Higgins-Williams v. Sutter Medical Foundation

Facts

FEHA makes it “an unlawful employment practice … [¶] … [f]or an employer, because of … mental disability … to discriminate against [an employee] … in terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.” (§ 12940, subd. (a); Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 83.) A qualifying mental disability under FEHA includes “any mental or psychological disorder … , such as … emotional or mental illness” that “limits a major life activity.” (§ 12926, subd. (j)(1); Higgins-Williams, at p. 84.) The phrase “major life activity” is “broadly construed and includes physical, mental and social activities, and working,” and “‘limits’ means the achievement of a major life activity is made difficult.” (§ 12926, subd. (j)(1)(A)–(C); Higgins-Williams, at p. 84.) These statutory anchors framed the entire appeal, because the dispositive question was whether the plaintiff’s condition fit within them.

Sutter Medical Foundation hired Michaelin Higgins-Williams in September 2007 as a clinical assistant in its shared services department, where clinical assistants work as “floaters” doing patient intake. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 81.) Norma Perry was the regional manager overseeing the department from 2007 forward; from 2007 through 2011, Debbie Prince was the plaintiff’s immediate supervisor and reported to Perry. (Ibid.)

In June 2010, the plaintiff told her treating physician, Alexander Chen, M.D., that she was “stressed because of interactions at work with human resources and her manager,” and Dr. Chen diagnosed her with “adjustment disorder with anxiety.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 81.) On that diagnosis, Sutter granted her a stress-related disability leave under the CFRA and the federal FMLA from June 28 through August 2, 2010; Dr. Chen reported her disabling condition as “‘stress[] when dealing with her Human Resources and her manager.’” (Id. at pp. 81–82.) She exhausted her available CFRA and FMLA leave with that absence. (Id. at p. 82.)

When she returned on August 3, 2010, she received a negative performance evaluation from Prince — co-signed by Perry — which was her only negative evaluation at Sutter. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 82.) According to the plaintiff, Perry began singling her out for negative treatment on September 8, 2010, being “curt and abrupt” while friendly with coworkers and assigning her a disproportionate share of work; the next day, Prince inaccurately accused her of mishandling her identification badge, and Perry “grabbed plaintiff’s arm and yelled at her, after which plaintiff suffered a panic attack, left work, and never returned.” (Ibid.)

In mid-September 2010, the plaintiff submitted a disability accommodation request seeking a transfer to a different department (for “‘forever’”), a 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. schedule, and a leave of absence from September 9 through October 31, 2010, which Sutter granted. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 82.) Her “only alleged disability was her adjustment disorder with anxiety.” (Ibid.) Dr. Chen’s subsequent reports keyed her return to a transfer: in a November 4, 2010 status report, he stated she “needed to be transferred out of the Shared Services Department under a different regional manager, and that if such a transfer occurred, plaintiff would be able to function without limitations.” (Ibid.) Sutter extended her leave repeatedly, ultimately granting nearly five additional months of accommodation-based leave after her statutory entitlements were spent. (Id. at pp. 82, 86.)

Sutter eventually warned the plaintiff that her employment would end February 1, 2011 unless she provided, by January 31, 2011, information about when she could return to her clinical assistant position or whether additional leave would effectuate that return. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at pp. 82–83.) On January 28, 2011, Dr. Chen informed Sutter she “was not medically cleared to return to work at that point.” (Id. at p. 83.) At her deposition, the plaintiff testified she “did not feel she could have returned to work in the Shared Services Department with regional manager Perry or supervisor Prince on February 1, 2011,” yet also that she “‘was willing to try’” to return on March 1, 2011 under Perry. (Ibid.) Sutter terminated her on February 1, 2011. (Ibid.)

Procedural history

The plaintiff’s complaint pleaded four FEHA causes of action — disability discrimination; failure to engage in the interactive process and provide reasonable accommodation; retaliation for asserting disability rights; and disability-related wrongful termination in violation of public policy — plus two causes of action under California’s Moore-Brown-Roberti Family Rights Act (CFRA): discrimination for using CFRA leave and CFRA-related wrongful termination in violation of public policy. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 81.) The Superior Court of Sacramento County (Loncke, J.) granted summary judgment for Sutter, and the plaintiff appealed. (Id. at pp. 80–81.)

Reviewing the summary judgment de novo, the Court of Appeal explained that it “first identif[ies] the issues framed by the pleadings,” that summary judgment is properly granted to a defendant who shows that an element of the plaintiff’s cause of action cannot be established “unless the plaintiff sets forth specific facts showing a triable issue of material fact as to that element,” and that it “review[s] independently from the trial court the summary judgment papers.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at pp. 80–81.) The Third Appellate District affirmed the judgment in all respects except the cost award, which it remanded. (Id. at pp. 87–88.)

Issue

Does an employee’s inability to work under a particular supervisor — because of anxiety and stress related to that supervisor’s standard oversight of the employee’s job performance — constitute a mental disability within the meaning of FEHA, such that summary adjudication of the disability discrimination claim (and the claims derivative of it) was improper? (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at pp. 83–85.)

