Employment – Disability discrimination

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Employment
Disability discrimination

Where an employee did not meet his employer’s legitimate expectations, summary judgment was properly granted to the employer on his claims of disability discrimination and retaliation.

“For a valid discrimination and retaliation claim under the ADA, an employee must show that he was meeting his employer’s legitimate employment expectations, and that he was performing his job satisfactorily. Lloyd, 552 F.3d at 601. The record in this case demonstrates that as far back as 2005, Dickerson received warnings from his supervisors for failing to complete work assignments or secure equipment, and leaving his work site without obtaining his supervisor’s permission. In 2007, before he complained of disability discrimination, at least one of his co-workers was warned that he should stay away from Dickerson if he wanted to be promoted to fulltime employment. In the first formal written evaluation performed on Dickerson, he was rated as “Unsatisfactory” in three of seven categories. In the categories in which he was ‘Satisfactory, his direct supervisor, Deffenbaugh, said that Dickerson ‘is consistently late for work and needs to improve’; some ‘jobs need to be redone because of not listening to the job instructions’; and Dickerson ‘does only the bare minimum to meet job requirements.’ In the categories in which Dickerson was ‘Unsatisfactory,’ Deffenbaugh stated that Dickerson ‘needs constant supervision or he will wander off jobs’; and that ‘[m]any times when Bobby is required to work with other staff members, they will request someone else to work with. He leaves the area and puts more burden on them.’ Overall, Dickerson’s performance was rated as ‘Unsatisfactory’: ‘Bobby takes no initiative to be a leader or a positive employee to try to meet job requirements . . . . Bobby is the type of employee that will take a lot of my time as a supervisor just to make sure he is still working.’ In the follow-up evaluation that Deffenbaugh performed approximately seven months later, he concluded that Dickerson, in spite of receiving “many” verbal reprimands to improve his work performance, remained an unsatisfactory employee. He noted that although Dickerson showed improvement in securing equipment, he still failed to tell his supervisor that he was going to leave a work site, and still shirked his work responsibilities to the detriment of his co-workers.

Affirmed.

10-3381 Dickerson v. Board of Trustees

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Murphy, J., Williams, J.

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