Medrano v. City of San Antonio

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
April 24, 2006
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
Charles R. Fulbruge III
____________________ Clerk
No. 04-51224
____________________
CHRISTOPHER MEDRANO
Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
CITY OF SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Defendant-Appellee
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio
No. 5:02-CV-1003
_________________________________________________________________
Before JONES, Chief Judge, and KING and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
KING, Circuit Judge:*
Following a jury verdict in favor of plaintiff-appellant
Christopher Medrano on his failure-to-accommodate and retaliation
claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the
district court granted a motion for judgment as a matter of law
pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b) in favor of
defendant-appellee the City of San Antonio, and issued a take-
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined
that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent
except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR.
R. 47.5.4.
-1-
nothing judgment in favor of the City, based on the Supreme
Court’s holding in US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S. 391
(2002). Medrano appeals. For substantially the reasons
expressed by the district court in its Order Granting Defendant’s
Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law, we AFFIRM.
I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The relevant factual circumstances underlying this
litigation are largely undisputed.1 Medrano suffers from
cerebral palsy, a condition that constitutes a “disability”
within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
(“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. § 12102(2) (2000), and impairs his ability to
walk.2 As a result of his condition, Medrano relies upon the
VIAtrans Paratransit System (“VIAtrans”), an ADA-required
alternative mode of public transportation available to San
Antonio residents with qualifying disabilities, to travel to and
from work. See 49 C.F.R. § 37.121(a) (providing that “each
public entity operating a fixed route system shall provide
paratransit or other special service to individuals with
disabilities that is comparable to the level of service provided
1
The parties submitted a detailed list of stipulated facts
as part of the record exhibits during the jury trial. Following
the lead of the well-reasoned district court order, we borrow
heavily from these stipulations in setting forth the relevant
facts in this case.
2
Although Medrano does not require a wheelchair, he does
use a cane and walks with a pronounced limp on account of his
condition.
-2-
to individuals without disabilities who use the fixed route
system”). Medrano worked for the City at the San Antonio
International Airport as a part-time parking attendant.3 The
City assigned shifts for the various personnel within the Parking
Division of the Aviation Department pursuant to its unilaterally-
adopted seniority policy.4 Even though he lacked the requisite
seniority, Medrano was afforded a preferential first-shift
assignment to accommodate his dependence on the VIAtrans schedule
for transportation to and from work during his tenure of
employment with the City as a part-time parking attendant.
The City eliminated the position of part-time parking
attendant on February 4, 2000. Shortly thereafter, Medrano
reapplied for a position as a full-time parking attendant. As
part of his application, Medrano requested the same first-shift
3
More specifically, from November 1995 until June 22,
1996, Medrano worked as a temporary parking attendant, at which
time he was selected for a position as a part-time parking
attendant. Medrano was then terminated on January 5, 1997. He
subsequently filed a charge of disability discrimination with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), eventually
settling his suit with the City and resuming work as a part-time
parking attendant on November 23, 1998.
4
Because the airport parking services are available
twenty-four hours a day, the parking attendants generally worked
one of three shifts: (1) a first shift that started in the
morning; (2) a second shift that started in the afternoon; and
(3) a third (or graveyard) shift that was the overnight shift.
According to the policy, shifts were assigned at least every six
months according to the seniority bidding process. The parties
agree that the first shift was generally perceived as the most
desirable shift in the bidding process, while the third shift
usually fell to the employees with the least seniority.
-3-
accommodation for his disability that he had received during his
previous period of employment as a part-time parking attendant.
Gregory Lawrence, who had recently become the Aviation Department
Parking Manager for the City on May 15, 2000, interviewed the
candidates for full-time parking attendant positions, including
Medrano. During a follow-up call in July 2000 to check on the
status of his application, Medrano claims that Lawrence told him
that the application had been rejected and that Lawrence did not
want to hire “trouble makers.” Lawrence denied making the
“trouble makers” comment and testified that he rejected the
application because the requested accommodation directly
conflicted with the City’s seniority policy. Medrano stipulated
that he had not accumulated seniority for the full-time parking
attendant position based on his previous work as a part-time
parking attendant. He further stipulated that, since July 2000,
the parking attendants working the first shift have had more
seniority than Medrano would have had if he had been hired in
July 2000.
