Court Opinion

ID: 9393356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-09 21:00:41.27158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:52.527231
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-13469   Document: 38-1    Date Filed: 05/09/2023   Page: 1 of 15

                                                           [PUBLISH]
                                 In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                               No. 21-13469
                          ____________________

        JESSICA GRAVES,
                                                    Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
        versus
        BRANDSTAR, INC.,

                                                           Defendant,

        BRANDSTAR STUDIOS, INC.,

                                                  Defendant-Appellee.

                          ____________________
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 2 of 15

        2                      Opinion of the Court                21-13469

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Southern District of Florida
                      D.C. Docket No. 0:20-cv-60666-AHS
                            ____________________

        Before JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
        NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:
               Jessica Graves was dealt a tough hand when, in relatively
        quick succession, her father fell ill and she was let go from her po-
        sition at Brandstar Studios. Following her termination, Graves
        sued Brandstar under the Family and Medical Leave Act and the
        Americans with Disabilities Act. The district court granted Brand-
        star summary judgment.
               Graves presents three arguments on appeal. First, she con-
        tends that Brandstar executives interfered with her rights under the
        FMLA. Second, she asserts that her termination constituted asso-
        ciational discrimination under the ADA. And ﬁnally, she claims that
        the district court improperly weighed the evidence on summary
        judgment rather than construing the facts in her favor.
              After careful review, we conclude that the district court
        properly granted summary judgment to Brandstar. We aﬃrm.
                                          I
                                         A
             From January 11, 2017 to May 30, 2018, Jessica Graves was
        an employee of Brandstar Studios—a video-production and
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 3 of 15

        21-13469               Opinion of the Court                        3

        content-creation company based in Florida. As a “branded content
        producer/writer,” she coordinated onsite shoots, managed editing
        sessions, and generally shepherded video content from start to ﬁn-
        ish. According to Graves, from early on in her tenure at Brandstar,
        her supervisors knew that her father lived in Pennsylvania and was
        terminally ill. They also knew that Graves was her father’s primary
        caregiver, coordinated medical services for him from afar, and vis-
        ited him frequently.
               On Wednesday, May 2, 2018, Graves received a call that her
        father had been rushed to the hospital to undergo emergency brain
        surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. She immediately sent her
        supervisors at Brandstar the following email:
              Subject: Family Emergency

              Hi guys, I’m planning to ﬂy out to see my dad in PA
              tomorrow morning. My dad is in ICU. I will not be
              available for calls/edits. Thank you in advance for
              making any adjustments to my schedule.

        Graves ﬂew to Pennsylvania the following day and tended to her
        father until Sunday, May 6, 2018, when she returned to Florida. A
        few weeks later, Brandstar executives noticed that Graves had
        clocked in on Thursday and Friday during her absence. Upon not-
        ing this discrepancy, Brandstar’s HR team insisted that Graves cor-
        rect her timecard to reﬂect the leave. It is undisputed, though, that
        they didn’t inform her that her father’s medical emergency might
        entitle her to beneﬁts under the FMLA.
USCA11 Case: 21-13469     Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 4 of 15

        4                     Opinion of the Court                21-13469

                Upon her return to Florida on May 6, Graves sent Brand-
        star’s CEO the following email, which she later characterized as a
        formal “show pitch . . . for a Military Makeover show”:
              Subject: My Dad

              Hi Mark, I just got back from PA where my dad was
              having emergency brain surgery for a tumor. The ag-
              gressive throat cancer that he just ﬁnally recovered
              from last year has metastasized and formed two tu-
              mors in his brain. This recent surgery was only able
              to remove one, the other will need to be treated with
              radiation and intense chemo and soon.

              My dad is a Vietnam Vet who was aﬀected by Agent
              Orange: He spent his entire career working in the
              probation and parole system, since retiring he has
              lived alone in Western PA. He’s the kindest, strongest
              and most stubborn man I’ve ever known and he’s my
              best friend.

