Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-96-07258/USCOURTS-caDC-96-07258-0/pdf.json

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 4, 1997 Decided December 12, 1997 

No. 96-7258

ANGELA MARSHALL,

APPELLANT

v.

FEDERAL EXPRESS CORPORATION,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 94cv02618)

Marc Fiedler argued the cause for appellant. With him on 

the briefs was Roger C. Johnson.

Colby W. Morgan, Jr. argued the cause for appellee. With 

him on the brief were Larry S. Kaplan, John T. Midgett and 

Merrell B. Renaud. R. Mark Dare entered an appearance.

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Before: SILBERMAN, WILLIAMS and GARLAND, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge: Angela Marshall was injured 

while on duty as a Senior Customer Service Agent with 

Federal Express, making it difficult for her to continue in 

that work. A fellow employee suggested that she apply for 

another job with Federal Express, as an Operations Agent at 

a different facility, which she would have been able to perform without difficulty. Soon thereafter, however, the same 

employee relayed another employee's belief that because 

Marshall's husband already worked at the same facility, Marshall could not work there in light of Federal Express's antinepotism rules. By the time Marshall discovered that this 

advice was wrong, the deadline for applying had passed. 

Shortly afterward she learned that the company had decided 

not to fill the spot at all.

Marshall filed a timely complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that Federal Express 

had "denied [her] the opportunity to apply for [the Operations 

Agent] position," in violation, she believed, of the Americans 

with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq. ("ADA" or the 

"Act"). Later, because of the impact of the injury on her 

ability to perform her original job as a Customer Service 

Agent, Federal Express dismissed her. She filed no EEOC 

complaint on that subject.

Marshall then filed suit in district court under the Act, 

claiming discrimination not only in regard to her failure to 

secure the Operations Agent job but also her termination 

from the company. The district court granted Federal Express's motion for summary judgment. We affirm. We 

agree with the district court that Marshall exhausted her 

administrative remedies only as to her failure to secure the 

Operations Agent job, and that she failed to raise a material 

issue of fact to support her claim that Federal Express 

discriminatorily foreclosed that job.

* * *

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Marshall began working at Federal Express in 1985. On 

February 13, 1992 she injured her back while working as a 

Senior Customer Service Agent at Federal Express's National Press Building station in Washington. She was placed on 

worker's compensation and began a leave of absence. In May 

1992 she entered Federal Express's Temporary Return to 

Work program, which provides injured workers with lightduty work for 90 days. By the time her participation ended 

in August, Federal Express had hired someone else to fill her 

old job. The company, nonetheless, kept her on for some 

time thereafter, allowing her to extend her leave of absence.

On September 21, 1992 Opal Shields, a Federal Express 

Leave of Absence Manager, informed Marshall by letter that 

the lifting restrictions brought on by her injury left her 

unqualified to return to work as a Senior Customer Service 

Agent. She would be allowed to file an unlimited number of 

applications for jobs at Federal Express for which she was 

qualified, and would be given "placement preference" for such 

jobs, but if she did not find one within 90 days she would be 

fired. Federal Express contracted with a rehabilitation counselor to help Marshall find a job. Through Shields, the 

company also informed her of several job openings for which 

she could apply. Marshall declined to apply for positions at 

Dulles Airport in Virginia and in Columbia, Maryland, saying 

that her back condition prevented her from commuting to 

those places. She did apply for a sales position in December 

but Federal Express gave the job to someone else; that 

decision is not at issue here.

On January 8, 1993 Shields told Marshall about an Operations Agent position that had opened up at Federal Express's 

"DCA" station and urged her to apply. The parties seem to 

agree that Marshall's back injury would not have hindered 

her work as an Operations Agent. When Shields told Gary 

Aldred, the Senior Manager of the DCA station, that Marshall wanted to apply for the opening, Aldred balked. Marshall's husband already worked at the DCA station, and 

Aldred told Shields that company policy forbade relatives or 

spouses from working together. Shields relayed this information to Marshall and told her she could not apply after all.

