Elzeneiny v. District of Columbia

195 F. Supp. 3d 207, 26 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1596, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85747, 2016 WL 3647838
CourtDistrict Court, District of Columbia
DecidedJuly 1, 2016
DocketCivil Action No. 2009-0889
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 195 F. Supp. 3d 207 (Elzeneiny v. District of Columbia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, District of Columbia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Elzeneiny v. District of Columbia, 195 F. Supp. 3d 207, 26 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1596, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85747, 2016 WL 3647838 (D.D.C. 2016).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

JAMES E. BOASBERG, United States District Judge

In his epic, multi-generational saga 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez reflected that “it is easier to start a war than to end it.” In similar fashion, Plaintiff Amina Elzeneiny’s thirteen-year-long employment-discrimination battle with the District of Columbia was far easier to initiate than it has been to resolve. Elzeneiny was first hired as a Budget Analyst in the District’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer, a unit of the Office of Budget and Planning, in January 2003. Several months later, she sought workplace accommodations on ’ account of her suffering from fibromyalgia, a condition that causes muscle and joint pain and chronic fatigue. Dissatisfied with the city’s response, Elzen-einy filed her first charge of discrimination related to the District’s failure to accommodate her disability in 2005, eleven years ago. The parties’ ongoing skirmishes concerning her requests for accommodations wended their way through the administrative process for years before she resorted to filing this suit in 2009, by which time Elzeneiny also had grievances against Defendant related to her recurring requests to take time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Plaintiffs original suit contained an admixture of failure-to-accommodate, hostile-work-environment, Title VII, and retaliation claims, many of which the District -.has plucked away over many years through successful motions practice.

Of particular note, in August of last year, the Court resolved Elzeneiny’s grievances concerning events that took place between 2003 and 2010, dismissing nearly all of the relevant counts as to this time period. See Elzeneiny v. District of Colum-⅛ 125 F.Supp.3d 18 (D.D.C.2015) (Elzen-einy II). Because the parties had been unable to schedule a deposition from El-zeneiny to testify about events that took place in 2011—her final year of employment—the Court could not address all of Plaintiffs outstanding charges at that time. Having since secured said deposition, the District has now moved for summary judgment on Plaintiffs three remaining counts—one each of interference and retaliation under the FMLA, and a count of retaliation in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Matching Marquez’s epic saga in its complexity but certainly not in its profundity, this lawsuit’s loose ends are finally ready for resolution. And just as with the members of Márquez’s Buendia family, some of Defendant’s arguments meet with success, while others are destined to a losing fate.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

Because much of this case’s factual background was recited at length in the prior summary-judgment Opinion, see El-zeneiny II, 125 F.Supp.3d 18, the Court will only briefly sketch out the broad histo *212 ry of the case before homing in on the 2011 events at issue in the current Motion.

Plaintiff began work at the District’s Office of Budget Policy as a Budget Analyst in January of 2003 and shortly after-wards informed her superiors that she suffered from fibromyalgia. Id. at 22-23. What transpired next was a long and complicated series of efforts by Plaintiff to secure workplace accommodations related to her condition. Such negotiations took place on and off from shortly after she was hired up to the point at which she ultimately resigned in November 2011, almost nine years later. Id. at 23-27. Her tenure with OBP was also punctuated by unsuccessful charges of discrimination that she filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the D.C. Office of Human Rights, in which she alleged that OBP supervisors had failed to accommodate her requests, id. at 24, and also that she had been retaliated against both on account of her disability and also for seeking leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Id. at 25-30.

The events surrounding her March 2011 attempt to take FMLA leave—and the conditions under which she returned from that leave—are at the heart of Defendant’s second Motion for Summary Judgment, considered here. A book-jacket summary of the plot: Defendants assert that there were ongoing problems with Plaintiffs work performance and output as a budget-administration analyst. This issue came to a head when the District issued a written reprimand criticizing her low productivity. Perhaps coincidentally, the next day she requested to take FMLA leave. The District denied this request and, when she took FMLA leave anyway, it later provided her with a notice of termination. She appealed the termination, which was subsequently reversed; she was then reinstated and retroactively approved to take FMLA leave. Upon returning to work in May 2011, however, Elzeneiny was reassigned to a new position, and in the following months she and various District supervisors engaged in the now-familiar back- and-forth concerning her workplace accommodations, culminating in her resignation in November 2011.

Three main grievances emerge from this timeline: 1) Defendant interfered with El-zeneiny’s right to take FMLA leave in March of 2011 and her right to return promptly from that leave; 2) it retaliated against her upon her return by putting her in a new position with fewer responsibilities and inferior tasks; and 3) it also retaliated by refusing to provide her with necessary accommodations for her disability when she returned from that leave in May 2011. Given the panoply of relevant events, for simplicity’s sake the Court will eschew time travel and proceed in chronological order. The first three sections below map onto the first claim, while the fourth and fifth correspond respectively to her second and third claims.

1. March 2011 Reprimand

This chapter in Plaintiffs story begins on March 8, 2011, when Elzeneiny’s supervisor, Eric Cannady, “issued a written reprimand criticizing Plaintiffs lack of work production.” MSJ at 2. The District claims that Cannady’s concerns were the culmination of months of documented frustration with Elzeneiny’s unsatisfactory job performance. As the Director for Budget Administration in D.C.’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), a unit of the OBP, Cannady supports the Mayor and City Council in developing, implementing, and overseeing the District’s $12.7 billion operating budget. See Declaration of Eric Cannady I (ECF No. 75-4), ¶¶ 1-2. Canna-dy supervised Elzeneiny in her capacity as a senior budget-administration analyst between January and March of 2011. Id. at 2. Her duties included providing analyses of *213 proposed budgets, developing “informed guidance needed for OBP programs divisions, branches, and District agencies to make proper budgetary formulation, execution, and planning decisions,” and “en-sur[ing] that budget formulation milestones are met on schedule.” Elzeneiny Deposition Exhibits (EOF No. 88-2), Exh. 9 (Position Description, Budget Administration Analyst) at 1-2.

In his written reprimand of March 8, 2011, Cannady pointed to the fact that he had already “had to reduce [Elzeneiny’s] workload from managing eight agency budgets to four ...[,] [which was] the direct result of [her] inability to perform at the level expected of a Budget Administration Analyst.” Elzeneiny Dep. Exhibits, Exh. 5 (Reprimand of Amina Elzeneiny).

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Bluebook (online)
195 F. Supp. 3d 207, 26 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1596, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85747, 2016 WL 3647838, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/elzeneiny-v-district-of-columbia-dcd-2016.