USCA4 Appeal: 24-1010 Doc: 33 Filed: 01/14/2026 Pg: 1 of 17
PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 24-1010
DEANNE M. HALL HAGGINS,
Plaintiff – Appellant,
v.
WILSON AIR CENTER, LLC,
Defendant – Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at Charlotte. Robert J. Conrad, Jr., District Judge. (3:22−cv−00247−RJC−DCK)
Argued: December 11, 2025 Decided: January 14, 2026
Before WILKINSON, AGEE, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Agee and Judge Thacker joined.
ARGUED: Ralph Thomas Bryant, Jr., RALPH BRYANT LAW FIRM, Greenville, North Carolina, for Appellant. Proloy K. Das, FORDHARRISON LLP, Hartford, Connecticut, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Frank L. Day, FORDHARRISON LLP, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellee. USCA4 Appeal: 24-1010 Doc: 33 Filed: 01/14/2026 Pg: 2 of 17
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
Wilson Air Center, LLC (“Wilson Air”), a private aviation services provider, tried
to get DeAnne Haggins, an employee diagnosed with breast cancer during the COVID-19
pandemic, to return to the office on a hybrid schedule. Wilson Air’s business had
rebounded, and the in-person duties that Haggins previously shifted onto someone else had
begun to overwhelm him. Yet while Haggins agreed to the arrangement on paper, she
resisted in practice. And after she repeatedly missed work without notice, Wilson Air
discharged her. Haggins claims that doing so amounted to discrimination and retaliation in
violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).
Given the circumstances, both compassion and real efforts at accommodation were
called for. Far from breaking the law, Wilson Air exceeded the call of duty. It allowed
Haggins to work full-time from home when business was down, continuing to pay her full
salary. The return of business, however, necessitated at least a part-time return to the office.
Across nearly three months, Wilson Air reiterated that it wanted Haggins to come into the
office, but only as her schedule permitted; took precautions to limit the spread of disease;
and excused many of her failures to communicate. But Haggins showed up to work for just
two partial days total in the three-month period, often failing to warn any of her coworkers
when she would be working from home—or not working altogether. She therefore does
not land within the ADA’s definition of a “qualified individual.” We thus affirm the district
court’s grant of summary judgment for Wilson Air.
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I.
Haggins worked at Wilson Air for over sixteen years. In her position as “Accounts
Payable (Accounting Assistant),” she was tasked with “[e]nsur[ing] correct payment to
vendor[s] and assist[ing] [the] Account Manager,” Jon Cox, “on a daily basis.” J.A. 249.
Many of Wilson Air’s payments took the form of paper checks, and vendors often sent
their invoices via mail. Wilson Air also retained physical records about every supplier. For
a long while, then, Haggins came into the office on a regular basis to perform, among other
tasks, the accounts payable and filing portions of her job.
A.
That changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its onset understandably caused
many Wilson Air employees—including Haggins—to adopt hybrid schedules, where they
worked in part remotely and in part in the office. The pandemic also caused “the number
of arriving flights, fuel sales, and revenue [to] hit record lows.” J.A. 251; see also J.A. 179–
81. Wilson Air’s demand, in other words, crashed.
Meanwhile, Haggins was diagnosed with a “very aggressive form of breast cancer.”
J.A. 304. Though she kept a hybrid workload for several months, Haggins went fully
remote during the summer due to her compromised immune system and constant need for
treatment. This required reassigning her in-person responsibilities to Cox.
The arrangement worked well at first. But by March 2021, Wilson Air’s business
had largely returned to normal. Cox, feeling swamped with long hours, began to express
frustration with his workload. So he spoke to the general manager about the possibility of
Haggins returning to a hybrid schedule. Cox then messaged Haggins and proposed that she
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be in the office twice a week for “4–5 hours each day . . . to help out with payables and
other admin stuff.” J.A. 195. “Okay I think I can handle that,” she responded. J.A. 196.
B.