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Marshall suspected that someone had gotten the policy 

wrongshe recalled that she used to work in the same 

building as her sisterso she made further inquiries. It 

turned out Aldred was mistaken. The Federal Express 

policy manual says that "[b]lood-related and marriage-related 

employees may be hired and be permitted to work at the 

same locations, providing no direct reporting or supervisory 

relationship exists." There would have been no direct reporting or supervisory relationship between Marshall and her 

husband at the DCA station. By the time Marshall learned 

that she was indeed eligible to apply, however, the job had 

passed her byon January 18 a personnel director told her 

that no more applications were being accepted. Indeed it 

soon became apparent that the job had passed everyone by

on January 21 Marshall was told that the Operations Agent 

vacancy at DCA had been withdrawn for budgetary reasons; 

this was confirmed a week later in a memorandum to the five 

candidates who had applied for the position.

In late January Marshall filed a charge with the EEOC, 

alleging that Federal Express had violated the ADA by not 

letting her apply for the Operations Agent job. On March 4, 

1993some 75 days after the expiration of her 90-day grace 

periodMarshall was fired. In August 1994 the EEOC 

concluded that the evidence was insufficient to support her 

ADA claim. This lawsuit followed.

* * *

Before bringing suit in federal court, ADA plaintiffs, like 

those under Title VII, must exhaust their administrative 

remedies by filing an EEOC charge and giving that agency a 

chance to act on it. 42 U.S.C. § 12117(a); Park v. Howard 

University, 71 F.3d 904, 907-09 (D.C. Cir. 1995). A vague or 

circumscribed EEOC charge will not satisfy the exhaustion 

requirement for claims it does not fairly embrace. "[A]llowing a complaint to encompass allegations outside the ambit of 

the predicate EEOC charge would circumvent the EEOC's 

investigatory and conciliatory role, as well as deprive the 

charged party of notice of the charge, as surely as would an 

initial failure to file a timely EEOC charge." Schnellbaecher 

v. Baskin Clothing Co., 887 F.2d 124, 127 (7th Cir. 1989). 

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Naturally every detail of the eventual complaint need not be 

presaged in the EEOC filing, but the substance of an ADA 

claim, like that of a Title VII claim, must fall within the scope 

of "the administrative investigation that can reasonably be 

expected to follow the charge of discrimination." Park, 71 

F.3d at 907 (citation and internal punctuation omitted).

Marshall's wrongful termination claim fails to meet this 

test. The charge filed by Marshall with the EEOC made no 

mention of her termination. The Commission could not reasonably be expected to investigate Marshall's firing based on 

the allegations in the charge, which spoke only of Federal 

Express's failure to allow her to apply for the Operations 

Agent job. Marshall never filed a second charge alleging a 

discriminatory termination, nor did she amend her original 

charge or otherwise bring her termination to the Commission's attention.

Marshall concedes that the wording of her administrative 

charge failed to put the Commission on notice of her imminent termination, but claims that the accompanying affidavit 

did the trick. And indeed she did foreshadow her impending 

discharge in that affidavit, noting that Opal Shields "was in 

the process of terminating me," and adding, "I feel as if I am 

being given the run around, and I will be terminated soon." 1

The Seventh Circuit takes the view that allegations in supporting affidavits may be considered for exhaustion purposes 

if the charging party makes clear that she wants the EEOC 

to investigate them. See Cheek v. Western and Southern 

Life Ins. Co., 31 F.3d 497, 502 (7th Cir. 1994). Even assuming the correctness of this approach, we do not read Marshall's off-hand forecasts of looming termination as a request 

that the EEOC investigate her discharge as a distinct act of 

__________

1 Marshall also notes that in an internal grievance letter she 

submitted to Federal Express six days before she lodged the EEOC 

charge, she commented, "I have less than two weeks before I am 

obsolete with this company." This letter, however, was not directed 

to the EEOC and we cannot consider it in our exhaustion inquiry. 

