Hobson v. Austin

FAYE RENNELL HOBSON v. LLOYD AUSTIN, Secretary, Department of Defense¹

NO. 3:17-1485

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE NASHVILLE DIVISION

February 15, 2021

TO: Honorable William L. Campbell, Jr., District Judge

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

By Order entered December 18, 2017 (Docket Entry No. 8), this pro se action was referred to the Magistrate Judge for pretrial proceedings under 28 U.S.C. §§ 636(b)(1)(a)( and (B), Rule 72(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Local Rules of Court.

Pending before the Court are cross motions for summary judgment filed by the parties. See Plaintiff's motion for summary judgment (Docket Entry No. 87) and Defendant's motion for summary judgement (Docket Entry No. 135). For the reasons set forth below, the Court respectfully recommends that Plaintiff's motion be denied and Defendant's motion be granted.

I. BACKGROUND

Faye Rennell Hobson ("Plaintiff") is a resident of Clarksville, Tennessee and a former employee of the United States Department of Defense Education Activity ("DoDEA"), an agency within the Department of Defense ("DoD"). Plaintiff began working as a teacher with the DoDEA in 2002, and held several different teaching jobs within the DoDEA over the course of the next decade and a half. Some of the jobs were within the United States at the Fort Campbell MilitaryInstallation ("Fort Campbell") and some were overseas in Germany and Guam, and, most recently, in South Korea, where Plaintiff asserts that she taught from 2010-2016. Plaintiff's last teaching position with the DoDEA was as a high school teacher at the Fort Knox, Kentucky Army Base ("Ft. Knox") during the 2016-2017 school year. Plaintiff resigned from her employment at Ft. Knox and from the DoDEA on October 14, 2016.²

During Plaintiff's employment with the DoDEA, she filed several equal employment opportunity ("EEO") complaints and pursued several lawsuits based upon various incidents of alleged employment discrimination and retaliation against her during her employment. See Complaint (Docket Entry No. 1) at ¶¶ 10-11. See also Hobson v. Gates, 3:10-00964; Hobson v. Mattis, 3:14-01540; Hobson v. Carter, 3:15-00741; and Hobson v. Carter, et al., 3:16-00744. The instant lawsuit covers the time period during her final time in Korea and while she was at Ft. Knox after leaving Korea.

While teaching in Korea, Plaintiff desired to obtain a teaching position at Ft. Campbell, which is close to her home where her retired husband resides, but was not selected for any positions. Id. at ¶ 11. Juxtaposed against Plaintiff's desire to return to Ft. Campbell was her request for a reasonable accommodation for physical and mental issues from which she suffers. Beginning in 2015, Plaintiff requested that she be assigned to a teaching assignment at Ft. Campbell so that she would be near her stateside doctors. During 2016, DoDEA officials made the decision to accommodate Plaintiff by assigning her from her overseas teaching position to a teaching position in the contiguous United States ("CONUS") which would permit her to be closer to medical care within the CONUS. Although a teaching assignment in North Carolina for a special education position for the 2016-2017 school year was initially offered to Plaintiff, she declined that teaching assignment. DoDEA officials then searched for additional vacant teaching assignments and offered Plaintiff a high school teaching assignment at Fort Knox for the 2016-2017 school year, which she ultimately accepted.

Although Plaintiff accepted the Ft. Knox teaching assignment and began working there, she was displeased with several aspects of the job change. First, Ft. Knox is several hundred miles away from Plaintiff's home in Clarksville. Because of the length of the daily commute from her home to Ft. Knox, Plaintiff had to find and pay for housing in the Ft. Knox area. Because her personal doctors were in the Clarksville/Ft. Campbell area, she also had to make lengthy trips and take leave from work in order to see her doctors. Second, Plaintiff did not receive the salary that she expected to receive at Ft. Knox. While in Korea, Plaintiff was paid as a "Masters +30" pay level, but she was paid at a lower "Masters, Step 15" pay level at Ft. Knox. Finally, during the fall of 2016, the DoDEA directed that withdrawals be made from Plaintiff's paychecks to reimburse the DoDEA for overpayments that had been made to Plaintiff. Plaintiff contends that all of these factors caused her to experience unnecessary stress, exacerbating her anxiety and led to her resigning from the Ft. Knox teaching assignment and her employment with the DoDEA in October 2016.

