Court Opinion

ID: 9411937
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-28 16:02:33.693429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:41:20.213401
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11499    Document: 29-1     Date Filed: 07/28/2023   Page: 1 of 9

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-11499
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       CANDACE E. HERREN,
                                                     Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       LA PETITE ACADEMY, INC.,

                                                   Defendant-Appellee.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                    for the Northern District of Alabama
                    D.C. Docket Nos. 2:16-cv-01308-LSC,
                             2:17-cv-00739-LSC
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                  22-11499

                            ____________________

       Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
             Candace Herren appeals the district court’s grant of sum-
       mary judgment in favor of her former employer, La Petite Acad-
       emy, Inc., (“La Petite”), on Herren’s claim for interference under
       the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, 29 U.S.C. §2615(a)
       (“FMLA”). Reversible error has been shown; we vacate the judg-
       ment and remand for further proceedings.
                                            I.
               This appeal is the second time this litigation has come before
       us for review. In August 2016, Herren ﬁled a civil action against Le
       Petite for unlawful retaliation and interference under the FMLA.
       Herren later ﬁled a second civil action against Le Petite, in which
       she asserted claims for unlawful discrimination based on her race,
       age, and medical disability. The district court consolidated the two
       civil actions and later granted La Petite’s motion for summary judg-
       ment on all of Herren’s claims.
              In Herren’s ﬁrst appeal before us, we aﬃrmed the district
       court’s grant of summary judgment on Herren’s claims for retalia-
       tion under the FMLA and for unlawful discrimination. We con-
       cluded, however, that -- in reviewing Herren’s claim for FMLA in-
       terference -- the district court failed to place the burden of proof
       on the appropriate party.
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       22-11499               Opinion of the Court                          3

               We vacated the district court’s grant of summary judgment
       on Herren’s FMLA interference claim. We remanded for the dis-
       trict court to consider in the ﬁrst instance whether La Petite satis-
       ﬁed its burden to show that it would have terminated Herren’s em-
       ployment for reasons “wholly unrelated” to Herren’s request for
       FMLA leave. See Herren v. La Petite Acad., Inc., 820 F. App’x 900 (11th
       Cir. 2020) (unpublished).
               On remand, the district court again granted summary judg-
       ment in favor of La Petite on Herren’s FMLA interference claim.
       In its order dated 22 April 2022, the district court determined that
       La Petite demonstrated suﬃciently that the employment decision
       was wholly unrelated to Herren’s request for FMLA leave.
                                            II.
              La Petite operates childcare centers throughout the United
       States. Herren began working for La Petite in 1986. From 2013
       until the termination of her employment in May 2016, Herren
       worked as the Director of La Petite’s Grayson Valley center in Bir-
       mingham, Alabama.
               In December 2015, an infant at La Petite’s center in
       Brookwood died after becoming unresponsive during a nap. Fol-
       lowing that tragic incident, La Petite’s Alabama-based childcare
       centers came under increased scrutiny by the Child Care Services
       Division of the Alabama Department of Human Resources
       (“DHR”). Among other things, DHR increased the frequency of
       its inspection visits. In the ﬁrst few months of 2016, DHR issued
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                22-11499

       several deﬁciency reports to La Petite’s centers, including the Gray-
       son Valley center.
              On 29 February 2016, Herren’s then-supervisor issued Her-
       ren a written performance improvement plan (“PIP”) to address
       Herren’s performance in the light of DHR’s deﬁciency reports.
       The PIP described Herren as having “[p]oor overall performance”
       based on her failure to maintain compliance with La Petite’s com-
       pany policies and with applicable state and local regulations. The
       PIP also warned that failure to maintain acceptable levels of perfor-
       mance could result in disciplinary action, including separation of
       employment.
              Following inspection visits on 5 and 7 April, DHR issued the
       Grayson Valley center two additional deﬁciency reports. On 26
       April, La Petite’s Divisional Vice President of Operations (Cindy
       Lehnhoﬀ) placed Herren on administrative leave pending further
       investigation. Lehnhoﬀ assigned Rhonda Kirk (La Petite’s Interim
       Human Resources Manager) to investigate the Grayson Valley cen-
       ter and Herren’s performance. As part of that investigation, Kirk
       visited the Grayson Valley site on 28 April. That same day, Kirk
       prepared a report summarizing her ﬁndings and recommending
       that Herren’s employment be terminated. Following Kirk’s inves-
       tigation, Lehnhoﬀ decided to terminate Herren’s employment. On
       2 May 2016, Lehnhoﬀ notiﬁed Herren that her employment was
       terminated.
             Herren suﬀers from colitis and Crohn’s disease. In March
       2015, La Petite approved Herren’s request for intermittent FMLA
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       22-11499               Opinion of the Court                          5

