Teacher sues school district for age discrimination

A math teacher in his late 60s filed a lawsuit against his school district, alleging that the district discriminated and retaliated against him in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). A district court dismissed the lawsuit and the teacher appealed.

The teacher was employed as one of two eighth grade math teachers on the campus. A few weeks into the school year, he was placed on a support plan based on concerns with his performance and preparation. Shortly thereafter, the other eighth grade math teacher resigned, and the district combined the two classes and assigned a different teacher as the lead teacher. 

Around this same time, the district placed the teacher on a second support plan and reassigned him to provide push-in services for the classroom of a sixth grade math teacher. In this role, the teacher was no longer a lead teacher responsible for his own classroom but was instead located inside the sixth grade teacher's classroom working with some of that teacher's students. 

The teacher served in this role for a few weeks, until the seventh grade math teacher resigned. The district initially assigned the teacher to fill the seventh grade position but replaced him soon after with another teacher, a woman in her 20s who was "straight out of teacher college." The teacher filing the lawsuit was moved back into the sixth grade push-in position. He was 67 years old at that time.

During the spring semester, the teacher developed a dispute with the sixth grade math teacher. The district directed the teacher to report to the school's media center while it developed a new support/intervention plan for him to continue doing push-in support. The teacher began a new role providing support for three eighth grade math students, whom he instructed separately in the library. He was also placed on a new support plan. 

Shortly afterward, the teacher sent an email to the district's assistant superintendent in which he complained, for the first time, that the principal and assistant principal were discriminating against him. 

Shortly thereafter, he filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging that he faced discrimination and retaliation on account of his age under Title VII, the ADEA and the ADA.

The teacher requested a transfer to another school and began working at a different campus in the district the following school year. At that school, the principal noticed that the teacher exhibited issues related to planning and classroom organization. The teacher accused the principal of retaliating against him because of his pending lawsuit against the district. However, the principal testified that she had no actual knowledge of the teacher's EEOC complaint or his pending lawsuit against the district at that time.

The next fall, the district received complaints from three students and one parent that the teacher was yelling at students and not allowing them to use the restroom or visit the nurse's office during class. The district provided the facts of the allegations, without the name or identifying information of the accused teacher, to the assistant superintendent for human capital, who recommended that the teacher be placed on leave pending an investigation into the allegations. 

The district placed the teacher on paid administrative leave for roughly four months while it conducted an investigation. The district ultimately cleared the teacher to return to work following the investigation, and at the time of the lawsuit, he was still employed with the district and assigned to the same campus.

The teacher argued that the district discriminated and retaliated against him based on his age by reassigning him to the push-in position, putting him on support plans, and placing him on administrative leave for four months. The court of appeals found that the teacher arguably did establish that he suffered an adverse employment action sufficient to sustain his discrimination claims and that he established a claim of discrimination under the ADEA. However, the law states that once a claim of discrimination has been made, the employer has the opportunity to rebut that claim by showing that the adverse employment action was taken for some reason other than an attempt to discriminate against the employee. 

In this case, the district was able to show that it had ongoing concerns about the teacher's preparation and performance and that these concerns were the reason it chose to reassign the teacher to the push-in role and replace him with someone else. Because these concerns were related to the teacher's performance and not his age, the court of appeals upheld the decision of the district court to dismiss the lawsuit.