But over the next month, Haggins never came into the office. Eventually, Denise
Bond, a supervisor in human resources, messaged Haggins to remind her about working in
person. Haggins replied that her oncologist would likely disapprove of her return. Bond
told her to get a doctor’s note saying as much, and Haggins did so shortly thereafter. Wilson
Air, however, did not immediately receive it.
In May 2021, Haggins met with Cox, Bond, and the general manager to again
discuss her return to in-person work. The three Wilson Air representatives emphasized that
several of Haggins’s tasks, particularly accounts payable and filing, required her to be in
the office. And when one of them said that these responsibilities needed attention only once
per week, Haggins volunteered to “do [them] twice a week” around her ongoing medical
treatment. J.A. 211. Haggins also agreed to provide Wilson Air her schedule each week, to
the extent she knew it.
But she again did not come into the office. Rather, on May 17, Haggins called the
manager of human resources, Emily Cates, to express her dissatisfaction with being
required to work partly in person. And on the same day, Wilson Air received the
aforementioned doctor’s note, dated nearly two weeks earlier.
Haggins thus kept working remotely while Cates learned more about the specifics
of her job. To that end, Cates met twice with Cox, Bond, and the general manager. All three
explained that many of Haggins’s duties needed to be done in person and that other
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employees could no longer fill in for her. Consequently, on May 25, Cates told Haggins
that she needed to report to work in person starting the next day, adding that she could wear
a mask and stay in her office with the door closed.
Haggins returned to the office the next morning, working a partial day separated by
two medical appointments. The full day afterward, Haggins worked remotely to receive an
infusion. And on her next day of work, Haggins again worked partly in the office, leaving
early after fluid had continuously and visibly leaked out of the area around her breasts.
C.
That was the last time Haggins worked in person. On June 2, she told Bond that she
intended to work the day entirely from home. But Bond refused, responding that Haggins
either needed to be physically present or not work at all. Haggins thus took a sick day.
Afterward, she saw a doctor regarding the earlier leakage from her chest, scheduling
surgery for the next day to fix it. Haggins promptly told both Cox and Bond that she would
be unable to work after the procedure. Signing onto her company-issued laptop to do so,
she saw a message from Cox telling her to return the computer. According to Haggins, this
“meant that [she] could not perform any work[-]related accounting functions from home.”
J.A. 314.
On June 3, Haggins had the surgery and did not work at all. On June 4, the general
manager texted Haggins to ask about the surgery and her status. She responded that she
“fe[lt] so much better!!!” but gave no information about when she would next resume work
or return to the office. J.A. 187. Over the ensuing weekend, Haggins texted Cox about the
surgery and told him that she would be taking sick days until her physician cleared her to
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return to work. Cox acknowledged receipt on June 7, a Monday, and marked her as sick
for the day.
On June 8, Haggins neither reported to work—be it virtually or in person—nor
notified anyone that she would be out sick again. Rather than resorting to discipline, Bond
emailed Haggins at her personal address to express concern over the unexplained absence
and ask her to “[p]lease let [Bond] know what is happening with [Haggins’s] situation.”
J.A. 241. Yet there was no response. Indeed, June 9, and much of June 10, passed without
any word from Haggins.
Haggins, for her part, did contact her doctor on June 8 to send a note to Wilson Air.
It read “[Haggins] underwent a medically necessary surgery on Thursday 6/3/21 and needs
to be out of work for recovery until Thursday 6/17/21.” J.A. 243. The letter was dated June
9, and Wilson Air received it on June 10.
Upon receiving the note, Bond convened with Cates. Bond again opted against
discipline, believing the better course was to reiterate the importance of communication.
To that end, she sent Haggins another email stressing the need to keep her in the loop
regarding absences from work. Bond also asked Haggins to “[p]lease contact [Bond] on
Wednesday of next week so that [they] can plan for [Haggins’s] return the following day.”
J.A. 245.
