Opinion ID: 6112002
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiff’s Retaliation Claims

Text: In addition to disability discrimination, Plaintiff alleges retaliation in his complaint. Specifically, Plaintiff claims Defendants retaliated against him after he complained about disability discrimination, filed an EEOC charge alleging disability discrimination, and testified about disability discrimination at his own and Rollo’s disciplinary hearings. We analyze Plaintiff’s retaliation claims in three distinct categories, based on their varying legal underpinnings: (1) First Amendment retaliation, (2) adverse action retaliation in violation of the ADA, and (3) retaliatory hostile work environment in violation of the ADA. As discussed below, we agree with the USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 27 of 38 20-14298 Opinion of the Court 27 district court that Plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation and ADA adverse action retaliation claims are legally inadequate, and we therefore AFFIRM the court’s decision to grant summary judgment as to those claims. As to Plaintiff’s retaliatory hostile work environment claim under the ADA, neither the parties nor the district court applied the correct legal analysis to that claim. Accordingly, we REMAND Plaintiff’s retaliatory hostile work environment claim to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Individually As is evident from the discussion above, Plaintiff’s First Amendment claim is the only claim on which Defendants Washington and King are potentially liable in their individual capacity. See Albra, 490 F.3d at 830 (explaining that the ADA does not provide for individual liability). The district court determined that Washington and King were entitled to qualified immunity as to Plaintiff’s First Amendment claims asserted against them individually. Plaintiff did not identify the qualified immunity ruling in his opening brief as an issue for appeal, nor did he offer any substantive argument on the qualified immunity issue in his opening brief. Accordingly, Plaintiff has waived any right to appeal the district’s court qualified immunity ruling as to his First Amendment claims asserted against Washington and King individually, and we USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 28 of 38 28 Opinion of the Court 20-14298 AFFIRM the district court’s order granting summary judgment as to those claims on that ground.
For Plaintiff to prevail on his First Amendment retaliation claim against Defendant MAWSS, he must show that: (1) he engaged in speech on a matter of public concern, (2) his First Amendment interest in the speech outweighed his employer’s interest in prohibiting the speech to promote the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees, and (3) his speech played a substantial part in an adverse employment action taken against him by MAWSS. See Battle v. Bd. of Regents for Ga., 468 F.3d 755, 759–60 (11th Cir. 2006). Once Plaintiff establishes these factors, the burden shifts to MAWSS to show by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision even in the absence of the protected conduct. See id. at 760. “The first two elements are questions of law designed to determine whether the First Amendment protects the employee’s speech. The third element and affirmative defense are questions of fact designed to determine whether the adverse employment action was in retaliation for the protected speech.” Id. As to the first part of the analysis, Plaintiff’s speech is entitled to constitutional protection only to the extent he “spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern.” See id. (quoting Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006)). Speech made primarily in Plaintiff’s role as an employee is not protected by the First Amendment and cannot give rise to a First Amendment retaliation claim. See id. USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 29 of 38 20-14298 Opinion of the Court 29 Plaintiff has not shown that he spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern when he complained internally about disability discrimination between July and December 2016, or when he filed EEOC charges alleging discrimination and retaliation. On the contrary, and as described in the complaint, the thrust of Plaintiff’s internal complaints about discrimination and his subsequent EEOC charges concerned a matter of private interest—that is, Plaintiff’s disqualification from a promotion he felt he was entitled to receive—rather than public concern. See Alves v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. Sys. of Ga., 804 F.3d 1149, 1165–68 (11th Cir. 2015) (denying First Amendment protection where the main thrust of the speech at issue concerned a personal employee grievance). As such, this speech is not protected by the First Amendment and cannot support Plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation claim. See id. Plaintiff argues that his