A county terminated an employee after discovering that the employee had violated several personnel rules. The former employee sued, alleging that the county had violated the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by: 1) discriminating against him on the basis of his medical conditions and physical disability; 2) retaliating against him for making protected complaints pertaining to his medical conditions and physical disability: and 3) failing to prevent discrimination and retaliation.
The trial court granted the motion for summary judgment LCW filed on behalf of the county. The former employee appealed.
The California Court of Appeal upheld the county’s motion. At the outset, the Court found the former employee’s “near complete failure” to cite to evidence in the record on appeal meant that he forfeited his claims. The Court did, however, go on to address the merits of his claims.
The Court noted that the employee did not separately discuss each of his causes of action on appeal. Instead, he simply argued that he competently did his job and the reasons for his termination were pretextual. The Court countered that the former employee did not “address the myriad of deficiencies in his performance catalogued” in his most recent evaluation. Moreover, the Court noted that the issue is not whether the former employee did his job competently; the issue is whether the employer was motivated by discriminatory animus. In the end, the Court found that the former employee failed to show any discriminatory animus and upheld the trial court’s decision to dismiss the case based on the county’s motion for summary judgment.