Medrano filed a disability discrimination complaint with the
EEOC on July 21, 2000, and received a right-to-sue letter on July
19, 2002. He then filed a complaint in federal district court on
October 15, 2002,5 alleging disability discrimination in
5
Because he filed his civil suit within ninety days of
receiving the right-to-sue letter, we note that Medrano satisfied
his statutory exhaustion requirements for bringing this civil
action against the City. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(1); see also
-4-
violation of the ADA based on the City’s (1) failure to hire him
for a full-time airport parking attendant position and (2)
retaliation against him for filing the previous lawsuit against
the City that had been settled on February 11, 2000. The
district court denied the City’s motion for summary judgment on
December 1, 2003 because it determined that a genuine issue of
material fact remained as to whether a reasonable accommodation
was available to Medrano. A jury trial on the merits commenced
on February 17, 2004. The City orally moved for judgment as a
matter of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a)
at the close of the plaintiff’s case-in-chief, but the district
court denied the motion at that time.6 After the jury returned a
verdict in favor of Medrano, the City renewed its motion for
judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b). This time, the
Vielma v. Eureka Co., 218 F.3d 458, 463 (5th Cir. 2000) (noting
that “the federal complainant must file suit within ninety days
of receipt of the right to sue letter”).
6
The court expressed some misgivings about the viability
of Medrano’s claims following the Supreme Court’s decision in
Barnett at this time:
THE COURT: If the jury does hold for Mr. Medrano, I’m
going to have to seriously consider taking the case away
from Mr. Medrano. But, I am going to let the jury handle
the case and see what the jury has to say.
. . . .
But I do believe U.S. Airways v Barnett did change the
rules of the road somewhat and [this] case does straddle
it. . . . I want both sides to know there would be a good
chance I would take a verdict from Mr. Medrano away. I
both have the right to give this matter to the Fifth
Circuit and the Fifth Circuit could tell us what the
state of the law is after Barnett.
5 Rawle at 327, 329-30.
-5-
district court granted the City’s motion and issued its final
order and judgment on September 27, 2004. See Medrano v. City of
San Antonio, 2004 WL 2550592 (W.D. Tex. Sept. 27, 2004). Medrano
timely filed his notice of appeal on October 26, 2004.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Standard of Review
We review the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter
of law pursuant to Rule 50(b) de novo, applying the same legal
standard as the district court. Flowers v. S. Reg’l Physician
Servs. Inc., 247 F.3d 229, 235 (5th Cir. 2001). “A motion for
judgment as a matter of law . . . in an action tried by jury is a
challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting the
jury’s verdict.” Ford v. Cimarron Ins. Co., 230 F.3d 828, 830
(5th Cir. 2000) (internal quotations omitted) (alteration in
original). Accordingly, judgment as a matter of law is
appropriate when “there is no legally sufficient evidentiary
basis for a reasonable jury to have found for that party with
respect to that issue.” Id. In light of our “especially
deferential” review of jury verdicts, we must “consider all of
the evidence, drawing all reasonable inferences and resolving all
credibility determinations in the light most favorable to the
non-moving party.” Flowers, 247 F.3d at 235. Nonetheless, “[i]f
the evidence at trial points so strongly and overwhelmingly in
the movant’s favor that reasonable jurors could not reach a
-6-
contrary conclusion, this court will conclude that the motion
should have been granted.” Omnitech Int’l, Inc. v. Clorox Co.,
11 F.3d 1316, 1323 (5th Cir. 1994).
B. “Special Circumstances” Under Barnett
The ADA broadly proscribes discriminatory employment
practices against persons with a disability, providing that “[n]o
covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual
with a disability because of the disability of such individual in
regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or
discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and
other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.” 42
U.S.C. § 12112(a). A “qualified individual with a disability” is
one “who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform
the essential functions of the employment position that such
individual holds or desires.” Id. § 12111(8). A “reasonable
accommodation” may include “part-time or modified work schedules,
reassignment to a vacant position, . . . and other similar
accommodations for individuals with disabilities.” Id.
§ 12111(9)(B). Finally, the ADA says that “discrimination”
includes an employer’s “not making reasonable accommodations to
the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise
qualified . . . employee, unless [the employer] can demonstrate
that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the
operation of [its] business.” Id. § 12112(b)(5)(A).
