Lopez-Albinana v. Mayorkas

Background

Richard Lopez-Albinana brought claims against Alejandro Mayorkas concerning his termination. The opinion addresses a motion to dismiss, which asks whether the complaint adequately alleges legally viable claims at the beginning of a case.

Lopez-Albinana did not challenge dismissal of his hostile-work-environment claim. His remaining claims included disability discrimination under 29 U.S.C. § 791 and retaliation.

Disability-discrimination claim

The court held that Lopez-Albinana plausibly stated a disability-discrimination claim. Section 791 incorporates the substantive standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the court explained that the applicable standard requires disability discrimination to be the necessary cause of the termination. The court concluded that the complaint plausibly alleged that each of the six areas identified in Lopez-Albinana’s performance improvement plan was related to the effects of his disability on his work product. The termination letter contained categories that closely tracked the performance improvement plan.

The court also found plausible Lopez-Albinana’s allegation that he could have performed the essential functions of his position with reasonable accommodations. The opinion gives examples involving devices or account access that could have eliminated the need to handwrite. Although the allegations about accommodations were limited, the court concluded that it was plausible that accommodations could have enabled him to perform the handwriting-related parts of his job.

Retaliation claim

The court held that Lopez-Albinana also adequately pleaded retaliation. He plausibly alleged that he was terminated after initiating informal counseling and filing a formal complaint following a December meeting with Vega and Dandridge. The alleged protected activity and termination occurred within roughly two months. The court also noted that both events occurred after Vega had promoted Lopez-Albinana and recommended him for a merit-based monetary award. The court found it plausible that his complaints after the December meeting led his supervisors to seek his termination. It further found that he adequately alleged exhaustion because he updated his formal complaint to include the termination.

Ruling and other matters

Judge Vince Chhabria granted the motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part. The hostile-work-environment claim was dismissed. The disability-discrimination and retaliation claims were not dismissed at this stage.

The court granted the defense’s renewed request for judicial notice of the existence of Lopez-Albinana’s termination letter because its existence in the administrative record could not reasonably be questioned. The court did not take judicial notice of the letter’s contents for their truth. The court denied as moot the renewed request for judicial notice of an email thread concerning Lopez-Albinana’s withdrawal of his first informal complaint because it did not rely on that document in resolving the motion.

An initial case-management conference was scheduled for February 23, 2022, and a joint case-management statement was due February 16, 2022.