              Fortunately, I was able to convince him to let me ﬁnd
              the best oncologists and radiologists in South Florida
              for this next and hopefully ﬁnal round of treatment,
              but I will need to move him down here asap. Since
              the last treatment resulted in pneumonia which re-
              quired a portion of his lung to be removed and feed-
              ing tube chest port to be put in. He nearly died twice.
              The reason I’m telling you this is because I’m hoping
              you can help.
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 5 of 15

        21-13469               Opinion of the Court                        5

              I have a 2-car garage that I need to convert into a stu-
              dio apartment and I know that between
              Ryan/Russ/Edwin/Vince they could knock this out
              in a few days.

              I am hoping you’ll see the beneﬁt in allowing them a
              few days to do this within the next couple weeks since
              we can also turn this into a local Military Makeover
              UFP. There are a few companies I can reach out to
              for materials to help, but I am prepared to pay for eve-
              rything myself, including labor. All I need from you
              is permission to ‘borrow’ the guys.

              I’m around if you want to give me a call otherwise we
              can discuss Monday. I’m going to be driving him and
              his beloved dog down to FL once he’s released from
              rehab to begin treatments.

               Graves also verbally requested to be excused from work-re-
        lated travel and staﬀed only to local shoots as she prepared her
        home for her father’s move to Florida. Again, it is undisputed that
        no one at Brandstar told Graves that her father’s condition and her
        role as his caretaker might entitle her to FMLA beneﬁts.
               On May 25, 2018, Graves arrived late to work and was es-
        corted into a meeting with her supervisor, a studio manager, and
        an HR assistant. During the conversation, they suggested that
        Graves transition from her full-time role to a freelance position be-
        cause it might better suit her schedule. Graves declined the oﬀer
        and asked whether this had to do with her father, to which the
        Brandstar executives answered that it didn’t. At that point, they
USCA11 Case: 21-13469        Document: 38-1       Date Filed: 05/09/2023       Page: 6 of 15

        6                        Opinion of the Court                    21-13469

        decided to let Graves go eﬀective May 30, 2018. Her father moved
        to Florida three months later.
               Graves’s employment record was mixed. She had a history
        of “coming and going”—a practice that rankled her supervisors.
        She also often missed editing sessions for her projects without no-
        tice. Once, Graves left a junior editor waiting on her for an hour
        until her supervisor contacted her to ask if she planned to attend.
        And long before her father’s surgery, Graves’s supervisors repeat-
        edly reported that her performance was subpar, that her projects
        often went incomplete, and that her attitude at work made it diﬃ-
        cult to collaborate.
                                             B
               Following her termination, Graves sued Brandstar in federal
        court. As relevant here, Graves alleged that Brandstar (1) interfered
        with her rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act and (2) en-
        gaged in associational discrimination in violation of the Americans
        with Disabilities Act. After the district court granted summary
        judgment to Brandstar, Graves appealed to this Court. 1

        1 We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, construing

        all facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party—here, Graves.
        Munoz v. Selig Enters., Inc., 981 F.3d 1265, 1272 (11th Cir. 2020). Summary
        judgment is warranted when there are no genuine disputes of material fact.
        Smith v. Owens, 848 F.3d 975, 978 (11th Cir. 2017).
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 7 of 15

        21-13469               Opinion of the Court                        7

                                         II
               Graves presents three arguments on appeal. She contends
        that the district court (1) misapplied the FMLA in rejecting her
        claim that Brandstar failed to provide adequate notice of her statu-
        tory rights, (2) wrongly rejected her ADA associational-discrimina-
        tion claim, and (3) improperly weighed the evidence when consid-
        ering Brandstar’s summary-judgment motion. We will consider
        each in turn.
                                         A
               Graves ﬁrst contends that the district court incorrectly re-
        jected her contention that Brandstar failed to provide her the re-
        quired notice of her FMLA rights. The FMLA provides up to 12
        weeks of leave for an employee, like Graves, who is responsible for
        caring for a family member with signiﬁcant medical needs. See 29
        U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1)(C). To recover on an “interference” claim under
        the FMLA, a plaintiﬀ must satisfy three elements. First, she must
        show that she was entitled to a beneﬁt under the FMLA. White v.
        Beltram Edge Tool Supply, Inc., 789 F.3d 1188, 1191 (11th Cir. 2015).
        Second, she must show that her employer denied her that beneﬁt.
        Id. And ﬁnally, she must “demonstrate harm, or prejudice, result-
        ing from the employer’s interference with her exercise (or at-
        tempted exercise) of an FMLA beneﬁt.” Ramji v. Hosp. Housekeeping
        Sys., LLC, 992 F.3d 1233, 1245 (11th Cir. 2021).
               As to the ﬁrst element, it’s undisputed that Graves was eligi-
        ble for FMLA beneﬁts because she had worked full-time at Brand-
        star for more than 12 months prior to the events giving rise to her
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 05/09/2023      Page: 8 of 15