-7-
Given the largely undisputed factual circumstances, our task
on this appeal is particularly narrow. The parties stipulated
that (1) the City is an “employer” within the meaning of that
term under the ADA; (2) Medrano is “disabled” under the ADA; and
(3) Medrano could perform the essential functions of the parking
attendant job with a shift accommodation that would allow him to
use VIAtrans to commute to and from work. But for the conflict
with the terms of the seniority policy, the parties agree that
Medrano’s request for a first-shift accommodation was reasonable.
Therefore, just as the district court did in its order granting
judgment as a matter of law, we shall focus our attention on
whether, despite the conflict with the seniority policy, a
reasonable jury could find that the City was required to hire
Medrano as a full-time parking attendant with the first-shift
accommodation.
To answer this question, the district court examined the
Supreme Court’s decision in US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S.
391 (2002). In Barnett, the Court confronted a very similar
issue, albeit in the context of summary judgment, to the one
presented in this case: How does the ADA resolve a conflict
between the interests of a disabled worker seeking assignment to
a particular position as a “reasonable accommodation” and the
interests of other employees with superior bidding rights under
an employer’s seniority system? Id. at 393. In applying the
relevant statutory provisions outlined above, the Court first
-8-
“reconciled the phrases ‘reasonable accommodation’ and ‘undue
hardship’ in a practical way.” Id. at 401. To defeat an
employer’s motion for summary judgment, the employee “need only
show that an ‘accommodation’ seems reasonable on its face, i.e.,
ordinarily or in the run of cases.” Id. Once the employee makes
this showing, the employer “then must show special (typically
case-specific) circumstances that demonstrate undue hardship in
the particular circumstances.” Id. at 402. The Court held that
an employer need not demonstrate on a case-by-case basis that its
seniority system should prevail over an otherwise reasonable
accommodation request.7 Id. at 403 (“[I]t would not be
reasonable in the run of cases that the assignment in question
trump the rules of a seniority system. To the contrary, it will
ordinarily be unreasonable for the assignment to prevail.”).
The Court, however, also adopted a fact-intensive exception
to this general rule that permits a court to find that “special
circumstances” trump a seniority policy in certain circumstances.
Id. at 405 (noting that an employee “remains free to show that
special circumstances warrant a finding that, despite the
presence of a seniority system (which the ADA may not trump in
the run of cases), the requested ‘accommodation’ is ‘reasonable’
7
Moreover, the Court expressly stated that the relevant
advantages of seniority systems “are not limited to collectively
bargained systems.” Barnett, 535 U.S. at 404. Therefore, the
Court declined to treat a seniority system that had been
unilaterally imposed by an employer any differently on this
basis. Id.
-9-
on the particular facts”). The opinion briefly discussed two
illustrative, though by no means exhaustive, examples of “special
circumstances” that might trump an otherwise valid seniority
policy:
The plaintiff might show, for example, that the employer,
having retained the right to change the seniority system
unilaterally, exercises that right fairly frequently,
reducing employee expectations that the system will be
followed--to the point where one more departure, needed
to accommodate an individual with a disability, will not
likely make a difference. The plaintiff might show that
the system already contains exceptions such that, in the
circumstances, one further exception is unlikely to
matter.
Id.
On appeal, Medrano challenges only the district court’s
adverse ruling regarding his ADA failure-to-accommodate claim
because he contends there was sufficient evidence in the record
to establish “special circumstances” such that the shift
accommodation he sought from the City was a reasonable one.8
Before proceeding to a substantive discussion of the “special
circumstances” exception, the district court first addressed the
8
In his opening brief, Medrano also challenged the
district court’s judgment in favor of the City on his ADA claims
of unlawful preemployment inquiry. We need not consider this
issue, however, because Medrano expressly waived it in his reply
brief to this court. See Crutcher v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 746
F.2d 1076, 1080 (5th Cir. 1984). We also decline to separately
address the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law
on Medrano’s retaliation claim because Medrano does not
separately argue that issue in this appeal. See Hall v. Thomas,
190 F.3d 693, 697 n.2 (5th Cir. 1999) (noting that appellant had
abandoned certain arguments by failing to discuss them in his
brief).
-10-
relevant time period in which to examine the City’s seniority
policy.
The Court must determine the scope of the seniority
system in order to assess whether “special circumstances”
necessitated a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.
