Last week, the Sixth Circuit affirmed a school employer’s summary judgment on a retaliation and harassment claim brought by a non-renewed special education teacher who had alleged that she was terminated in retaliation for taking lactation breaks. Childers v. Casey County School District Board of Education, No. 23-5317 (6th Cir. Aug. 1, 2024). Although she brought the claims under Title IX and Kentucky state law, the Court applied Title VII burdens of proof to find that the employer’s explanation -- her failure to timely submit forms to fund a student’s education -- was not pretextual in light of the sporadic and stale allegations in her complaint.
According to the Court’s opinion, the plaintiff was a
contract special education teacher. A
new student was added during her maternity leave, but she failed to complete
his enrollment verification form after she returned even though she was aware
that his forms had not been properly completed or submitted for federal
funding. She and the Principal had
agreed that she could use her locked classroom for lactation breaks and put a
cover on the door. When she returned
from leave, the Special Education Director objected to the amount of paid time
she intended to spend each day without seeing students: 60 minutes for
planning, 60 minutes for lactation and 20 minutes for lunch. She did not adjust her schedule. Over the next six months, someone inadvertently
entered her room during her lactation breaks on three separate occasions.
The Principal also asked her one time to remove the cover from her door
for a safety audit, but she refused to do so. For her performance evaluation, she was free
to add examples of her students’ work, but she failed to do so. She was evaluated as “developing” in part
because the school lost funding for the new student for whom she had failed to
timely submit a required form. She
appealed the evaluation, but it was affirmed and her contract was not renewed.
The Court found that the teacher failed to show that her
poor performance evaluation was pretext for discrimination or retaliation. While she agreed that the new student’s form
was ultimately her responsibility and she had sufficient time to complete it,
she attempted to shift the blame to others. She also failed to show that the Special
Education Director or his outburst six months earlier about her work schedule played
any role the decision to not renew her contract. Finally, she could not show pretext when she
herself chose what was placed in her folder, not the Principal.
The Court also found insufficient evidence of a hostile work
environment based on five sporadic incidents over a six month period.
While we are sympathetic to [the
plaintiff’s] privacy concerns, these episodes are insufficient to raise an
actionable hostile work environment claim. [She] acknowledged that she did not
think that the janitors entered her classroom purposefully, which diminishes
the severity of the intrusions. . . . The infrequency of the privacy
violations, including the alleged removal of her window cover, demonstrates
that [her] allegations are the types of “isolated incidents” that are legally
insufficient to state a hostile work environment claim. . . . And [the Director’s]
challenges to and frustrations with her draft schedule were not frequent,
severe, physically threatening, or humiliating; at most, they constituted “mere
offensive utterance[s].”