Haggins still did not contact Bond, however. Nor did she work at all on June 17 or
notify anyone about taking another sick day. Bond and Cates accordingly met once more
to discuss the matter, agreeing on the termination of Haggins. Bond then notified Haggins
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over email that she had been discharged for “job abandonment”—that is, repeatedly
missing work without warning. J.A. 247.
Wilson Air did not hire a full-time replacement. It instead enlisted temporary, in-
person work from a third-party agency as needed. Eventually, it moved all accounting
functions to its corporate headquarters.
D.
Almost one year later, Haggins sued Wilson Air. In relevant part, she alleged her
employer failed to make a reasonable accommodation for her, discriminated against her
because of her breast cancer, and retaliated against her for complaining to human resources,
all in violation of the ADA. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of
Wilson Air, writing that “Haggins fail[ed] to present a prima facie case
of . . . discrimination, retaliation, or failure to accommodate; and even if she had, Wilson
Air brings overwhelming evidence of legitimate business reasons for the decisions it
made.” J.A. 587–88.
Haggins timely appeals this conclusion. We review it de novo, viewing the evidence
and drawing all reasonable inferences in Haggins’s favor. See Lashley v. Spartanburg
Methodist Coll., 66 F.4th 168, 173 (4th Cir. 2023). If “the record taken as a whole could
not lead a rational trier of fact to find for” Haggins, we must affirm. Matsushita Elec. Indus.
Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986).
II.
Haggins primarily alleges Wilson Air discriminated against her on the basis of her
breast cancer, which the parties agree is an ADA-recognized “disability.” Underlying this
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claim are two theories: First, in Haggins’s view, Wilson Air failed to make a reasonable
accommodation when it told her that she could no longer work remotely and needed to turn
in her company-issued laptop. Second, Haggins alleges Wilson Air discharged her
“because of her disability,” a claim sounding in disparate treatment but framed generically
in the briefing as simple discrimination. See Raytheon Co. v. Hernandez, 540 U.S. 44, 52
(2003). Whatever the theory, Haggins does not meet a predicate condition for
discrimination under the ADA: she is not a “qualified individual.”
That an employee has a disability does not automatically mean she is entitled to the
ADA’s protections. “No matter the type of discrimination alleged,” the employee must
show first that she is a “qualified individual.” Sieberns v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 125 F.3d
1019, 1022 (7th Cir. 1997). Thus, whether characterized as a failure to accommodate or
general disability discrimination, an ADA claimant like Haggins must be someone “who,
with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the
employment position that such individual holds or desires.” 42 U.S.C. § 12111(8); see,
e.g., Tartaro-McGowan v. Inova Home Health, LLC, 91 F.4th 158, 165, 172 (4th Cir.
2024). Three parts of this prerequisite bear emphasis.
First, even when an employee cannot perform a job on its face, she may still be a
qualified individual if a “reasonable accommodation” enables her to so perform. In this
sense, the determination of a qualified individual is intertwined with the availability of a
reasonable accommodation.
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Second, regardless of any accommodation suggested by the employee or offered by
the employer, the claimant must be able to do the job’s “essential functions.” “[T]he
decision about a position’s essential functions belongs, in the first instance, to the
employer; it accordingly merits ‘considerable deference’ from the courts.” Elledge v.
Lowe’s Home Ctrs., LLC, 979 F.3d 1004, 1009 (4th Cir. 2020) (quoting D’Amico v. City
of New York, 132 F.3d 145, 151 (2d Cir. 1998)). Indeed, we do not second guess an
employer’s assessment of a position’s essential functions so long as they “bear more than
a marginal relationship to the job at issue.” Tyndall v. Nat’l Educ. Ctrs., Inc. of Cal., 31
F.3d 209, 213 (4th Cir. 1994) (quoting Chandler v. City of Dallas, 2 F.3d 1385, 1393–94
(5th Cir.1993)); see 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(n)(1). In applying this deferential framework, we
“consult the full range of evidence bearing on the employer’s judgment,” such as a
position’s written job description and testimony from senior employees. Elledge, 979 F.3d
at 1009.
