Decided: June 19, 2012
The Plaintiff in this case, Carolyn Snydor, appeals the district court’s dismissal of her discrimination claim. In January 2009, Snydor, a public health nurse in Fairfax County, underwent surgery on her left foot. She returned to work in March and was then terminated by Fairfax County in November because her medical restrictions following surgery limited her “capacity to perform the full clinical duties of a public health nurse.” Following her termination, Snydor filed an administrative charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the County had discriminated against her on the basis of her disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In her charge, Snydor stated she had “requested a reasonable accommodation” from her manager, but was denied relief. She also completed an EEOC intake questionnaire, where she described her disability as limited walking ability and explained that she must use an electric wheelchair when moving for any length of time. Her questionnaire stated that she had requested “to be assigned as Nurse of the Day and to be in the clinic doing lighter duty work” and that in response, her supervisor said “she did not want me around the patients in the clinic because of [her] wheelchair.”
The EEOC issued Snydor a right-to-sue notice and she filed a complaint against the County in federal court. The County moved for summary judgment following discover, and the district court denied the motion finding that it remained in dispute whether Snydor could have served as a public health nurse while in a wheelchair. The County then filed a motion in limine seek to exclude the evidence that Snydor had requested to work in the clinic in her wheelchair, asserting that the sole accommodation she informed the EEOC she had requested was light duty work, never stating that she would have been able to perform her duties in a wheelchair. The district court agreed that Snydor did not file her proposed accommodation with the EEOC and dismissed the case sua sponte because of her failure to exhaust administrative appeals.
The ADA includes the requirement that a plaintiff must exhaust her administrative remedies by filing a charge with the EEOC before pursuing a suit in federal court. This requirement ensures that the employer is put on notice of the alleged violations and gives it a chance to address the discrimination prior to litigation, often allowing the injured party to obtain relief much sooner than in the courts. The goals of notice and opportunity for an agency response would be undermined by allowing a plaintiff to raise claims in litigation that did not appear in her EEOC charge, thus a plaintiff fails to exhaust their administrative remedies where the charges reference different time frames, actors, and discriminatory conduct than the central allegations in her suit. Examples are where a charge alleges only racial discrimination but the complaint includes sex discrimination, or where a charge alleges only retaliation but the complaint alleges racial discrimination as well. However, the exhaustion requirement is not meant to be construed so strictly as to bar suit where a plaintiff’s claims are reasonably related to her EEOC charge and can be expected to follow from a reasonable administrative investigation.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit found it clear that Snydor’s charge claimed what her suit claimed – she had been discriminated against based on her disability by being denied a reasonable accommodation. Holding that the requirement for exhaustion is whether the plaintiff’s administrative and judicial claims are reasonably related, not precisely the same, the court found sufficient similarities between the two to find that Snydor satisfied the requirement. The type of prohibited action she alleged, discrimination on the basis of disability by failing to provide a reasonable accommodation, remained consistent throughout. She did not attempt to raise new disabilities for the first time in court, and mentioned several times in her EEOC questionnaire the issue of her wheelchair. Furthermore, a wheelchair is a logical accommodation for her difficulties in walking, one that could be expected to follow from a reasonable administrative investigation by the EEOC and that should not have caused the County to be caught off guard when it was raised. The Fourth Circuit further concluded that sending Snydor back to the beginning of the process would undermine the congressional preference for agency resolution in the area, reversing the district court’s holding and remanding the case for further proceedings.
-Nora Bennani