Holding

Reasoning

The prima facie framework supplied the dispositive element. To establish a prima facie case of mental disability discrimination under FEHA, the court explained, a plaintiff must show three elements: “(1) She suffers from a mental disability; (2) she is otherwise qualified to do the job with or without reasonable accommodation; and (3) she was subjected to an adverse employment action because of the disability.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 84, citing Faust v. California Portland Cement Co. (2007) 150 Cal.App.4th 864, 886.) The case turned entirely on the first element. As the court put it, “the undisputed facts show plaintiff does not suffer from a FEHA-recognized mental disability; consequently, the trial court properly granted summary adjudication of this cause of action because plaintiff cannot establish the element of a disability.” (Id. at p. 84.)

The supervisor-specific rule of Hobson controlled. The court grounded its analysis in Hobson v. Raychem Corp. (1999) 73 Cal.App.4th 614, holding flatly that “[a]n employee’s inability to work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress related to the supervisor’s standard oversight of the employee’s job performance does not constitute a disability under FEHA.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 84, citing Hobson, at p. 628 [“the inability to perform one particular job, or to work under a particular supervisor, does not constitute a qualified disability” under FEHA].) On the undisputed record, the plaintiff and Dr. Chen “acknowledged on several occasions, both directly and through requests for a transfer from the Shared Services Department, that plaintiff was unable to work under her regional manager, Perry, or her supervisor, Prince, because of anxiety and stress related to their standard oversight of plaintiff’s job performance.” (Id. at pp. 84–85.) That, the court concluded, “is precisely ‘the inability … to work under a particular supervisor’ that Hobson says does not rise to a FEHA-recognized disability.” (Id. at p. 85.) The court treated the plaintiff’s evidence of allegedly “nonstandard” oversight — Perry’s singling her out and grabbing her arm — as the most she could “muster,” insufficient to recharacterize a stress reaction to ordinary supervision. (Id. at pp. 84–85 & fn. 2.)

The two acknowledged dents in Hobson did not reach this holding. The court candidly conceded that “Hobson has been disapproved on one point and questioned on another.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 85.) First, the California Supreme Court “disapproved Hobson to the extent it held or suggested that ‘disability’ under FEHA requires a ‘substantial limit’ on a major life activity (as the parallel federal act … requires)”; under FEHA, “‘disability’ is defined more broadly … requiring only a ‘limit’ on a major life activity.” (Id. at p. 85, citing Colmenares v. Braemar Country Club, Inc. (2003) 29 Cal.4th 1019, 1031, fn. 6, and § 12926.1, subd. (c).) Both Hobson and the federal authority it relied on had applied “the narrower federal test of disability of ‘substantially limits’ a major life activity, rather than the broader California test of simply ‘limits.’” (Id. at p. 84.) But that disapproval went to the quantum of impairment, not to whether trouble with a single supervisor counts as an impairment at all — so it left the supervisor-specific rule untouched.

The EEOC v. UPS “single job” point was a different distinction. Second, the court acknowledged that Hobson‘s broader statement — that “the inability to perform one particular job … does not constitute a [FEHA-]qualified disability” — “has been questioned (by a 9th Cir. case).” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 85.) In EEOC v. United Parcel Service, Inc. (9th Cir. 2005) 424 F.3d 1060, the court noted, “‘exclusion from a single job with a single employer’” may possibly constitute a disability-satisfying “‘limitation’” in working under FEHA — there, exclusion from driving large UPS trucks because of monocular vision was a FEHA physical disability. (Id. at p. 85.) The plaintiff tried to leverage that language, but the court held she “cannot equate EEOC‘s language that an ‘“exclusion from a single job with a single employer”’ may constitute a FEHA disability … with an employee’s ‘inability … to work under a particular supervisor,’” because “the context in EEOC was that of working in a ‘“single [type of] job”’ and not that of working under a particular supervisor.” (Id. at pp. 85–86.) The decisive point: “What no decision has disapproved or questioned, however, is the Hobson point directly on point here” — the supervisor-specific rule. (Id. at p. 85.) The trial court therefore properly adjudicated the discrimination claim because the plaintiff “cannot establish the element of a disability.” (Id. at p. 86.)

The accommodation, interactive-process, retaliation, and Tameny claims failed derivatively. The plaintiff’s claims for failure to engage in the interactive process and make reasonable accommodation (§ 12940, subd. (n)), retaliation for requesting an accommodation (§ 12940, subd. (h)), and disability-based wrongful termination in violation of public policy under Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (1980) 27 Cal.3d 167 — all rested on the existence of a mental disability. Because the undisputed facts showed the plaintiff “did not have a legally recognized mental disability,” these “three causes of action fail.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 86.) The result follows from the architecture of FEHA: with no qualifying disability, there is nothing to accommodate, no protected request whose denial could be retaliated against, and no disability on which a public-policy discharge claim could rest.