testimony at his own disciplinary hearing and at Rollo’s disciplinary hearing in March 2017 qualifies as protected speech under Lane v. Franks, 573 U.S. 228, 238 (2014), in which the Supreme Court held that a public employee’s truthful testimony, compelled by subpoena but given outside of the course of his ordinary job duties, was protected by the First Amendment. Assuming Plaintiff is correct, any First Amendment claim based on Plaintiff’s testimony at the disciplinary hearings fails because there is no evidence Plaintiff’s speech at the hearings played a substantial part in any adverse action MAWSS subsequently took against Plaintiff. Plaintiff’s disqualification from the Mechanic promotion occurred in August 2016, prior to Plaintiff’s testimony at the USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 30 of 38 30 Opinion of the Court 20-14298 hearings. A disciplinary hearing panel determined that a fifteenday suspension was warranted at the conclusion of Plaintiff’s February 9 disciplinary hearing. This decision was made prior to, and thus could not have been influenced by, Plaintiff’s testimony at Rollo’s hearing in March 2017. The disciplinary decision obviously followed Plaintiff’s testimony at his own hearing, but the decision was well-supported by the evidence presented at the hearing, and it was set in motion by an investigation that occurred in December 2016, again predating Plaintiff’s hearing testimony. Plaintiff received an unsatisfactory service rating and loss of a merit raise in October 2017, but it is undisputed that those adverse actions followed automatically from his disciplinary suspension. The only other consequence Plaintiff claims resulted from his testimony at the disciplinary hearings is the small-engine assignments he received after he testified, but we have already explained that those assignments do not constitute an adverse employment action. In short, most of the speech alleged by Plaintiff in support of his First Amendment retaliation claim concerns a personal, employment-related grievance rather than a matter of public concern. See Alves, 804 F.3d at 1165–68. To the extent some part of his alleged speech arguably is protected by the First Amendment, Plaintiff has not shown that the speech played a substantial role in any adverse employment action Defendants subsequently took against him. See Battle, 468 F.3d at 759–60. For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s order granting summary judgment on Plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation claim. USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 31 of 38 20-14298 Opinion of the Court 31
In addition to his First Amendment retaliation claim, Plaintiff asserts a retaliation claim arising under the ADA for the same adverse actions. The ADA prohibits retaliation against an individual “because such individual has opposed any act or practice made unlawful [by the Act] or . . . made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing” under the Act. 42 U.S.C. § 12203(a). When an ADA retaliation claim is based on circumstantial evidence, as Plaintiff’s claim is, we analyze the claim under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. See Batson v. Salvation Army, 897 F.3d 1320, 1328–29 (11th Cir. 2018). Plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of retaliation by showing that: (1) he engaged in a statutorily protected expression, (2) he suffered an adverse action, and (3) there was a causal link between the two. See id. at 1329. The burden then shifts to Defendants to articulate a legitimate, non-retaliatory reason for their actions. See id. Assuming Defendants meet their burden, Plaintiff must produce evidence showing that the rationale asserted by Defendants is a pretext for retaliation to avoid summary judgment. See id. We assume Plaintiff has established a prima facie case of ADA retaliation. Defendants do not dispute that Plaintiff engaged in conduct that is statutorily protected by the ADA when he complained internally about disability discrimination during the latter part of 2016, and when he subsequently filed EEOC charges and raised the issue of disability discrimination during his own and USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 32 of 38 32 Opinion of the Court 20-14298 Rollo’s disciplinary hearings in February and March 2017. It is also undisputed that Plaintiff suffered an adverse action when he was disqualified from the Mechanic promotion in August 2016 and when he was suspended after a disciplinary hearing in February 2017, which suspension resulted in Plaintiff receiving an unsatisfactory service rating and the loss of a merit raise in October 2017. 