Here, the seniority system might include the entire
history of the program; or given management’s change in
policy, the relevant seniority system might include the
time of the policy change in 2000 to the date of trial.
The Barnett Court stressed the importance of maintaining
a seniority system that meets employees’ expectations of
consistent, uniform treatment. Employees understandably
rely on the policies in place at the time of their
employment. Because Defendant’s employees were notified
of the change in seniority policy as of Defendant’s
January 21, 2000 memo, the Court will confine its
analysis to the employer’s most recent policy.
Therefore, Plaintiff’s claims will be considered only as
to any exceptions made following February 4, 2000 when
Plaintiff was terminated under the new policy.
Medrano, 2004 WL 2550592, at *3.
Medrano argues that the district court erred in focusing
exclusively on the application of the seniority policy after the
City eliminated the part-time parking attendant positions and
thereby disregarding the shift accommodations made to him during
his tenure as a part-time parking attendant. Medrano insists
that the elimination of the part-time parking attendant positions
on February 4, 2000 did not otherwise affect the seniority
policy. From this premise, Medrano next contends that the
district court failed to properly account for the impact of
Medrano’s previous first-shift assignments on his fellow
employees. He maintains that the “common theme” in both examples
of the “special circumstances” exception under Barnett is the
-11-
impact of the accommodation on co-workers’ expectations. Citing
witness testimony in the record, Medrano asserts that his co-
workers neither objected to nor complained about his first-shift
accommodation during his tenure as a part-time parking attendant
for the City. Finally, he argues that the district court
improperly applied a mathematical formula to determine whether
the accommodations granted to Medrano were reasonable as a matter
of law. According to Medrano, the fact-intensive “special
circumstances” inquiry is uniquely suited for determination by a
jury.
The City responds that the district court correctly applied
Barnett in ruling as a matter of law that the evidence was
legally insufficient to support the jury’s verdict. First, the
City argues that a different seniority system was created when it
eliminated all part-time parking attendant positions, and the
district court correctly focused on this new system in granting
judgment as a matter of law for the City. Moreover, the City
maintains that Medrano’s reliance on the absence of complaints in
the witness testimony misconstrues the focus on co-worker
expectations under the “special circumstances” exception of
Barnett. In order to prove the existence of “special
circumstances” under the first example in Barnett, the City
contends that Medrano would have to demonstrate that “fairly
frequent” deviations from the seniority policy left employees
with no real expectation that the seniority policy would be
-12-
enforced. Finally, the City argues that Medrano could not
demonstrate that one more exception was “unlikely to matter”
pursuant to the second example of the “special circumstances”
exception in Barnett because there was no evidence of any
deviations from the seniority policy.
We agree with the district court that the proper focus of
its “special circumstances” was on the seniority policy as it
applied after the part-time positions were eliminated on February
4, 2000. Medrano does correctly point out that the actual terms
of the seniority policy itself did not change when the part-time
positions were eliminated. We fail to see how this distinction
undermines the district court’s analysis. The simple fact
remains that, although Medrano consistently received a first-
shift assignment during his prior employment as a part-time
parking attendant, he never received such an accommodation as a
full-time parking attendant once the City eliminated the part-
time position on February 4, 2000. In fact, he was never hired
as a full-time parking attendant.
During oral argument, Medrano insisted that the separate job
classifications were immaterial to the Barnett analysis because
he performed the same duties and worked the same hours as his
full-time counterparts. We find this argument unconvincing. The
positions of “Parking Toll Attendant/Full Time” and “Parking Toll
Attendant/Part Time” constitute separate job classifications
under the City’s seniority policy. The policy defines
-13-
“seniority” as the “length of service within an employee’s
current job classification and department.” The policy plainly
states that “[t]he assignment to a shift will be by seniority
during the bid process.” Moreover, Medrano stipulated that he
did not accumulate seniority for the position of “Parking Toll
Attendant/Full Time” based on his previous employment with the
City as a “Parking Toll Attendant/Part Time.”
In light of the clear terms of the seniority policy and the
stipulated facts in this case, we conclude that job
classification is in fact a critical component of this seniority
system’s bidding process. See, e.g., Dobbs v. City of Atlanta,
606 F.2d 557, 558 (5th Cir. 1979) (describing, in the context of
a similar seniority bidding procedure, how an employee who
transfers to a different position within a department “must
forfeit all the competitive seniority he has accumulated in his
previous bargaining unit and start at the bottom”). Therefore,
we conclude that the district court correctly focused its
analysis on the seniority policy as it applied after the part-
time positions were eliminated on February 4, 2000.
