Jessica Graves v. Brandstar Studios, Inc., No. 21-13469 (11th Cir. 2023)
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Plaintiff was let go from her position at Brandstar Studios shortly after her father fell ill. Following her termination, Plaintiff sued Brandstar under the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The district court granted Brandstar summary judgment. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that Brandstar executives interfered with her rights under the FMLA. Second, she asserted that her termination constituted associational discrimination under the ADA. And finally, she claimed that the district court improperly weighed the evidence on summary judgment rather than construing the facts in her favor.
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the parties agreed that Brandstar provided Plaintiff the leave she requested in her May 2 email and that she received full pay for those days. In fact, Plaintiff accidentally clocked in on her two days of requested leave, and Brandstar HR executives circled back weeks later to ensure that she corrected her timecard to reflect her requested leave. Thus, Plaintiff can’t demonstrate that she was harmed by Brandstar’s technical failure to notify her of her FMLA rights. Further, the court found that not only did Plaintiff fail to “request leave” in the May 6 email, but there’s also no indication that Brandstar “acquired knowledge” on its own that she wanted leave for an FMLA-qualifying reason. Moreover, the court found that the only evidence Plaintiff marshaled is the “temporal proximity” between her father’s acute onset decline and her termination—which isn’t enough to show pretext.
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