In any case, the letter adds nothing material to the vague forebodings contained in the affidavit.

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discrimination. Marshall's wrongful termination claim is not 

properly before us.

Marshall also contends that Federal Express discriminated 

against her by failing to reasonably accommodate her disability. She says the company could have accommodated her in 

her Customer Service Agent job by waiving the job's lifting 

requirements or by transferring her to the Operations Agent 

job. As for waiving the lifting requirements, Marshall runs 

directly into the problem that thwarted her wrongful termination claim: her administrative charge makes no mention of 

any refusal to accommodate her lifting limitations or even of 

her termination (investigation of which might have led back to 

such a refusal). Thus the EEOC was not on notice to 

investigate the lifting issue, and Marshall is barred from 

raising it for the first time in her complaint.

As for Federal Express's failure to transfer her, the story 

is somewhat more complicated. As we have noted, Marshall's 

EEOC charge (read in conjunction with its accompanying 

papers) alleges that she was denied the opportunity to apply 

for the Operations Agent job, implies that she was given 

spurious reasons for the denial, and contends that this 

amounted to discrimination. Now she says, in effect, that the 

administrative charge implicitly included her current claim

that Federal Express could and should have shifted her to the 

Operations Agent job as a means of accommodating the 

apparent conflict between her disability (which we here assume) and the demands of the Customer Service Agent job.

The ADA provides that "[n]o covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability because of 

the disability of such individual in regard to job application 

procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, 

conditions, and privileges of employment." 42 U.S.C. 

§ 12112(a) (emphasis added). The statute defines "discriminate" to include "not making reasonable accommodations to 

the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise 

qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or 

employee" absent undue hardship to the employer. 42 U.S.C. 

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§ 12112(b)(5)(A). As the language of § 12112(a) makes clear, 

for discrimination (including denial of reasonable accommodation) to be actionable, it must occur in regard to some adverse 

personnel decision or other term or condition of employment. 

Here, the only adverse action before us is denial of the chance 

to apply for the Operations Agent job. In regard to that, 

both parties agree, Marshall required no accommodation at 

all: she was as capable of performing the job as anyone. If 

her termination were properly before us, it might well bring 

in its train the question whether Federal Express had a duty 

to take action short of termination by accommodating Marshall's disability-driven limitations in her former job. But, as 

we have seen, that claim has not been preserved. Thus there 

is no adverse action before us with any nexus to a possible 

denial of reasonable accommodation.

The same analysis governs the definition of discrimination 

in 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(B), which includes "denying employment opportunities to a job applicant or employee who is 

an otherwise qualified individual with a disability, if such 

denial is based on the need of such covered entity to make 

reasonable accommodation to the physical or mental impairments of the employee or applicant." In view of the agreement that Marshall was perfectly fit for the Operations Agent 

job, denial of the opportunity to secure it could not have been 

"based on the need of [Federal Express] to make reasonable 

accommodation to [Marshall's] physical or mental impairments."

We assume without deciding that if working conditions 

inflict pain or hardship on a disabled employee, the employer 

fails to modify the conditions upon the employee's demand, 

and the employee simply bears the conditions, this could 

amount to a denial of reasonable accommodation, despite 

there being no job loss, pay loss, transfer, demotion, denial of 

advancement, or other adverse personnel action. Such a 

scenario might be viewed as the ADA equivalent of the hostile 

working environment claim cognizable under other discrimination laws. Cf. Stewart v. County of Brown, 86 F.3d 107 

(7th Cir. 1996); Vande Zande v. Wisc. Dep't of Administration, 44 F.3d 538, 546 (7th Cir. 1995). But Marshall's charge 

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failed to put any work environment before the EEOC; even if 

we stretched the point and read her charge as implicating the 

environment of the Operations Agent job, it remains the case 

that her disability (if any) created no occasion for accommodation in that job.