Third, implied in the definition of a “qualified individual” is a reciprocal obligation
between the employee and employer to engage in a good faith, collaborative search for a
reasonable accommodation. See Anderson v. Diamondback Inv. Grp., LLC, 117 F.4th 165,
181 (4th Cir. 2024). “To determine the appropriate reasonable accommodation,” in other
words, “it may be necessary for the” employer “to initiate an informal, interactive process
with the individual with a disability in need of the accommodation.” 29 C.F.R.
§ 1630.2(o)(3). And if the individual declines to engage in this cooperative bargaining, she
cannot then cry foul at the employer. Elledge, 979 F.3d at 1013.
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With these guideposts in mind, there is agreement that certain essential functions of
Haggins’s job could be performed only on work premises. Listed in the written description
for her accounting assistant role are “day to day activities” like “[p]ost[ing] and enter[ing]
all incoming invoices for payments,” “[m]aintain[ing] payables files,” and “[p]repar[ing]
checks for distribution.” J.A. 249. All of these tasks are premised on being in the office;
according to Wilson Air’s controller, the company receives vendor invoices—many via
mail—just about daily, and Haggins must enter these invoices, print checks, prepare paper
packets for the general manager’s signature, assemble envelopes for mailing, and file
physical copies of each document. Small wonder that her job description goes on to explain
how the “[w]ork [e]nvironment” is that of an “airport . . . with duties both indoor and
outdoor,” saying nothing about the possibility for remote work. J.A. 249.
Haggins’s need to return to the office should come as no surprise. “[A] regular and
reliable level of attendance is a necessary element of most jobs.” Tyndall, 31 F.3d at 213.
Indeed, Haggins herself attested several times that her payables and filing duties demanded
in-person attendance, going so far as to volunteer to work in the office twice per week.
True, during the lull in demand for private aviation, Cox took on Haggins’s in-office
duties so that she could work remotely full-time. But when business bounced back, Cox
began to “repeatedly complain[] about his workload,” J.A. 175, 188, signaling the need for
Haggins to reassume the responsibilities. This is common: agency guidance to the ADA
explains how a cyclical industry can “make the performance of each function during the
peak periods more critical and might limit the employer’s flexibility in reorganizing
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operating procedures.” 29 C.F.R. pt. 1630 app. § 1630.2(n) (2025). And as our court has
held, “employers do not need to change a job’s essential functions or split them across
multiple employees.” Elledge, 979 F.3d at 1013.
Wisely, then, Haggins does not claim on appeal that she can fulfill the duties of an
accounting assistant while fully working from home. She instead chooses a more modest
theory: if Wilson Air gave her the reasonable accommodation of a hybrid schedule that it
had promised, her argument goes, she would have been able to perform her job’s essential
functions—making her a qualified individual under the ADA. But Wilson Air did not
renege on the parties’ compromise for a hybrid schedule. Haggins did.
Over and over, Wilson Air expressed openness to Haggins working in the office
part-time and teleworking for the rest of her hours; each time, Haggins purported to accept
yet failed to follow through. In March 2021, Cox asked Haggins if she could show up to
work in person for “4–5 hours” twice each week. J.A. 195. Haggins agreed, but then she
never once came to the office. In May 2021, various Wilson Air employees reiterated the
need for Haggins to return to work in the office on at least a part-time basis, giving her the
flexibility to “come in around her schedule” of medical appointments. J.A. 211. Again,
Haggins agreed but then never once came to the office. Only after a nearly two-month-long
absence from in-person work—despite Haggins’s multiple promises to show up—did
Wilson Air begin to demand fully in-person attendance. And even then, Haggins worked
just two partial days in person before disclosing her intention to resume remote work full-
time.
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Doing the math, in the eighty-day period between Cox’s initial request for Haggins
to work a hybrid schedule and Haggins’s termination, she came to work in person for just
two days in part. That comes nowhere near the routine, in-office attendance necessary for
Haggins to perform her accounts payable and filing functions—let alone the two-day-per-
week schedule she had promised. Thus, while she laments her alleged inability to work a
hybrid schedule, “this path to fulfilling [some] of the job’s essential functions was
foreclosed by” Haggins “h[er]self.” Elledge, 979 F.3d at 1013.
