Former Student Life supervisor Adrienne Thompson is suing Citrus for “disability discrimination and harassment.”
Thompson was terminated from Citrus College in October 2016. Thompson’s attorney’s filed their complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court on January 24.
Among the allegations against her employer, Thompson contends Citrus engaged “failure to provide reasonable accommodations,” “failure to prevent disability harassment,” and “failure to engage in interactive process.”
Dr. Robert Sammis, Citrus’ director of Human Resources, states that interactive process is the process by which Human Resources will “look at the type of disability, where the impact is in terms of the essential job duties, and then where we might be able to develop some kind of accommodation.”
The complaint says that Thompson was diagnosed with health conditions brought on by stress in 2014 that grew more severe over the next two years, as well as another condition in 2015.
Regarding Citrus’ code of conduct in dealing with employee’ disabilities, Sammis said, “When an employee does comes forward, we can start the [interactive] process.”
However, the complaint says that Thompson’s superiors were notified of her condition, as well as the severe symptoms, yet no action was taken to accommodate for her condition or engage in the interactive process, violating Government Code 12940(n).
By 2016, the symptoms progressed to a point where Thompson’s ability to do her job effectively was impaired. In the complaint, Thompson claims her supervisors still did nothing to accommodate her.
Instead, the complaint alleges that Citrus was, “treating [her] differently from other similarly situated employees, increasing [her] workload both in undue quantity and to work outside her classification and/or job description, making unreasonable demands on [her] in connection with her work, calling upon [her] to work when she was on vacation, failing and refusing to adequately staff [her] area, creating written reprimands which falsely accused [her] of failures of performance, exaggerating the significance of alleged failures of performance, failing and refusing to conduct a reasonable investigation into the events which formed the basis of such reprimands, suspending [her] without due process, and within only weeks of the wrongful suspension, seizing on a single event which was not new since the suspension as a basis for recommending termination… and failing and refusing to afford [her] adequate time to modify or correct her performance before terminating her employment.”
The complaint alleges that rather than discussing the health issues or suggesting accommodations, Citrus decided to terminate her employment. Citrus then mailed a Notice of Proposed Disciplinary Action on July 16, 2017, informing Thompson that she was in danger of losing her job.
Neither Thompson’s attorneys nor the college commented on what the disability in question is.
“She has a right to privacy on this matter, so I can’t comment.”
Sammis also said that Thompson was “offered a hearing. Other than that, I can’t get into the specifics of the allegations or charges that were brought forward.”
Wools, Peer, Dollinger & Scher, the firm representing Thompson, also declined to talk about the case.
“You know what, I don’t really have much time here to chat,” said Jeffrey Dollinger.
“I just wanted to kindly ask you not to reach out to Adrienne directly.”
Rosario Garcia, the current Student Life Supervisor, was also asked about the circumstances and disability leading to Thompson’s dismissal, but said that she “really [doesn’t] know anything about [Thompson’s] dismissal. Any reasons or disabilities.”
Garcia also mentioned that neither she nor any of the current staff for Student Life and Leadership Development have even met Thompson.
“The two admin clerks, they’re new. They just started a month ago… even the student workers, all of them are new as well. I think they’ve all started with me, or after.”
The next hearing for this case is the filing deadline for the plaintiff’s status report resettlement, scheduled for June 7, 2019 at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse on 111 North Hill Street in Los Angeles. The jury trial will take place there as well on September 9, 2019 at 9:30 am.
