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Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 5, 2009 Decided January 5, 2010 

No. 09-7013 

TRINA STEWART, 

APPELLANT

v. 

ST. ELIZABETHS HOSPITAL AND DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH, 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:04-cv-01444) 

Lisa Alexis Jones argued the cause and filed the briefs for 

appellant. 

Holly M. Johnson, Assistant Attorney General, Office of 

the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, argued the 

cause for appellees. Peter J. Nickles, Attorney General, Todd 

S. Kim, Solicitor General, and Donna M. Murasky, Deputy 

Solicitor General of the District of Columbia, were with her 

on the briefs. 

Before: TATEL and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and 

RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge. 

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge

KAVANAUGH. 

KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge: Trina Stewart worked for 

about 20 years as a housekeeping aide at St. Elizabeths*

Hospital in Washington, D.C. In January 2002, St. Elizabeths 

transferred Stewart to a part of the hospital known as the John 

Howard Pavilion, a maximum-security facility that houses 

mentally ill patients who have been charged with or convicted 

of crimes. Stewart alleges that the stress of working there 

caused her mental health to deteriorate to the point that she 

became disabled for purposes of the Rehabilitation Act. 

Stewart contends, moreover, that St. Elizabeths failed to 

accommodate her disability by refusing her request for a 

transfer to a job site outside the John Howard Pavilion. 

Stewart’s claim fails, however, because her superiors did not 

have notice of any mental disability or requested 

accommodation until October 2002, at which time they acted 

promptly and appropriately to assist her. We therefore affirm. 

I 

 Trina Stewart worked as a housekeeping aide at St. 

Elizabeths Hospital. In January 2002, St. Elizabeths assigned 

Stewart to work at its John Howard Pavilion. The John 

Howard Pavilion is a maximum-security facility that houses 

pretrial defendants awaiting psychiatric screening, convicted 

persons who become mentally ill while incarcerated, and 

persons found not guilty by reason of insanity. 

 *

 St. Elizabeths Hospital does not have an apostrophe before 

the “s.” 

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Stewart did not want to work at the John Howard 

Pavilion and complained to both the Director of 

Housekeeping and her former supervisor about her new 

assignment. She did not base her objection on any claimed 

disability. 

 A few months after her transfer to the John Howard 

Pavilion, a patient exposed himself to Stewart. After the 

incident, Stewart says she became fearful and panicky and 

that her “heart would race each day working in that very 

restrictive place” with dangerous criminals. J.A. 149. 

In a separate later incident, one of Stewart’s supervisors 

found her “crying, shaking, [and] talking to herself.” Id. at 

146. Stewart explained to her supervisors that she was upset 

because other employees were spreading personal rumors 

about her. After this incident, Stewart’s supervisors became 

concerned about her, but they attributed her behavior in part 

to stress as a result of the 2002 deaths of her uncle and sister. 

 In early October 2002, Stewart called the hospital’s 

Facility Administrator, Jasper Burnett, to request a transfer 

from the John Howard Pavilion because she didn’t “feel that 

well.” Id. at 269. Burnett made an appointment to meet with 

Stewart on October 15th and, pursuant to federal regulations, 

asked her to provide medical documentation of any disability. 

Between the call and the appointment, Stewart provided 

Burnett’s secretary with an incident report regarding the 

patient who had exposed himself to her. She did not provide 

medical documentation of any disability. At the October 15th 

meeting, Stewart informed Burnett about the distress she was 

experiencing and requested a transfer from the John Howard 

Pavilion. Burnett told her that he would help her once she 

completed the requisite paperwork. That afternoon, Stewart 

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left work early and attempted suicide. She never returned to 

work at St. Elizabeths. 

 Stewart later brought suit against St. Elizabeths for 

failure to accommodate her disability under section 504 of the 

Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794. With respect to 

Stewart’s claim that the hospital had failed to accommodate 

her disability before October 2002, the District Court granted 

summary judgment to the hospital. The District Court 

concluded that Stewart had not afforded her superiors notice 

of her alleged mental disability before October 2002. 

 With respect to Stewart’s claim that Burnett had denied 

her request for accommodation in October 2002, Stewart’s 

case went to trial. After she had presented her evidence, St. 

Elizabeths moved for judgment as a matter of law. The 

District Court granted the motion, holding that Stewart had 

not presented evidence from which a reasonable jury could 

conclude that Burnett had denied her request either explicitly 

or through undue delay. 

 Stewart appeals from both the grant of summary 

judgment and the grant of judgment as a matter of law. Our 

review is de novo, and in this posture we view the evidence in 

the light most favorable to Stewart, the non-moving party in 

the District Court. 