Having so concluded, our review of the district court’s
analysis is greatly simplified. Both examples of “special
circumstances” under Barnett examine whether deviations from a
seniority policy--either when an employer exercises its right
unilaterally to change the system “fairly frequently” or when the
system itself “already contains exceptions”--reduce the
-14-
expectations of employees “that the system will be followed” such
that “one further exception is unlikely to matter.” Barnett, 535
U.S. at 405. The crucial and inescapable shortcoming of
Medrano’s attempt to establish “special circumstances” is that
the record is conspicuously devoid of a single instance in which
an exception was made for an employee in the full-time parking
attendant job classification in violation of the City’s seniority
policy. See Medrano, 2004 WL 2550592, at **4-5 (“Because the
Court only looks to the most recent seniority policy,
insufficient evidence was presented as a matter of law for it to
find special circumstances existed . . . .”).9 The district
court’s conclusion on this point is entirely correct.
Moreover, this court’s decision in Foreman v. Babcock &
9
Although we agree that co-worker impact is the touchstone
of the “special circumstances” analysis under Barnett, Medrano’s
citations to testimony from co-workers responding to his first-
shift accommodation while he was employed as a part-time parking
attendant are simply irrelevant to this inquiry. Because Medrano
did not identify a single relevant exception, we need not, and do
not, reach the issue of what precise evidentiary threshold might
demonstrate that an employer exercised its right to deviate from
the seniority policy “fairly frequently” under Barnett.
We also agree with the district court that Medrano’s
reliance on the Federal Circuit’s decision in Office of the
Architect of the Capitol v. Office of Compliance, 361 F.3d 633
(Fed. Cir. 2004), was misplaced. In that case, the court located
substantial evidence in the record “of the numerous exceptions
to, and overall fluidity of, [the Office of the Architect]’s wage
grade classification system” to conclude that “one more
exception” was unlikely to matter. Id. Again, Medrano’s
inability to introduce any evidence of such flexibility in the
City’s seniority policy with respect to full-time parking
attendants ultimately doomed his effort to establish “special
circumstances” under Barnett.
-15-
Wilcox Co., 117 F.3d 800 (5th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 522 U.S.
1115 (1998), presented a similar conflict between a reasonable
accommodation request under the ADA and the terms of a
collectively bargained seniority policy. Initially, we note that
Foreman took place in exactly the same procedural posture as this
case--namely, an appeal from a judgment as a matter of law in
favor of the employer. Id. at 802. As in the instant matter,
the employee in Foreman conceded that the requested work
accommodation for his heart condition would violate the terms of
the seniority policy. Id. at 809. In affirming the district
court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law, this court
expressly rejected the argument that an employer’s duty to
accommodate an employee’s disability under the ADA trumped the
employer’s obligation to honor the collectively bargained
seniority policy. Id. at 810.
“Following other circuits which have considered this issue,
we hold that the ADA does not require an employer to take action
inconsistent with the contractual rights of other workers under a
collective bargaining agreement.” Id. (citing Benson v.
Northwest Airlines, Inc., 62 F.3d 1108, 1114 (8th Cir. 1995);
Eckles v. Consol. Rail Corp., 94 F.3d 1041, 1051 (7th Cir. 1996);
Milton v. Scrivner, Inc., 53 F.3d 1118, 1125 (10th Cir. 1995)).
Based on our close review of this court’s decision in Foreman,
-16-
the Supreme Court’s subsequent holding in Barnett,10 and the
record in this case, we conclude that a reasonable jury could not
find in favor of Medrano on his failure-to-accommodate claim.
III. CONCLUSION
Even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the
verdict, Medrano did not adduce evidence which would allow a
reasonable jury to find that “special circumstances” existed
under Barnett to require a first-shift accommodation in direct
violation of the City’s seniority policy. Therefore, we AFFIRM
the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law.
10
In light of Barnett, we conclude that our holding in
Foreman applies with equal force in the context of a
unilaterally-imposed seniority policy like the one in this case.
See supra note 7.
-17-