Lanir v. Yorktown Sys. Grp., Inc.

527 F.Supp.3d 817

Alon LANIR, Plaintiff,

v.YORKTOWN SYSTEMS GROUP, INC., Defendant.

Civil Action No. 1:19-cv-1203

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

Signed March 19, 2021

John Joseph Rigby, McInroy & Rigby LLP, Arlington, VA, for Plaintiff.

Lucas Taylor Hanback, Rogers Joseph O'Donnell, Washington, DC, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

T. S. Ellis, III, United States District Judge

At issue in this Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12101, et seq. matter are the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment. The matter has been fully briefed and argued, including a telephonic hearing that occurred on September 30, 2020. For the reasons stated below, Plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment must be denied, and Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment must be granted in part and denied in part.

I.

Plaintiff Alon Lanir, an at-will Hebrew language instructor diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, was previously employed by Defendant Yorktown Systems Group, Inc., a government contractor, to teach Hebrew at the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute ("FSI"). Plaintiff's at-will employment with Defendant depended solely on an active FSI teaching assignment, and Plaintiff's final FSI teaching assignment was a term assignment ending on February 15, 2019. Thus, Plaintiff's at-will employment with Defendant was scheduled to end on February 15, 2019.

In the year preceding Plaintiff's pre-determined end date, several FSI students complained about Plaintiff's teaching, and accordingly, Plaintiff received two deficiency reports from FSI regarding these student complaints. Plaintiff's worksite supervisor, Government Technical Monitor ("GTM") Roula Hickman, a government employee, also complained about Plaintiff's work performance, as Hickman felt that Hickman had to spend an inordinate amount of time instructing Plaintiff on the specific details of Plaintiff's classroom assignments. Specifically, Hickman complained that Hickman spent more time providing Plaintiff with instructions than all other FSI language instructors combined, and that Plaintiff called and emailed her excessively.

On December 4, 2018, two months prior to Plaintiff's pre-determined end date, Plaintiff had a disagreement with Hickman about Plaintiff's work performance. Shortly thereafter, on December 10, 2018, Plaintiff filed an ADA accommodation request with Defendant, requesting that Defendant require Hickman, an FSI employee, to accommodate Plaintiff's disability by providing clearer and more explicit instructions to Plaintiff about classroom assignments. Plaintiff later amended his ADA accommodation request to request the following:

I need instructions given to me to be very specefic [sic] and that my GTM would be willing to answer questions, no matter how mundane they may be. I also need a little understanding. I also need instructions given to me to be consistent and in writing. I also need to have someone to turn to if I have questions. I also need my GTM to be sensitized as to how to interact with autistic people.¹

Defendant declined to provide Plaintiff these specific accommodations, in part because, as the parties now agree, Defendant could not require Hickman, a non-employee, to alter her behavior toward Plaintiff or to perform certain tasks. Nonetheless, on December 13, 2018, Defendant elected to respond to Plaintiff's accommodation request by placing Plaintiff on a Performance Improvement Plan ("PIP"). This PIP provided Plaintiff with five specific instructions designed to improve his relationship with Hickman. Notably, however, the PIP informed Plaintiff that failure to improve his relationship with Hickman could result in further disciplinary action, including termination of Plaintiff's at-will employment. Specifically, the PIP stated:

Corrective Actions: Review all tasks carefully to ensure understanding ... After reviewing tasks assigned, prepare a brief summary of questions and points of clarification to submit to [Hickman] ... Send the summary [to Hickman] in the body of an email; not as an attachment ... Do not use the delivery notification or read receipt function when communicating with [FSI] ... Review the response from [Hickman]. If there is something you still are not sure of, seek additional assistance from [Steve Sabia, Defendant's Program Manager for Language Instruction].

...

Should your performance remain at an unacceptable level it could result in further disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.²

On February 15, 2019, FSI declined to extend Plaintiff's teaching assignment beyond Plaintiff's February 15, 2019 pre-determined end date, and accordingly, Defendant terminated Plaintiff on that day for lack of a work assignment. Following Plaintiff's termination, Plaintiff brought this ADA action against Defendant,³ alleging the following four claims:

(1) Count 1 alleges an ADA claim for failure to accommodate based on Defendant's alleged failure to accommodate Plaintiff's disability following Plaintiff's ADA accommodation request; (2) Count 2 alleges an ADA claim for retaliation based on Plaintiff's placement on a PIP following Plaintiff's ADA accommodation request;

(3) Count 3 alleges an ADA claim for disability discrimination based chiefly on Plaintiff's termination from employment;⁴ and

(4) Count 4 alleges an ADA claim for retaliation based on Plaintiff's termination from employment, which occurred two months after Plaintiff's ADA accommodation request.

