Marí v. Univ. of Puerto Rico
| Decision Date | 02 September 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 13-1641,13-1641 |
| Parties | MARÍA J. COLLAZO-ROSADO, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO; MARISOL GÓMEZ-MOUAKAD, Defendants, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Daniel R. Domínguez, U.S. District Judge]
[Hon. Camille L. Vélez-Rivé, U.S. Magistrate Judge]
Before Lynch, Chief Judge, Thompson and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
Jorge Martínez-Luciano, with whom Emil Rodríguez-Escudero and Martínez-Luciano & Rodríguez-Escudero were on brief, for appellant.
Edna E. Pérez-Román for appellee University of Puerto Rico.
Mayra M. González-Reyes, with whom Jiménez, Graffam & Lausell was on brief, for appellee Marisol Gómez-Mouakad.
We deal here with a suit by María J. Collazo-Rosado ("Collazo") against the University of Puerto Rico ("UPR") and Marisol Gómez-Mouakad ("Gómez") — Collazo's former employer and supervisor, respectively. A Crohn's-disease sufferer (Crohn's is a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine), Collazo contends that the defendants did not renew her employment contract in retaliation for her complaining about disability-discrimination — an action that, she says, infracted 42 U.S.C. § 12203(a), which is the anti-retaliation provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"). She also contends that Gómez's conduct constituted First-Amendment retaliation under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But on summary judgment, the district court rejected these claims as a matter of law. And in the pages that follow, we explain why the court got it right.
The relevant facts — read in the light most flattering to Collazo (the summary-judgment loser), consistent with record support, see Soto-Padró v. Pub. Bldgs. Auth., 675 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 2012) — tell the following story. Collazo has lived with Crohn's disease for many years, at least since 2005. Sometime in 2006 she interviewed for a position as "mentorship coordinator" of the "academic support development center" at the UPR's Humacaocampus. The center (which is what we'll call it from now on) is a federally-funded program at the UPR that (as its name suggests) offers students academic-support services, specifically in the area of natural sciences. Collazo told her interviewer — Dr. Helena Méndez-Medina ("Méndez"), the center's then-codirector — that if she got the job, she would have to have access to a bathroom and be able to use accumulated sick leave to see her doctor or go for tests. These were "reasonable accommodations," she told Méndez. No problem, Méndez replied — or words to that effect. Ultimately, the UPR hired Collazo in early winter 2006 on a contract set to expire in September 2007. But twice the UPR renewed her contract on a one-year basis — in September 2007 and again in September 2008.
Collazo's job involved hiring and training students to mentor and tutor other students at the center; supervising the center's secretary, plus those students who worked and received services there; preparing surveys and reports; and managing the center's long-term "functionality." Those tasks were hers and hers alone. The center was open 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. And her shift ran from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
About two months after starting at the center, Méndez sent a memo to all personnel — including Collazo — telling them to notify the administrative assistant first before missing work, arriving late, or leaving early. She also reminded everyone thatthey had to punch a time clock — which was near Collazo's desk — to signal their arrival at and departure from work. "No attendance card will be signed," Méndez added, "if it contains entries made by hand or changes in the work schedule that ha[ve] not been properly pre-authorized." Collazo, all agree, hand wrote her time on cards dozens of times before and after this memo, offering excuses like she "forgot to punch" in or the time-clock area was "closed."
Gómez became Collazo's immediate supervisor in August 2008. Chatting together one day around this time, Collazo mentioned she had Crohn's disease. And she explained the reasonable accommodations she had received and hoped to continue receiving: the ability to take frequent bathroom breaks and attend medical appointments. "[D]on't worry," Gómez told her, though she did ask Collazo to give center personnel a heads-up — by telephone, email, or text — whenever she was arriving late, leaving early, or away from her desk for any "considerable" span of time. The reason for this was that Collazo's job required that she be physically present at the center to supervise student mentors and tutors.