7 We assume, without deciding, that Plaintiff likewise has shown that the adverse actions were not “wholly unrelated” to his protected conduct, as required to establish a prima facie case of retaliation. See Gogel v. Kia Motors Mfg. of Ga., Inc., 967 F.3d 1121, 1135 (11th Cir. 2020) (applying the “not wholly unrelated” causation standard at the prima facie stage of the McDonnell Douglas analysis) (quotation marks omitted). Defendants have articulated a legitimate, nonretaliatory reason for each of the adverse actions taken against Plaintiff. As to Plaintiff’s disqualification from the Mechanic promotion, Defendants explain that Washington and King imposed a driving restriction based on Dr. Millette’s description of Plaintiff’s MS-related symptoms in July 2016, which restriction meant Plaintiff was unable to perform the essential functions of the Mechanic position. 7 Plaintiff argues that the restructuring of his job duties to include only smallengine repairs in September 2017 also qualifies as an adverse action for purposes of his ADA retaliation claim. As discussed in relation to Plaintiff’s disability discrimination and First Amendment retaliation claims, there is no evidence that assigning Plaintiff to small-engine work was in any way adverse. Thus, we do not consider the assignment an adverse action for purposes of Plaintiff’s ADA retaliation claim. USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 33 of 38 20-14298 Opinion of the Court 33 Regarding Plaintiff’s fifteen-day disciplinary suspension in February 2017, Defendants note that the suspension was recommended by a three-person hearing panel at the conclusion of Plaintiff’s disciplinary hearing, during which hearing Plaintiff admitted both that he had performed a personal vehicle repair while on MAWSS time and using MAWSS materials and that he had stood by while a coworker tried to conceal and ultimately stole MAWSS inventory. Finally, Defendants explain that Plaintiff’s unsatisfactory service rating and loss of a merit raise in October 2017 followed automatically from his disciplinary suspension. The legitimate, nonretaliatory reasons proffered by Defendants for each of the adverse actions taken against Plaintiff easily satisfy their burden at the second stage of the McDonnell Douglas framework. See Chapman v. AI Transp., 229 F.3d 1012, 1024 (11th Cir. 2000) (noting that the employer’s burden to articulate legitimate, nonretaliatory reasons for its actions “is merely one of production”). Plaintiff presents no evidence that the rationale proffered by Defendants to explain his disqualification from the Mechanic promotion was a pretext for retaliation. It is undisputed that Washington and King determined Plaintiff was not qualified for the Mechanic position because of the driving restriction they imposed on Plaintiff after Dr. Millette provided updated information to MAWSS in July 2016 about Plaintiff’s MS-related symptoms. We have rejected Plaintiff’s argument that the driving restriction was discriminatory, and we likewise reject his argument that the restriction was retaliatory. Indeed, the driving restriction cannot USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 34 of 38 34 Opinion of the Court 20-14298 have been retaliatory because it was the subject of—and the impetus for—Plaintiff’s internal complaints about disability discrimination, which is the only protected conduct Plaintiff engaged in before he was disqualified from the Mechanic promotion. As to Plaintiff’s February 2017 suspension—as well as the October 2017 unsatisfactory service rating and loss of merit raise that followed automatically from the suspension—it is undisputed that the suspension was imposed by a three-person hearing panel at the conclusion of Plaintiff’s disciplinary hearing conducted on February 9, 2017. The panel was aware that Plaintiff had complained internally about disability discrimination because Plaintiff testified to that fact during the hearing. However, there is no evidence that Plaintiff’s prior internal complaints about discrimination influenced the panel’s decision as to the appropriate discipline to impose on Plaintiff. On the contrary, all the evidence in the record indicates that the hearing panel decided that a fifteen-day suspension was warranted based on evidence presented at the hearing— including video surveillance footage and Plaintiff’s own testimony—showing that Plaintiff violated Personnel Board rules by completing a personal vehicle repair on MAWSS time and using MAWSS materials and that he aided and abetted theft of MAWSS inventory when he stood by while his co-worker tried to conceal and then stole a pair of windshield wipers that Plaintiff had previously pulled from the garage without noting their removal in the MAWSS inventory system. USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 35 of 38 20-14298 Opinion of the Court 35 Plaintiff claims he was selectively targeted for discipline, but he does not present any evidence to support that claim. It is undisputed that the other parties involved in the incidents for which Plaintiff was disciplined—Rollo and Turner—were themselves disciplined: Turner was forced to retire, and Rollo was suspended. Plaintiff also points out that his co-worker Jason Simon was in the MAWSS