Compounding the problem was Haggins’s continued failure to communicate her
absences. At numerous junctures, Wilson Air expressed receptiveness to arranging a hybrid
schedule tailored to Haggins’s medical needs, so long as she simply conveyed those needs.
During the May meeting with Haggins, for instance, Bond and the general manager
emphasized the value of Haggins sharing her schedule with Wilson Air weekly. Likewise,
after Haggins did not show up to work on June 8, Bond emailed her asking that she keep
Wilson Air updated about her status. When Wilson Air later received a doctor’s note
explaining why Haggins had been, and would continue to be, out of the office, Bond wrote
that the company needed to know about such absences in advance. Bond also asked
Haggins to contact her at the end of the timeframe covered in the doctor’s note, which was
then six days out, to coordinate her return.
But Haggins did not contact anyone on this proposed day. She instead opted to miss
two full weeks of work with only a doctor’s note, sent partway through the period of
absence, specifying when she would return. Worse still, whereas the note stated she
“need[ed] to be out of work for recovery until Thursday 6/17/21,” J.A. 243, Haggins neither
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returned to work on June 17 nor communicated this absence to Wilson Air. To the extent
one can reasonably read “until” in this note to mean Haggins could return only after June
17, she failed to clarify the misunderstanding with Bond, whose email clearly described
“Wednesday”—that is, June 16—as the final day of absence. J.A. 245. And even assuming
Haggins did not check her personal email (the destination of Bond’s correspondence) at all
in the two weeks after her surgery, as Haggins claims, this does nothing to dispel the
reasonable inference drawn from Wilson Air’s perspective: Haggins had received Bond’s
communications but never answered them. See Smith v. Flax, 618 F.2d 1062, 1067 (4th
Cir. 1980) (“It is the perception of the decision maker which is relevant.”).
Haggins also emphasizes on appeal how Cox once asked her to turn in her laptop,
which effectively barred her from remote work. Yet Cox did so only after Haggins went
back on her word and spent the last two months working almost entirely from home. Such
recourse was not just lawful, but also entirely reasonable: Haggins made clear that she did
not intend to work in person despite her prior assurances, at which point her employer tried
to more strongly incentivize her to show up. Wilson Air, “possessing ‘ultimate discretion’
over the choice among reasonable accommodations, was not—in the face of” Haggins’s
“rejections of such an obvious and helpful offer—required to extend another.” Elledge, 979
F.3d at 1013.
It need not be said that we take seriously Haggins’s battle with breast cancer; cancer
can be a formidable foe. We recognize that many of Haggins’s absences can be attributed
to her regrettably long suffering from this disease. But therein lies the problem. Even with
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the reasonable accommodation of a hybrid schedule, Haggins could not show up to work
to perform her position’s essential functions, or at least timely notify Wilson Air whenever
she would be out of the office. That means she is not a qualified individual, rendering the
ADA’s protections inapplicable.
The undisputed facts reveal that Wilson Air frequently went beyond the ADA’s
baseline in trying to accommodate Haggins. To wit: it reassigned several of her essential
functions to Cox, reverting only when its business needs changed. It permitted Haggins to
work a hybrid schedule, even giving her the freedom to choose the days and times in which
she would come into the office. It took precautions to minimize Haggins’s exposure to
illness while on the business’s premises. It continued trying to cooperate with Haggins after
she went back on her word about hybrid work. And it refrained from discharging her after
she missed a day of work—that is, did not so much as sign in remotely—and left the
company with only a doctor’s note sent after the absence for an explanation.
To hold the employer liable for disability discrimination, after all these
commendable efforts at bilateral cooperation, would do a disservice to Wilson Air and the
ADA alike. “Courts should not discourage employers from going beyond the [ADA’s]
requirements . . . .” Reyazuddin v. Montgomery County, 754 F. App’x 186, 190 (4th Cir.
