Opinion ID: 2778730
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Carter’s Prior Lawsuit

Text: CSU offers its faculty the option to teach summer courses, contingent on the department’s budget, program needs, student interest, and a rotation list of professors who timely submit requests to teach specific classes. The list changes No. 13-3367 3 yearly depending on prior assignments, and it gives some preference to professors who are within four years of retirement. The department chair matches available professors with offered courses, subject to approval by the dean and a university-wide summer school committee. In the summers of 2006 and 2007, Carter was assigned to teach some, but not all, of the courses he requested. Likewise, CSU assigns professors their courses for the fall and spring semesters based on teaching preferences, departmental need, and student demand. During the spring semester of 2007, CSU assigned Carter to teach Accounting 213, which met on Thursday evenings. Carter did not take well to that assignment. Beginning on January 11, 2007, Carter called in sick every Thursday and did not teach any of his courses that met that day. Following numerous communications regarding his absences, Carter met with CSU administrators on April 10. During that meeting, Carter blamed his refusal to teach the Thursday classes on CSU’s failure to accommodate his sleep apnea. After the meeting, he began teaching some of his Thursday courses, but continued to refuse to teach Accounting 213. Consequently, CSU’s Assistant Vice President Debrah Jefferson recommended that Carter be sanctioned a certain percentage of his salary. Carter’s course assignments, among other complaints, formed the basis of a lawsuit he filed against CSU in August of 2007 (“Carter I”). There, Carter alleged that CSU was discriminating against him on the basis of race, gender, and disability in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), Section 1981, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). He later amended his complaint to 4 No. 13-3367 include Simyar and Tolia as individual defendants in the Section 1981 claim. In 2011, the district court entered summary judgment against Carter on all but one of his claims, and the parties settled the remaining claim in June of 2012.