        8                      Opinion of the Court                  21-13469

        appeal and was charged with caring for a parent who had a serious
        health condition. See 29 C.F.R. § 825.110; see also 29 U.S.C. §
        2612(a)(1)(C).
                 That brings us to the second element—whether Brandstar
        denied Graves her beneﬁts under the FMLA. Graves contends that
        Brandstar failed to provide her notice of certain statutory rights—
        a failure, she says, that amounts to actionable interference with her
        FMLA beneﬁts. Under the FMLA and its implementing regula-
        tions, there are several kinds of notice that an employer must pro-
        vide—at diﬀerent junctures and in diﬀerent circumstances. See 29
        C.F.R. § 825.300. The two at issue here are “[e]ligibility notice” and
        “[r]ights and responsibilities notice.” Id. § 825.300(b)–(c). The for-
        mer, as its name implies, “must state whether the employee is eli-
        gible for FMLA leave,” id. § 825.300(b)(2), and the latter must “de-
        tail[] the speciﬁc . . . obligations of the employee and explain[] any
        consequences of a failure to meet these obligations,” id.
        § 825.300(c)(1).
                Importantly for present purposes, it doesn’t take much to
        trigger an employer’s obligation to provide both kinds of notice.
        The operative regulation states that an employer must provide an
        employee with eligibility and rights-and-responsibilities notice
        when either (1) “an employee requests leave” or (2) “the employer
        acquires knowledge that an employee’s leave may be for an FMLA-
        qualifying reason.” Id. § 825.300(b)(1) (eligibility notice); see id.
        § 825.300(c)(1) (stating that rights-and-responsibilities notice “shall
        be provided to the employee each time the eligibility notice is
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 9 of 15

        21-13469               Opinion of the Court                        9

        provided”). Accordingly, if the employer learns from any source—
        whether from the employee or otherwise—that the employee’s
        leave might be for family or medical reasons, it is obligated to pro-
        vide both types of notice.
              Graves contends that she sought FMLA-qualifying leave on
        two occasions that triggered Brandstar’s notice obligations: (1) her
        May 2 email requesting leave for a short trip to care for her father
        while he underwent emergency surgery; and (2) her May 6 email
        and subsequent verbal communications requesting to be excused
        from work-related travel. We consider each in turn.
                                         1
               In the May 2 email, Graves told Brandstar executives that she
        intended to ﬂy to Pennsylvania for her father’s emergency brain
        surgery the next day and would “not be available for calls/edits”
        while she was with him. We agree with Graves that her email was
        suﬃcient to trigger Brandstar’s obligation to provide her eligibility
        and rights-and-responsibilities notice under the FMLA because
        Brandstar “acquire[d] knowledge that [her] leave may be for an
        FMLA-qualifying reason.” Id. § 825.300(b)(1). It is undisputed that
        Brandstar failed to provide Graves the required notice following the
        May 2 email.
               Brandstar’s failure to notify Graves of her FMLA rights may
        well have interfered with her exercise of the corresponding beneﬁts
        within the meaning of the second prong of the interference analy-
        sis. See supra at 7. But that failure alone isn’t enough to survive
        summary judgment. To recover on her interference claim, Graves
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 05/09/2023      Page: 10 of 15