2018). Yet that is effectively what Haggins asks us to do here.
III.
Haggins’s retaliation claim likewise misses the mark. The ADA, of course, forbids
retaliation against employees who have engaged in protected activity. 42 U.S.C. § 12203.
And notably, this antiretaliation provision covers everyone—not just qualified individuals.
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See Morgan v. Joint Admin. Bd., Ret. Plan of Pillsbury Co. & Am. Fed’n of Grain Millers,
268 F.3d 456, 458 (7th Cir. 2001). Haggins accordingly alleges Wilson Air committed
unlawful retaliation by discharging her one month after she engaged in protected activity—
that is, after she lodged a complaint to human resources about the employer’s hybrid-work
mandate.
We disagree. Required in a prima facie case for retaliation is some showing that “a
causal connection existed between the protected activity and the adverse action.” Ross v.
Commc’ns Satellite Corp., 759 F.2d 355, 365 (4th Cir. 1985). Haggins falls short of this
burden; in fact, Wilson Air went out of its way to support and accommodate her struggle
with breast cancer, resorting to termination only after excusing nearly a calendar quarter of
Haggins’s broken promises about returning to the office and failures to communicate her
schedule. The email formally discharging Haggins confirms as much. In it, Bond explained
that Haggins had missed over two weeks of work and repeatedly failed to notify Wilson
Air when she would return, even after being expressly asked to do so.
Contesting this ready conclusion, Haggins claims first that the stated reasons for
termination in Bond’s email were false. But as already explained at length, the uncontested
facts reveal numerous points at which Haggins missed in-person work, or work altogether,
without timely notifying Wilson Air. Indeed, whereas Haggins alleges that testimony from
Cates (recall, the human resources manager) contradicts the contents of Bond’s email, the
record indicates otherwise: Cates explained how Wilson Air fired Haggins because “[t]here
was no communication” and “[s]he was not coming in the office to do her job,” J.A. 499—
the very complaints aired in Bond’s email.
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That leaves just the proclaimed temporal proximity between the protected activity
and discharge. As Haggins reminds us, a particularly close proximity can suffice for a
prima facie case of retaliation in some cases. See, e.g., Haulbrook v. Michelin N. Am., Inc.,
252 F.3d 696, 706 (4th Cir. 2001); cf. Clark Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273
(2001) (per curiam) (stating in Title VII setting “that the temporal proximity must be ‘very
close’” (quoting O’Neal v. Ferguson Constr. Co., 237 F.3d 1248, 1253 (10th Cir. 2001))).
But not here. For starters, the relevant timeframe for our temporal-proximity
analysis is one month. This is because the clock for Wilson Air’s alleged retaliation started
ticking when Haggins complained to human resources on May 17, not when Wilson Air
denied her request to work from home full-time, as Haggins at points implies. After all, the
ADA’s antiretaliation provision covers retaliation against actions taken by the individual.
See 42 U.S.C. § 12203.
Moreover, the one-month interim between Haggins’s protected activity and
discharge, standing alone, does not suffice to show the causal link needed for her prima
facie case of retaliation. Again, Wilson Air went well beyond the ADA’s obligations in
trying to work things out for Haggins, continuously attempting to reach a compromise in
which she could fulfill her job’s essential, in-person functions without threatening her
health or obstructing her medical treatment. That is accommodation, not retaliation. And
these efforts at accommodation continued after Haggins lodged her complaint with human
resources.
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IV.
Wilson Air is not the type of intransigent employer that the ADA was designed to
set straight. Again and again, it tried to strike a mutually beneficial deal with Haggins that
allowed her to work a hybrid schedule and that was mindful both of her compromised
immune system and her need to regularly seek treatment. But Haggins declined to
cooperate, opting instead to make and break promises about returning to the office—often
without notice to boot. Had there been effort at both ends, this dispute might have reached
a more fortunate end. As it is, the district court’s judgment must be affirmed.
AFFIRMED