* * *

We now turn to the question that was properly presented 

by Marshall's EEOC charge: whether Federal Express discriminated against her on the basis of disability in refusing to 

let her apply for the Operations Agent position. The district 

court found that it did not, holding that Marshall was not 

disabled within the meaning of the ADA, 42 U.S.C. 

§ 12102(2)(A). The court also noted that Federal Express 

had offered a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for its 

actions, and that Marshall had supplied no evidence to show 

that the reason was pretextual. Because we agree with the 

district court on this latter ground, we do not reach the issue 

of disability.

We have approved the use of the familiar burden-shifting 

framework set out in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 

U.S. 792 (1973), as a tool for analysis in ADA casesat least 

in cases where the plaintiff offers no direct evidence tending 

to show discriminatory animus and the defendant denies that 

its decisions were motivated by the plaintiff's disability. See 

Aka v. Washington Hospital Center, 116 F.3d 876, 885-86 

(D.C. Cir. 1997), vacated on other grounds pending rehearing 

en banc, 1997 WL 569524 (D.C. Cir., Sept. 5, 1997); cf. Barth 

v. Gelb, 2 F.3d 1180, 1186 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (Rehabilitation 

Act). This is such a case: Marshall has come forward with 

no direct proof of discriminatory motivation, and Federal 

Express for its part asserts that the Operations Agent position was eliminated after a staffing analysis had determined 

that the job could be handled using current employees. We 

assume without deciding that Marshall is disabled in the 

statutory sense and has made out the other elements of her 

prima facie case. Federal Express having offered a nondiscriminatory reason for the dismissal, the burden shifted to 

Marshall to show that Federal Express's cost-cutting rationale was just a cover-up for illicit discrimination.

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Marshall cites two items as indicators of pretext. First, 

she says, based on her seven years of experience at Federal 

Express and her husband's first-hand familiarity with the 

DCA station, that the company's fiscal explanation simply 

cannot be believed. As she put it in her deposition testimony, 

"I know that they need an operations agent position." But 

such a conclusory observation fails to create a material issue 

of fact as to Federal Express's claimed motivation. Marshall 

has laid no foundation for any expertise on the issue of 

whether an extra employee at that position was worth the 

cost to Federal Express.

Second, Marshall points to the confusion over Federal 

Express's policy on employment of relatives as evidence that 

the company's cost-cutting rationale is specious. Her argument seems to be that because a Federal Express employee 

gave her what turned out to be an unfounded reason for 

refusing to accept her application, Federal Express must be 

giving the court an insincere reason for canceling the position 

altogether. We find the logic of this difficult to fathom. If 

the company's true aim was to disadvantage Marshall because 

of her disability, why would it take the drastic step of zeroing 

out the entire Operations Agent position, thereby also disadvantaging not only Marshall but all five applicants (none of 

whom, so far as we know, was disabled), not to mention 

depriving itself of the net advantage of filling the position? It 

would have been much simpler to refrain from informing 

Marshall about the job in the first place. Indeed, Marshall's 

effort to draw a sinister inference from the nepotism mix-up 

runs into the fact that the company itself alerted her to this 

and several other job openings.

In sum, a rational fact-finder would need more than Marshall has provided before it could "second-guess an employer's personnel decision absent demonstrably discriminatory 

motive." Fischbach v. District of Columbia Dep't of Corrections, 86 F.3d 1180, 1183 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Milton v. 

Weinberger, 696 F.2d 94, 100 (D.C. Cir. 1982)). Even assuming that Marshall made out a prima facie case under the first 

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part of the McDonnell Douglas testa proposition the district court rejected and on which we take no positionshe 

has failed to raise a genuine issue of fact as to whether 

Federal Express's reason was pretextual.

The judgment of the district court is 

Affirmed.

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