Collazo, it turns out, "normally" gave prior notice when she had a medical appointment. "Normally" is her word, not ours. And Gómez granted every one of her leave and absence requests — whether medically related or not — and never expressly or even impliedly stated that she could not take bathroom breaks.
Eventually, however, Gómez became concerned that the center was not meeting the program's goals and objectives. Here is what happened: In January 2009 the codirector of a center at the UPR's Arecibo campus — Dr. Philippe Scott — told Gómez that he too thought her center was underperforming, based on a head-to-head comparison of the two centers. On top of that, other professors complained about how the tutoring system was running. Professor Rolando Tremont, for example, director of the chemistry department at the UPR's Humacao campus, told Gómez he thought the center was not offering enough mentor and tutoring sessions to students in his department. He also complained that mentors and tutors were not regularly attending classes in his department. They needed to attend classes regularly, he said, because that way they would know what was being taught, which would make them better chemistry mentors and tutors at the center.
Worried that the federal government might defund the program, Gómez took a more active role in the center's operations, zeroing in on the staff's performance. She held meetings to discuss ways to improve. And she asked Collazo to put on more and different workshops. She also issued a memo in March 2009 that basically mirrored the one Méndez had issued two years earlier: Gómez reminded everyone — including Collazo — that persons needing to modify their work schedule must give advance notice. "[T]ime cards," Gómez added, Collazo signed the bottom of that memo.
Keeping an eye on her underlings' attendance, Gómez saw that Collazo was either coming in late, leaving early, or leaving her work area for long stretches — without giving anyone any advance notice. So Gómez wrote her up, noting that her actions left the students without supervision; that they had talked about this problem many times before; that her "behavior [was] not permissible"; that she must follow proper protocol; and that she had at her disposal a number of ways to give the required notice. Collazo later tried to defend herself, saying: "If I was absent, well, I would call in." But "they would hardly answer the telephone," she added — probably, she speculated, because "they" checked the "caller ID" before deciding whether to pick up. She also later claimed that she had justified "all of these leaves" with "medical documents." But the record evidence she cites to is a doctor's note dealing with just one absence. For what it is worth, the UPR never lowered her salary because of her absences nor discounted the times that she was not at her work area.
Regrettably, on at least one occasion the visiting boyfriend of the secretary at the center laughed and made comments every time Collazo left the office, saying things like: "Again.
Look, Juliana, again." We infer that he was referring to Collazo's trips to the bathroom. Collazo felt humiliated by the event. And she complained to Gómez, apparently, who did nothing about it. The record shows, though, that Gómez never made fun of Collazo's medical condition and never allowed any employee to make fun of her condition either.
Fed up with what she thought was discriminatory treatment, Collazo complained to her union, formally asked the UPR for reasonable accommodations (ready access to a bathroom and flexibility to attend medical appointments), and filed charges of disability-based discrimination and retaliation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). To back up her position, she got a medical certificate from the director of the UPR's Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The certificate read in part:
[Collazo's] condition is protected by the [ADA]. [She] requires reasonable accommodation in her work. She needs ready access to the bathroom, and flexibility in her time schedule to allow for visits to the physician, laboratory or other diagnostic or treatment facility. She may unexpectedly become ill and require use of her sick leave without prior warning.
Concluding that Collazo's reasonable-accommodation request simply sought "improv[ed] labor relations in the workplace," the UPR's reasonable-accommodation committee recommended in June 2009 that the "parties" try to resolve theirdifferences "voluntarily" through something called the "Employee Assistance Program." As for the EEOC matter, the record does not tell us what happened there. But neither the UPR nor Gómez argues that Collazo failed to exhaust her administrative remedies. And because that issue does not go to our jurisdiction, see O'Rourke v. City of Providence, 235 F.3d 713, 725 n.3 (1st Cir. 2001), we say no more about that subject.
Moving on, we see that Gómez completed a written evaluation of Collazo's performance in June 2009, giving her an overall "B" rating. "B" stands for ...
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