In Terry v. County of Cayuga, decided Sept. 30, 2013, the Northern District of New York denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s claim that she was subjected to retaliation under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Plaintiff, an attorney, was fired the day she returned from her two-week FMLA leave.
The FMLA entitles eligible employees to 12 weeks of annual leave for qualifying health or family obligations, and provides that an employer may not terminate or otherwise retaliate against an employee for taking such leave. Prohibited retaliation occurs where the employee’s FMLA leave is “at least one motivating factor” in the employer’s termination decision.
The court found that an inference of retaliation was justified by the close temporal proximity between plaintiff’s return from her FMLA leave and her termination, as well as her supervisor’s expressed hostility towards plaintiff’s FMLA leave.
For example, plaintiff’s supervisor (Westphal) rated her low in the “dependability” category on her one performance evaluation, noted that plaintiff is dependable “when present”, and that her “significant use of sick time suggested diminished performance.” These comments (among others) evinced actionable leave-based animus.
While defendant cited a number of alleged performance deficiencies as non-retaliatory termination reasons, there was sufficient evidence of pretext to warrant a jury trial. The court pointed to, for example, facts undermining a co-worker’s reports of plaintiff’s excessive phone use, delays in disciplining plaintiff, and the failure to tell plaintiff that she was being fired because of performance issues.
The court concluded that while “extensive evidence of Plaintiff’s performance issues” may have played a role in the decision to terminate plaintiff, plaintiff presented enough evidence upon which a reasonable jury “could determine that Plaintiff’s FMLA leave was a motivating factor in Westphal’s decision to terminate her employment.”