Court Opinion

ID: 9491131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:04:35.850429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:31.838992
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
With all due respect to the court’s opinion, I do not believe that the record, fairly read, admits of a conclusion that it is open to a jury to find that Ms. Fry fired Kiel in retaliation for his engaging in protected activity. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
The record reveals, as established by the deposition testimony of Kiel’s co-workers, that Kiel yelled out at Ms. Fry, “You’re selfish, Julie, you’re selfish,” and then slammed a desk drawer. At least two of these co-workers testified that they had never before heard Kiel speak that loudly. As one of the co-workers testified, “It started off, he was kind of yelling louder than I had ever heard him speak before, and then she [Ms. Fry] was trying to calm him down, I felt.”
As for the contention that Kiel may not have realized that he was shouting, he himself testified that “If I want to shout, I shout,” which is consistent with the co-workers’ testimony that they had never before heard him raise his voice.
Perhaps we might have been more tolerant of Kiel’s insubordinate outburst than was Ms. Fry, but to hold that the ADA insulates an employee from the consequences of insubordination is to engage in a tortured reading of the purpose of that statute. To hold in the face of this record that it would be reasonable for a jury to find that Ms. Fry fired Kiel in retaliation for his requesting a TDD is to penalize employers like the Frys, who have an admirable record of hiring deaf employees, and to send an ominous message to other employers who might heretofore have been contemplating adopting a similar hiring practice. Virtue may well be its own reward, but we ill serve enlightened employment practices by fettering them with bonds the statute was never contemplated to impose.