The CFRA leave-related claims foundered on the plaintiff’s own deposition. Turning to the CFRA causes of action (§ 12945.2), the court emphasized that the plaintiff had exhausted her CFRA and FMLA entitlements with the June–August 2010 leave, after which Sutter granted “nearly five additional months of leave” on an accommodation basis and asked her to state when she could return or whether more leave would effectuate a return — information she did not provide. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at pp. 86–87.) Her “confusing and incomplete deposition testimony” did “not raise the legally required genuine issue of material fact to overcome the summary adjudication of those causes of action,” because she did “not indicate if or when she could return as a clinical assistant,” did “not indicate she could work under supervisor Prince,” and did “not indicate she could actually work under regional manager Perry starting March 1, 2011.” (Id. at p. 87.)

Pretext was absent on the broader retaliation theory. To the extent the plaintiff alleged wrongful termination or retaliation for asserting legal rights, the court applied the burden-shifting rule: “once an employee has established a prima facie case of wrongful termination or retaliation, an employer must offer a legitimate reason for an adverse employment action; if the employer does so, the burden shifts back to the employee to raise a genuine issue of material fact that the employer’s reason is actually a pretext to mask an illegal action.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 87, citing Morgan v. Regents of University of California (2000) 88 Cal.App.4th 52, 67–69.) Sutter had a legitimate reason — the plaintiff’s failure to provide return-to-work information after months of accommodation — and her three pretext items (a third-party administrator’s e-mail speculating about possible fraud, a coordinator’s comment about her own leave, and temporal proximity) were “too speculative” or otherwise insufficient when measured against undisputed facts showing Sutter’s generous accommodation. (Id. at pp. 87–88.) Summary judgment was therefore proper across the board. (Id. at p. 88.)

The cost award required a remand under Williams v. Chino Valley. Just before oral argument, the plaintiff flagged the Supreme Court’s then-recent decision in Williams v. Chino Valley Independent Fire Dist. (2015) 61 Cal.4th 97, which disapproved prior law and held that “section 12965, subdivision (b), governs cost awards in FEHA actions, allowing trial courts discretion in awards of both attorney fees and costs to prevailing FEHA parties,” bounded by the rule that “an unsuccessful FEHA plaintiff should not be ordered to pay the defendant’s fees or costs unless the plaintiff brought or continued litigating the action without an objective basis for believing it had potential merit.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at pp. 87–88, quoting Williams, at pp. 99–100.) The court remanded for the trial court to reconsider the cost award to Sutter under that standard. (Id. at p. 88.)

Significance

Higgins-Williams is the Court of Appeal’s clearest modern endorsement of a narrow but durable limit on FEHA’s expansive disability definition: friction with a specific supervisor, expressed as anxiety and stress reacting to that supervisor’s ordinary oversight, is not itself a protected disability. The decision matters precisely because FEHA’s definition is otherwise broad — “working” is a major life activity, and a condition need only “limit” (not “substantially limit”) it. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 84.) By holding the line where the plaintiff’s evidence equated her disability with her inability to function under Perry and Prince, the court prevented the broad “limits” standard from converting every supervisor-specific stress diagnosis into a FEHA disability.

The opinion is also a careful exercise in stare decisis hygiene. Rather than ignore the post-Hobson erosion, the court isolated exactly what survived. The Supreme Court’s Colmenares disapproval addressed the impairment threshold (“limit” versus “substantial limit”), and the Ninth Circuit’s EEOC v. UPS dictum addressed exclusion from a “single [type of] job.” Neither touched the supervisor-specific holding, which “no decision has disapproved or questioned.” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 85.) The case thus stands as a reliable citation for that proposition even as Hobson itself is partially undermined. For employers facing accommodation demands framed as transfers “away from” a manager, the decision supplies a doctrinal answer; for plaintiffs, it marks the boundary that pleadings and physician reports must avoid.

Key quotes

“An employee’s inability to work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress related to the supervisor’s standard oversight of the employee’s job performance does not constitute a mental disability under [FEHA].” (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at p. 85.)

“What no decision has disapproved or questioned, however, is the Hobson point directly on point here … .” (Id. at p. 85.)

“These three causes of action fail in light of the undisputed facts showing that plaintiff did not have a legally recognized mental disability.” (Id. at p. 86.)

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Practice pointer

Open questions

The court expressly reserved the line between “standard” and “nonstandard” supervisorial oversight. It treated Perry’s singling-out and arm-grabbing as the most the plaintiff could “muster,” but did not decide how much abnormal conduct would transform a supervisor-specific stress reaction into a cognizable FEHA disability. (Higgins-Williams, supra, 237 Cal.App.4th at pp. 84–85 & fn. 2.) The opinion also leaves open the reach of EEOC v. UPS‘s “‘single [type of] job’” concept under FEHA after the Poppink Act’s recognition that “working” is a major life activity “regardless of whether the … working limitation implicates a particular employment or a class or broad range of employments” — the court distinguished, rather than rejected, that line. (Id. at pp. 85–86; § 12926.1, subd. (c).) Finally, the cost-award remand leaves unresolved, as to this defendant, how the trial court would apply the Williams/Christiansburg standard to a plaintiff who lost on a partially eroded precedent. (Higgins-Williams, at pp. 87–88.)