At issue now are the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment. Defendant seeks summary judgment on all claims, arguing that Defendant did all it could in response to Plaintiff's accommodation request, and that Defendant neither discriminated against Plaintiff on the basis of Plaintiff's disability nor retaliated against Plaintiff for engaging in protected activity. For his part, Plaintiff opposes Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment and seeks summary judgment as to Count 1, arguing that Defendant did not adequately respond to Plaintiff's accommodation request. The parties have fully briefed and argued their positions and thus the matter is now ripe for disposition.

II.

A prima facie case for failure to accommodate requires a plaintiff to establish (1) that he or she has a qualifying disability under 29 U.S.C. § 705(20) ; (2) that the defendant had notice of plaintiff's disability; (3) that the plaintiff could perform the essential function of the job with a reasonable accommodation; and (4) that the defendant refused to make any reasonable accommodation. See Reyazuddin v. Montgomery Cty., Md. , 789 F.3d 407, 414 (4th Cir. 2015) ; see also Wilson v. Dollar Gen. Corp. , 717 F.3d 337, 345 (4th Cir. 2013) (same). If a plaintiff establishes a prima face case for failure to accommodate, a defendant nonetheless "avoids liability [under the ADA] if it can show as a matter of law that the proposed accommodation ‘will cause undue hardship in the particular circumstances.’ " Reyazuddin , 789 F.3d at 414 (quoting Halpern v. Wake Forest Univ. Health Scis. , 669 F.3d 454, 464 (4th Cir. 2012) ).

Here, for Count 1, an ADA claim for failure to accommodate, there are genuine disputes of material fact with respect to both Plaintiff's prima facie case and Defendant's undue hardship defense. First, there are genuine disputes of material fact regarding element four of Plaintiff's prima facie case, namely whether Defendant failed to afford Plaintiff a reasonable accommodation under the circumstances. Importantly, the ADA does not require an employer to provide the "exact accommodation" requested,⁵ especially where, as here, the requested accommodation—altering the behavior and actions of a non-employee—is admittedly beyond the employer's control.⁶ But the ADA nonetheless requires, at a minimum, that an employer forward the employee's accommodation request to the party able to provide the requested accommodation—in this case, FSI, the party employing Hickman—and that Plaintiff, Defendant, and FSI then engage in an interactive process to consider whether an accommodation is warranted under the circumstances, and if so, the nature of such an accommodation. See, e.g. , Haneke v. Mid-Atl. Capital Mgmt. , 131 F. App'x 399, 400 (4th Cir. 2000) (citing 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(o)(3) ) ("Implicit in the fourth element is the ADA requirement that the employer and employee engage in an interactive process to identify a reasonable accommodation."); Crabill v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ. , 423 F. App'x 314, 322–23 (4th Cir. 2011) (same).⁷ In this respect, an employer may be liable for failure to accommodate if the record establishes that " ‘had a good faith interactive process occurred, the parties could have found a reasonable accommodation that would enable the disabled person to perform the job's essential functions.’ " Wilson , 717 F.3d at 347 (quoting Jones v. Nationwide Life Ins. Co. , 696 F.3d 78, 91 (1st Cir. 2012) ).

Here, there are genuine disputes of material fact regarding the adequacy of the interactive process undertaken here and the reasonableness of the accommodation Defendant provided to Plaintiff. In this respect, the parties sharply dispute (1) whether Defendant forwarded Plaintiff's accommodation request to FSI in adequate detail, (2) whether Defendant adequately discussed the substance of Plaintiff's accommodation request with Plaintiff and FSI in effort to determine an appropriate accommodation, and (3) whether Plaintiff's PIP was an appropriate accommodation under the circumstances.⁸ Notably, Defendant's duty to coordinate with FSI and Plaintiff to consider an appropriate accommodation is not eliminated by the fact that FSI is not Plaintiff's direct employer. Nor is Defendant's duty to coordinate with FSI and Plaintiff eliminated by the fact that Plaintiff contacted the Department of State's Office of Civil Rights to file a discrimination complaint against Hickman, as this complaint concerned allegations of...