee Discipline & Due Process | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation

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