        10                      Opinion of the Court                  21-13469

        must also—prong three—show that Brandstar’s failure caused her
        harm. See Ramji, 992 F.3d at 1245; accord, e.g., Munoz v. Selig Enters.,
        Inc., 981 F.3d 1265, 1274–75 (11th Cir. 2020) (citing Graham v. State
        Farm Mut. Ins., 193 F.3d 1274, 1284 (11th Cir. 1999) (per curiam)
        (“Even if the defendants have committed certain technical infrac-
        tions under the FMLA, [a] plaintiﬀ may not recover in the absence
        of damages.”)). Under our precedent, an employee doesn’t suﬀer
        harm from an employer’s technical non-compliance with the
        FMLA’s notice requirements when she receives all her requested
        time oﬀ and is paid for her absences. Munoz, 981 F.3d at 1275.
               The parties agree that Brandstar provided Graves the leave
        she requested in her May 2 email and that she received full pay for
        those days. In fact, Graves accidentally clocked in on her two days
        of requested leave, and Brandstar HR executives circled back weeks
        later to ensure that she corrected her timecard to reﬂect her re-
        quested leave. Thus, Graves can’t demonstrate that she was
        harmed by Brandstar’s technical failure to notify her of her FMLA
        rights. As a result, we must reject her interference claim arising out
        of the May 2 request for leave.
                                           2
               Graves separately contends that her May 6 email—in which
        she asked for ongoing ﬂexibility to prepare her home for her fa-
        ther’s move to Florida—triggered Brandstar’s obligation to provide
        her eligibility and right-and-responsibilities notice, which it failed
        to do. We disagree for a fundamental reason: Graves didn’t request
USCA11 Case: 21-13469     Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 11 of 15

        21-13469               Opinion of the Court                        11

        leave either in her May 6 email or in her subsequent communica-
        tions with Brandstar.
               The Family and Medical Leave Act requires, at the very least,
        that an employee actually seek leave—of some sort—to trigger an
        employer’s obligation to give eligibility and rights-and-responsibil-
        ities notice. As already explained, the operative notice regulation
        requires either that an employee speciﬁcally “request[] FMLA leave”
        or that the employer “acquire[] knowledge that an employee’s leave
        may be for an FMLA-qualifying reason.” 29 C.F.R. § 825.300(b)(1)
        (emphasis added). That regulation, as we have said, sets a low bar,
        but in either triggering instance, the employee must ask for time
        oﬀ—i.e., leave—in order to prompt the employer’s notice obliga-
        tions. See, e.g., Ramji, 992 F.3d at 1243–44 (holding that an employer
        was obligated to give an employee notice of her rights under the
        FMLA when she had clearly asked for sick leave to recuperate her
        injured knee).
                An examination of the May 6 email reveals that Graves didn’t
        ask for leave—of any sort—to care for her ailing father. To the con-
        trary, her message unambiguously discussed ongoing and future
        work with Brandstar, which included developing a show around
        her father’s transition to Florida. So, if anything, Graves’s father’s
        medical needs, in her view, presented new opportunities for work,
        not reasons for leave. True, Graves asked to be staﬀed on local pro-
        jects to assist with her father’s transition to Florida. But at most,
        those amounted to requests for accommodations to allow her to
        continue to work, not a request for leave. Her rejection of
USCA11 Case: 21-13469       Document: 38-1         Date Filed: 05/09/2023        Page: 12 of 15

        12                        Opinion of the Court                     21-13469

        Brandstar’s oﬀer to move from full-time to freelance also evidences
        her desire to continue working. Put simply, all signs point to the
        fact that Graves intended to keep working full-time at Brandstar,
        not that she wanted leave. 2
               Moreover, not only did Graves fail to “request leave” in the
        May 6 email, but there’s also no indication that Brandstar “ac-
        quire[d] knowledge” on its own that she wanted “leave . . . for an
        FMLA-qualifying reason.” 29 C.F.R. § 825.300(b). Therefore,
        Graves’s email didn’t trigger Brandstar’s obligation to notify her of
        her eligibility and rights and responsibilities under the FMLA. We
        conclude that the district court didn’t err in granting summary
        judgment to Brandstar on Graves’s FMLA claim.