garage when Turner stole the windshield wipers, but there is no evidence that Simon pulled the windshield wipers from MAWSS’s inventory without noting their removal and then stood idly by while Turner blatantly tried to conceal and subsequently stole the wipers in Simon’s presence. Finally, Plaintiff notes that MAWSS garage employees had a custom and practice of performing minor personal repairs and that Sumrall had engaged in this practice himself. Assuming that is true, it does not account for the fact that Plaintiff was disciplined for both performing a personal repair and aiding and abetting a co-worker’s theft. Moreover, there is no evidence that any HR employees—including Washington and King, who initiated Plaintiff’s discipline—were aware of the personal repair practice in the MAWSS garage, which Plaintiff does not deny violated Personnel Board rules. In short, Plaintiff presents no evidence from which a jury could reasonably conclude that he was selectively targeted for discipline or disciplined unfairly in retaliation for his complaints about disability discrimination. Nor does Plaintiff present any other evidence that could fairly be interpreted to suggest that the explanations proffered by Defendants for Plaintiff’s disqualification from USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 36 of 38 36 Opinion of the Court 20-14298 the Mechanic promotion and his subsequent fifteen-day disciplinary suspension are pretextual, and that retaliation is the real reason for either of those adverse actions. As such, Plaintiff’s ADA retaliation claim fails.
Finally, Plaintiff asserts a retaliatory hostile work environment claim against Defendants under the ADA. Specifically, Plaintiff claims that Defendants subjected him to a “hostile, offensive, and abusive working environment” because of his internal complaints about disability discrimination between July and December 2016, in violation of the ADA’s anti-retaliation provision. This Court has not specifically held that a retaliatory hostile work environment claim is cognizable under the ADA, but it has held that such a claim is available under Title VII. See Monaghan v. Worldpay US, Inc., 955 F.3d 855, 860 (11th Cir. 2020). The anti-retaliation provisions of the ADA and Title VII are nearly identical. Compare 42 U.S.C. § 12203(a) (“No person shall discriminate against any individual because such individual has opposed any act or practice made unlawful by [the ADA] or because such individual made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under [the ADA].”) and 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) (making it unlawful for an employer “to discriminate against” an individual because such individual “has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice by [Title VII], or because he has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 37 of 38 20-14298 Opinion of the Court 37 under [Title VII].”). Thus, we assume that Plaintiff’s retaliatory hostile work environment claim is cognizable under the ADA, and that the same standard applies to that claim as would apply to a similar claim under Title VII. Until recently, this Court had applied the “severe or pervasive” standard to a Title VII retaliatory hostile work environment claim, requiring a plaintiff asserting such a claim to show that he experienced harassment on account of his protected conduct that was “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the terms and conditions” of his employment. See Gowski v. Peake, 682 F.3d 1299 (11th Cir. 2012). In Monaghan, the Court rejected the standard formerly applied in Gowski, and held that a plaintiff can prevail on a retaliatory hostile work environment claim under Title VII by showing, in addition to the other elements required to establish a retaliation claim, that the alleged retaliatory conduct “well might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination” under Title VII. Monaghan, 955 F.3d at 857 (quoting Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 57 (2006) (quotation marks omitted and alterations adopted)). The district court and the parties below analyzed Plaintiff’s retaliatory hostile work environment claim under the “severe or pervasive” standard applied prior to Monaghan. Defendants continue to rely on the severe or pervasive standard in their appellate brief, while Plaintiff cites Monaghan in his appellate brief. As made clear in Monaghan, the proper standard for analyzing a retaliatory hostile work environment claim is the “well might have dissuaded” USCA11 Case: 20-14298 Date Filed: 01/24/2022 Page: 38 of 38 38 Opinion of the Court 20-14298 standard announced in Burlington Northern rather than the “severe or pervasive” standard of Gowski. See id. We thus remand Plaintiff’s retaliatory hostile work environment claim to the district court to give the parties an opportunity to brief, and that court the opportunity to consider in the first instance, the claim under the correct legal standard.