       leave from 17 March 2015 to 17 March 2016 to allow Herren to
       obtain once-monthly chemotherapy treatments for her medical
       conditions.
              In March 2016, Herren advised her new supervisor (Felicia
       Gist) that her Crohn’s disease was no longer in remission and that
       she would need to take 12 weeks of FMLA leave starting in May.
       On 26 April (the same day Herren was placed on administrative
       leave) Herren requested and received paperwork from La Petite’s
       beneﬁts department to renew her FMLA leave. Herren emailed the
       completed paperwork the next day, requesting FMLA leave from
       27 April through 24 June.
              In emails dated 27 April, a beneﬁts specialist advised Gist that
       Herren would need to take FMLA leave starting that day. On 2 May
       (the day Herren’s employment was terminated), Herren received a
       certiﬁed letter informing her that she was eligible for the additional
       FMLA leave she had requested.
                                            III.
              We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary
       judgment; we “view all evidence and make all reasonable infer-
       ences in favor of the party opposing summary judgment.” Chap-
       man v. AI Transp., 229 F.3d 1012, 1023 (11th Cir. 2000) (en banc).
       Summary judgment is appropriate when the record shows “no gen-
       uine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to
       judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). “A material fact
       is genuine if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                 22-11499

       a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Furcron v. Mail Ctrs. Plus, LLC,
       843 F.3d 1295, 1303 (11th Cir. 2016) (quotations omitted).
              To establish a claim for inference under the FMLA, a plaintiﬀ
       need only demonstrate -- by a preponderance of the evidence --
       that she was entitled to a beneﬁt that was denied by her employer.
       See Strickland v. Water Works & Sewer Bd., 239 F.3d 1199, 1206-07
       (11th Cir. 2001). Causation is no element of a plaintiﬀ’s FMLA in-
       terference burden; “the employer’s motives are irrelevant.” See id.
       at 1207; Spakes v. Broward Cty. Sheriﬀ’s Oﬃce, 631 F.3d 1307, 1309
       (11th Cir. 2011). That Herren established a claim for FMLA inter-
       ference is undisputed.
              When -- as in this case -- an employee establishes an FMLA
       interference claim, the employer may then “raise the lack of causa-
       tion as an aﬃrmative defense” to liability. See Spakes, 631 F.3d at
       1309. To establish this aﬃrmative defense, the employer bears the
       burden of “demonstrat[ing] that it would have discharged [the] em-
       ployee ‘for a reason wholly unrelated to the FMLA leave.’” Id. at 1310
       (emphasis added); see Krutzig v. Pulte Home Corp., 602 F.3d 1231, 1236
       (11th Cir. 2010) (“[T]he right to commence FMLA leave is not ab-
       solute, and . . . an employee can be dismissed, preventing her from
       exercising her right to commence FMLA leave, without thereby vi-
       olating the FMLA, if the employee would have been dismissed re-
       gardless of any request for FMLA leave.”).
            According to La Petite, the decision to terminate Herren’s
       employment was based on performance-related issues stemming
       from the DHS deﬁciency reports: a reason it says was wholly
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       22-11499               Opinion of the Court                        7