        2 In the final sentence of her email, Graves mentioned that she had planned to
        “driv[e] [her father] and his beloved dog down to FL once he[ was] released
        from rehab to begin treatments.” Even if we were to assume that sentence
        implied a request for leave and that Graves’s proposal constituted “care”
        within the meaning of the FMLA, see 29 U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1)(C), her claim
        would fail on the same ground that precludes her FMLA claim related to the
        May 2 email: Graves can’t show harm resulting from any technical non-com-
        pliance with the FMLA’s notice regulation because her father didn’t move to
        Florida until three months after she was let go. See supra at 7.
USCA11 Case: 21-13469      Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 05/09/2023     Page: 13 of 15

        21-13469               Opinion of the Court                         13

                                          B
               Graves next contends that the district court erred in granting
        summary judgment to Brandstar on her associational-discrimina-
        tion claim.
               Under the ADA, an employer is prohibited from discriminat-
        ing against an employee who is “associated” with someone who
        has signiﬁcant medical needs for whom the employee may need to
        provide care. 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(4). We evaluate a claim of asso-
        ciational discrimination under the ADA using the burden shifting-
        framework outlined in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S.
        792, 802–04 (1973). See Wascura v. City of S. Miami, 257 F.3d 1238,
        1242 (11th Cir. 2001).
                In the absence of direct evidence of discrimination, the em-
        ployee bears the initial burden to show a prima facie case of dis-
        crimination. Hilburn v. Murata Elecs. N. Am., Inc., 181 F.3d 1220, 1226
        (11th Cir. 1999). Once the employee has done so, the employer
        need only produce evidence of a legitimate, nondiscriminatory rea-
        son for its decision. Wascura, 257 F.3d at 1242. The burden then
        shifts back to the employee to show suﬃcient evidence to create a
        genuine issue of material fact that the employer’s stated reason is
        pretextual. Id. at 1243. If the employee can’t carry that burden,
        then the employer is entitled to summary judgment. Id.
               We will assume arguendo that Graves has made out a prima
        facie case and move to the second and third prongs of the McDon-
        nell Douglas analysis. On the second prong, Brandstar proﬀers am-
        ple evidence that Graves was ﬁred because of her haphazard
USCA11 Case: 21-13469     Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 05/09/2023    Page: 14 of 15

        14                     Opinion of the Court                21-13469

        attendance, poor communication, incomplete work, and diﬃcult
        work demeanor.
                By contrast, Graves oﬀers little to no argument—in either
        her initial or reply brief—to carry her burden on the third prong.
        What we said in Wascura applies here foursquare: Graves “has
        failed to adduce suﬃcient evidence from which a reasonable jury
        could ﬁnd that [Brandstar’s] proﬀered, non-discriminatory reasons
        for her termination were pretextual.” 257 F.3d at 1243. The only
        evidence she marshals is the “temporal proximity” between her fa-
        ther’s acute onset decline and her termination—which, as we’ve
        previously held, isn’t enough to show pretext. Gogel v. Kia Motors
        Mfg. of Georgia, Inc., 967 F.3d 1121, 1138 n.15 (11th Cir. 2020) (en
        banc) (“While close temporal proximity between the protected
        conduct and the adverse employment action can establish pretext
        when coupled with other evidence, temporal proximity alone is in-
        suﬃcient.”). Thus, the district court properly granted summary
        judgment to Brandstar on Graves’s ADA claim.
                                         C
               Lastly, Graves contends that the district court improperly
        weighed the evidence rather than viewing it in the light most favor-
        able to her when deciding Brandstar’s summary-judgment motion.
        Our review here is de novo, Munoz, 981 F.3d at 1272, and “we may
        aﬃrm the district court’s judgment on any ground that ﬁnds sup-
        port in the record,” Strickland v. Norfolk S. Ry. Co., 692 F.3d 1151,
        1154 (11th Cir. 2012) (quotation marks omitted). Having con-
        cluded that the record supports the district court’s grant of
USCA11 Case: 21-13469    Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 05/09/2023   Page: 15 of 15

        21-13469              Opinion of the Court                     15

        summary judgment to Brandstar on both the FMLA and ADA
        claims, we needn’t separately address this issue.
                                       III
               For the foregoing reasons, we aﬃrm the district court’s de-
        cision granting summary judgment for Brandstar.
              AFFIRMED.