Believing that she had suffered from discriminatory and retaliatory treatment regarding her assignment to Ft. Knox instead of Ft. Campbell, Plaintiff thereafter filed two administrative complaints of employment discrimination with the DoDEA's Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity Office ("DMEO"). In her first complaint, No. DE-FY16-144/2017-CONF-008 ("Administrative Complaint #144"), Plaintiff complained that she was subjected to discrimination based on physical and mental disabilities (injured right hand, osteoarthritis, and anxiety disorder), race (African-American), and retaliation for her prior EEO activity when she was denied her requested reasonable accommodation of a reassignment to a teaching position at the Ft. Campbell Middle School, when she was denied credits and years of experience that impacted her pay, and when her pay was wrongfully reduced because of debt tickets that had been lodged against her by the DoD.³ In her second complaint, No. DE-FY17-003/2017-CONF-014 ("Administrative Complaint #003"), Plaintiff reasserted the bulk of her prior complaint, added an allegation that shehad been constructively discharged from the Ft. Knox teaching position, and linked discrimination on account of her disability, race, and prior EEO activity to the alleged constructive discharge.⁴

After the processing and review of her administrative complaints was completed and did not result in administrative relief for Plaintiff,⁵ she filed this pro se lawsuit against the Secretary of the United States Department of Defense ("Defendant"). See Complaint (Docket Entry No. 1). Plaintiff brings claims of unlawful employment discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., and the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 et seq. ("ADA"). Id. at 1 and 4-5.⁶ As relief, Plaintiff seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages, an award of back pay, and an order that Defendant re-employ her. Id. at 5.

In her complaint, Plaintiff contends that she is pursuing the issues that were part of Administrative Complaint #144, which she sets out as:

whether plaintiff was subject to discrimination based on her disabilities (physical: injured right hand and osteoarthritis, hypertension, palpitations, chronic renal insufficiency, reflux diseases, iron deficiency anemia, hyperlipidemia, impaired fasting glucose, and Anxiety disorder), race (African-American) and reprisal (prior EEO Activity) when:

A. On August 12, 2016, she was denied a medical reassignment to a position at Fort Campbell Middle School (Wassom). A position in which the plaintiff was/is qualified and highly certified to teach.

B. On August 15, 2016, Ms. Patti Ross, Supervisory Human Resources (HR) Specialist, Human Resources Directorate, DoDEA (a DoDEA HR person that the plaintiff has filed approx. 4 EEO complaints that involved Ms. Ross) denied plaintiff years of teaching experience in which she was previously awarded and denied 64 out of 94 graduate credits from her Masters +30 pay grade.

C. Beginning on September 17, [2016], the DoDEA HR directed the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) to reduce plaintiff's pay, as well as to collect erroneous debts, by way of DoDEA created debt tickets. Plaintiff's pay changed from the agreed upon amount of $76,800.00 to approx. $65,000.00.

See Complaint at 1-2. Although Plaintiff also raised claims in her complaint based upon the allegations of constructive discharge that were set out in Administrative Complaint #003, id. at 2, the Court dismissed the constructive discharge claim and any claim contained in Administrative Complaint #003 as untimely. See Order entered March 22, 2019 (Docket Entry No. 67).⁷ Defendant thereafter filed an answer (Docket Entry No. 74), and the parties were given a period for pretrial activity in the case pursuant to scheduling orders (Docket Entry Nos. 78, 95, and 116). A jury trial in the case has been demanded by Defendant but a trial date has not yet been set.⁸

II. MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND RESPONSES

Plaintiff argues that she is entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law on each of her claims. In her supporting memorandum (Docket Entry No. 88), she contends that there are no genuine material facts at issue and that the Court should grant her judgment on her discrimination and retaliation claims. Plaintiff argues that she has set forth conclusive proof of discrimination and retaliation through documentary evidence of workplace events that occurred as early as 2009 and continued until the time of her resignation, through the Reports of Investigation ("ROI") and Final Agency Decisions ("FAD") from her EEO actions, and through Defendant's discovery responses. Plaintiff argues that Defendant has not supplied any evidence that negates her allegations of disability discrimination, racial discrimination, and retaliation and, thus, there is no need for a jury to hear her claims in order for her to prevail. Plaintiff supports her motion with 12 exhibits, seeDocket Entry Nos. 88-1 through 88-13, and by referring the Court to the objection (Docket Entry No. 62)⁹ that she filed to the previously entered Report and Recommendation.

In response to Plaintiff's motion, Defendant first argues that Plaintiff's motion is procedurally...