II 

 The Rehabilitation Act requires federal employers to 

make “reasonable accommodations to the known physical or 

mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a 

disability.” 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A) (incorporated into the 

Rehabilitation Act by 29 U.S.C. § 791(g)). To prevail on a 

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claim for denial of reasonable accommodation, Stewart had to 

produce sufficient evidence (a) that she was disabled for 

purposes of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794; (b) that 

St. Elizabeths had notice of her disability, see Crandall v. 

Paralyzed Veterans of Am., 146 F.3d 894, 896-97 (D.C. Cir. 

1998); and (c) that St. Elizabeths denied her request for a 

reasonable accommodation of her disability, see Mitchell v. 

Washingtonville Cent. Sch. Dist., 190 F.3d 1, 6 (2d Cir. 1999). 

Stewart challenges both St. Elizabeths’ pre-October 2002 

actions and its October 2002 actions. We consider each in 

turn. 

A 

With respect to Stewart’s claim that she did not receive 

an accommodation before October 2002, Stewart failed to 

produce sufficient evidence that she notified St. Elizabeths of 

her disability, as is required to support a Rehabilitation Act 

claim. 

Stewart did not produce sufficient evidence that she 

notified St. Elizabeths of her disability before October 2002. 

Indeed, Stewart acknowledges that she did not inform any of 

her supervisors of her disability before then. See Oral Arg. Tr. 

at 5. Nor did her supervisors receive constructive notice: 

Stewart’s behavior was not so obviously a manifestation “of 

an underlying disability that it would be reasonable to infer 

that an employer actually knew of the disability.” Crandall, 

146 F.3d at 898 (quoting Hedberg v. Ind. Bell Tel. Co., 47 

F.3d 928, 934 (7th Cir. 1995)). Although Stewart was visibly 

upset after a patient exposed himself to her, such a reaction 

alone was not indicative of mental illness. And after the later 

incident where she was found crying and shaking, Stewart 

told her supervisor that her distress stemmed from a personal 

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matter. J.A. 146. Stewart’s supervisors could not be expected 

to attribute those reactions to a mental illness that qualified as 

a disability. Indeed, most other signs about Stewart’s work 

and behavior would have led her supervisors to the opposite 

conclusion: Stewart reasonably explained why she was upset 

after both incidents, she completed her work assignments in a 

satisfactory manner, her attendance record was excellent, and 

she took leave only for typical personal and family issues – 

car trouble, babysitting difficulties, deaths in her family, her 

children’s illnesses, and her own minor illnesses. Def.’s 

Statement of Material Facts Not in Dispute ¶¶ 12-13, J.A. 17-

18. 

 

 In sum, with respect to her claim based on St. Elizabeths’ 

pre-October 2002 actions, Stewart did not produce sufficient 

evidence that she notified St. Elizabeths of her disability. 

Therefore, the District Court properly granted summary 

judgment to St. Elizabeths with respect to St. Elizabeths’ preOctober 2002 actions. 

B 

Stewart separately claims that St. Elizabeths denied her 

October 2002 request for an accommodation. To create an 

issue for the jury with respect to this request, Stewart was 

required to produce sufficient evidence that, after her request, 

St. Elizabeths refused to make an accommodation. See 

Mitchell, 190 F.3d at 6; Scarborough v. Natsios, 190 F. Supp. 

2d 5, 19 (D.D.C. 2002). 

As the District Court correctly concluded, a reasonable 

jury could not have found that St. Elizabeths – in particular, 

Facility Administrator Jasper Burnett – denied Stewart’s 

request for an accommodation. Burnett met promptly with 

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Stewart after she asked him to do so. At their meeting, 

Burnett did not deny an accommodation to Stewart. On the 

contrary, Burnett said he would try to assist Stewart as soon 

as she submitted the necessary paperwork. Nothing in the 

evidence presented suggests that Burnett acted in anything but 

an entirely appropriate manner in dealing with Stewart’s 

situation. See 29 C.F.R. pt. 1630 app. § 1630.9 (“When the 

need for an accommodation is not obvious, an employer, 

before providing a reasonable accommodation, may require 

that the individual with a disability provide documentation of 

the need for accommodation.”); cf. Beck v. Univ. of Wis. Bd. 

of Regents, 75 F.3d 1130, 1136 (7th Cir. 1996) (when the 

parties are “missing information . . . that can only be provided 

by one of the parties, . . . the party withholding the 

information may be found to have obstructed the process”); 

Templeton v. Neodata Servs., Inc., 162 F.3d 617, 619 (10th 

Cir. 1998) (when employee fails to provide medical 

information, claim for denial of accommodation cannot go 

forward). 

* * * 

We affirm the District Court’s summary judgment and 

judgment as a matter of law in favor of St. Elizabeths 

Hospital. 

So ordered. 

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