       unrelated to Herren’s application for FMLA leave. On remand, the
       district court determined that -- because La Petite “began the pro-
       cess of terminating Herren before she ever requested FMLA leave”
       -- La Petite demonstrated adequately that the decision to terminate
       Herren’s employment was wholly unrelated to Herren’s FMLA ap-
       plication.
              Upon review of the record, we conclude that the district
       court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of La Petite.
       The record -- viewed in Herren’s favor -- does not establish beyond
       dispute that La Petite would have terminated Herren’s employment
       regardless of her FMLA leave request.
              That the entire decisional process that resulted in the termi-
       nation of Herren’s employment began before Herren’s FMLA leave
       request does not establish -- without dispute -- that the decision to
       terminate Herren’s employment was wholly unrelated to the
       FMLA leave request. La Petite began considering additional disci-
       plinary action against Herren following DHR’s two deﬁciency re-
       ports in early April. La Petite, however, presented no unrebutted
       evidence that a ﬁnal decision to terminate Herren’s employment
       had been made before Herren requested additional FMLA leave on
       27 April.
              To the contrary, the evidence supports a reasonable infer-
       ence that Lehnhoﬀ decided to terminate Herren’s employment af-
       ter Herren’s 27 April leave request. Herren was placed on adminis-
       trative leave on 26 April pending an investigation. Lehnhoﬀ
       charged Kirk with conducting the investigation. On April 28, Kirk
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       8                      Opinion of the Court                22-11499

       visited the Grayson Valley site and prepared a report documenting
       her ﬁndings. According to Lehnhoﬀ’s deposition testimony,
       Lehnhoﬀ decided to terminate Herren’s employment after Kirk
       completed her investigation: at least one day after Herren’s FMLA
       leave request. Given the overlap in time between La Petite’s inves-
       tigation and Herren’s FMLA leave request, the record does not
       show aﬃrmatively that the two events were unrelated.
             On appeal, the parties each present argument about whether
       Lehnhoﬀ in fact knew about Herren’s 27 April FMLA leave request
       when she decided to terminate Herren’s employment. These ar-
       guments are made for a good reason. We have concluded that one
       way in which an employer might satisfy its burden of proving that
       an employment decision was “wholly unrelated” to an employee’s
       FMLA request is by presenting unrebutted evidence that -- at the
       time the decision was made to terminate an employee’s employ-
       ment -- the decisionmaker was unaware of the employee’s request
       for FMLA leave. See Krutzig, 602 F.3d at 1236.
               We note, however, that the district court included no discus-
       sion of Lehnhoﬀ’s knowledge in its 22 April 2022 summary-judg-
       ment order. Nor can we conclude that this record establishes be-
       yond dispute that Lehnhoﬀ was unaware of Herren’s 27 April
       FMLA leave request. The record contains evidence from which a
       factﬁnder could infer reasonably that Lehnhoﬀ knew about the
       FMLA request, including (1) Lehnhoﬀ’s equivocal testimony about
       whether she knew about Herren’s FMLA leave status or about Her-
       ren’s request for additional leave; (2) undisputed evidence that both
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       22-11499                  Opinion of the Court                                9

       Kirk and Gist knew about Herren’s request to take additional
       FMLA leave; (3) Kirk’s central role in investigating Herren and
       Grayson Valley; and (4) evidence that Kirk’s investigation notes in-
       cluded a reference to Herren’s FMLA status.
               In sum, La Petite, for now at least, has failed to satisfy its
       burden of establishing --beyond dispute -- that the reason for termi-
       nating Herren’s employment was “wholly unrelated” to Herren’s
       FMLA leave request. A genuine issue of disputed material fact ex-
       ists; the district court erred in granting summary judgment. We
       vacate the district court’s grant of summary judgment on Herren’s
       FMLA interference claim and remand for further proceedings con-
       sistent with this opinion.*
              VACATED AND REMANDED.

       * On appeal, Herren argues that the district court erred in granting summary
       judgment on an issue not raised properly in La Petite’s summary-judgment
       motion. We have already rejected this argument. In deciding Herren’s initial
       appeal, we noted that -- although La Petite “did not couch its argument on the
       FMLA interference claim in terms of an affirmative defense” -- the district
       court committed no error in addressing the issue of causation because Herren
       raised the issue in her response to La Petite’s summary-judgment motion. We
       remain bound by our earlier ruling on this matter. See Lebron v. Sec’y of Fla.
       Dep’t of Child. & Fams., 772 F.3d 1352, 1360 (11th Cir. 2014) (“Under the ‘law
       of the case’ doctrine, the ‘findings of fact and conclusions of law by an appel-
       late court are generally binding in all subsequent proceedings in the same case
       in the trial court or on a later appeal.’”).