Lewis v. School Dist. #70, No. 06-4435 (7th Cir. Apr. 17, 2008)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (IL, IN, WI) has ruled that a former Illinois school district bookkeeper can bring a claim for retaliation under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) over her removal from her position when she was taking intermittent leave. Debra Lewis, a Freeburg Community School District No. 70 (FCSD) bookkeeper and treasurer, began caring for her terminally ill parents at home in 2004. After her father died, and with the permission of Superintendent Rob Hawkins, Ms. Lewis began taking an increasing amount of time off to care for her mother, missing 72 of 242 workdays in 2004. With the encouragement of the superintendent, she took much of her bookkeeping work home. According to Mr. Hawkins, Ms. Lewis’ absence caused other employees to shift their works schedules to cover some of her duties. Although some school board members wanted to replace her, the superintendent instructed Ms. Lewis to resume her regular work schedule when the new school year began. She continued to miss a significant number of days, and he noted a number of “performance” problems unrelated to her absences. With board approval, Mr. Hawkins informed her that she had exhausted her paid sick leave and vacation time but was entitled to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA leave. She applied for and was granted intermittent FMLA leave. Eventually, the superintendent recommended she be replaced, and he informed her by letter that she could resign or accept a lower position as a teacher’s assistant. The only reason given for her replacement was that she missed “too much work to meet the essentials” of her job. Ms. Lewis’s husband, an attorney, suggested to the superintendent that these actions violated the FMLA. FCSD’s legal counsel responded that Ms. Lewis’s performance as bookkeeper was “not satisfactory” and, thus, the decision to replace her was unrelated to the FMLA. After her request for reinstatement was rejected, she sued FCSD in state court, alleging violations of FMLA, along with a number state law claims. FCSD removed the case to federal district court. After disposing of the state law claims, the district court granted summary judgment to the district on the FLMA claims, noting that the record documented Ms. Lewis’ poor performance and that she had failed to present evidence of retaliation.
The Seventh Circuit reversed the lower court’s FMLA ruling, concluding that Ms. Lewis had stated a valid retaliation claim. The appeals court found that Ms. Lewis had “presented both direct and circumstantial evidence of a discriminatory motive sufficient to avert summary judgment.” The court pointed to the superintendent’s statements that the sole reason for his decision was Ms. Lewis’s absenteeism as “direct evidence of an impermissible motivation for her loss of the bookkeeper position.” The circumstantial evidence of impermissible motive included the actions of the school board and the superintendent, which “cast doubt on their claim that her removal from the bookkeeper position was for incompetence.” The court found that the board’s and the superintendent’s conduct created the “permissible inference that, while fully cognizant of their obligations to Ms. Lewis under the FMLA, they decided not to inform her of those rights and place her on FMLA leave, but instead to build a case for her discharge on the ground of incompetence.” The court also noted that the record revealed the board’s hostility toward FMLA requirements, referring to them as “just ludicrous” and “a fiasco.” Second, during her FMLA leave, the board required her to perform the functions of a full-time bookkeeper while working and only being paid part-time and, then, removed her when “her periods of intermittent leave prevented her from timely completing all of the duties she had performed as a fulltime bookkeeper.” As a result, a reasonable jury “could find that the FMLA leave granted to Ms. Lewis was illusory … [and take the view] that the performance problems noted by the district court could not provide a permissible non-discriminatory justification for an adverse employment action.” Lastly, the court found that a reasonable jury could conclude that the FCSD’s actions provided circumstantial proof of retaliatory motive, since the board permanently demoted Ms. Lewis while she was still taking intermittent FLMA leave and failed to follow its own procedures in doing so. The appeals court also noted “evidence that the board may have tampered with audio recordings of meetings at which her employment was discussed, evidence that we have considered to be probative of pretext or improper motivation on other occasions.” In sum, “whether the school board decided to replace Ms. Lewis at least in part because she had inconvenienced the District by missing too many days of work under the FMLA, or whether the decision was based only on the fact that it felt that she was not a very good bookkeeper, is a question of fact that must be decided by a jury.”
Lewis v. School Dist. #70, No. 06-4435 (7th Cir. Apr. 17, 2008)