Littler Lightbulb – December 2025 Employment Appellate Roundup

At a Glance

This Littler Lightbulb highlights some of the more significant employment and labor law developments in the federal courts of appeal in the last month.

Fourth Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment for Employer in Failure to Promote Race and Gender Discrimination Case

Hood-Wilson v. Board of Trustees of the Community College of Baltimore County, 162 F.4th101 (4th Cir. Dec. 12, 2025) involved a Title VII discrimination claim by a Black female community college program director who alleged that she was not promoted to Assistant Dean of Workforce Solutions because of her race and gender. The plaintiff alleged that the community college's rationale for selecting a white male over her for the position, i.e., that he was more qualified than the plaintiff, was pretextual. The district court granted summary judgment for the employer and the plaintiff appealed.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit first addressed the plaintiff's argument regarding the candidates' relative qualifications. The Fourth Circuit explained that it "assess[es] relative job qualifications based on the criteria that the employer has established as relevant to the position in question." In this case, the court found, the person selected for the position was chosen because they were the strongest applicant for the position based on the requirements in the job description. To rebut this assessment, the plaintiff offered the declaration of a former co-worker subjectively asserting that the person selected for the position exhibited poor leadership skills and mismanaged a grant-funded program, in contrast to the plaintiff who had grant-writing experience. In response, the Fourth Circuit stated, "it is the perception of the decision maker which is relevant," and whether coworkers "thought that she did a good job, or that she did not deserve [to be denied the promotion], is close to irrelevant."

Next, the plaintiff argued that the hiring committee had preselected a white male employee for the position, and that the hiring process and interview questions were designed to highlight white male applicants' qualifications. Rejecting this argument, the Fourth Circuit noted that "[i]f one employee was unfairly preselected for the position, the preselection would work to the detriment of all applicants for the job, black and white alike." Accordingly, "preselection is not indicative on its own of discrimination...."

The plaintiff also argued circumstantial evidence demonstrated discriminatory animus played a role in the hiring decision, and specifically asserted that allegedly discriminatory comments by a member of the hiring committee supported her claim. Because none of the comments were tethered to the final decision maker, however, and none of the alleged remarks occurred during the hiring process, the Fourth Circuit agreed with the district court that the alleged comments failed to demonstrate discriminatory animus in relation to the hiring decision at issue.

Finally, the court rejected the plaintiff's claim that a corrective action letter she received evidenced discrimination, and that white male employees who allegedly committed the same infractions as the plaintiff were not disciplined. In this regard, the court found that the plaintiff, unlike the other employees, had a history of "inattention to fiscal matters," for which she was appropriately disciplined. Although deviations from a company's internal policies may constitute circumstantial evidence of pretext and discriminatory intent, in this case the record established that the discipline followed the employer's established policy and was not discriminatory.

For all these reasons, the Fourth Circuit upheld summary judgment for the employer.

Fourth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Tenure Denial Race Bias Suit

In a similar race discrimination case, Katti v. Arden,161 F.4th 217 (4th Cir. Dec. 2, 2025), the plaintiff, an Indian professor, sued the provost, college dean, department head, and two faculty members of North Carolina State University alleging they denied him tenure based on his race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and retaliated against him for his "non-traditional teaching methods" in violation of the First Amendment. After the district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, the plaintiff appealed to the Fourth Circuit.

First, outlining the principles governing its review, the Fourth Circuit emphasized that in university tenure process cases the Supreme Court has counseled a "restrained" approach. Stating that academic freedom is the "bedrock of higher education," the court explained that it must "show great respect for the faculty's professional judgment." Applying these principles, the court stated that in equal protection violation cases, the plaintiff must establish the tenure committee treated him differently than comparators with similar "scholarship, . . . pedagogy, [and] . . . service to the university." To plead a § 1981 violation, a plaintiff must also allege intentional discrimination based on race. Here, although the plaintiff's complaint contained charts purporting to show that the university treated him less favorably than his white male comparators, the Fourth Circuit found that they lacked the requisite detail on teaching quality, mentorship, and service that factored into the tenure decision, and, moreover, that the plaintiff failed to allege that the individually-named defendants were even involved in the decision to grant tenure to the individuals identified as comparators in the plaintiff's charts. Ultimately, the plaintiff's theory of race discrimination failed because none of the facts alleged had anything to do with race, and were merely speculative.

As to the plaintiff's retaliation claim, the Fourth Circuit assessed whether the professor's speech was protected by the First Amendment. While it is "possible that teaching methods ... could fall within the zone of protection afforded by the First Amendment," in this case, the criticism of the plaintiff was about his teaching quality, not about the content of his courses or his scholarship, which was not protected.

Sixth Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment for Employer on Plaintiff's ADA Accommodation Claim

In Bowles v. SSRG II LLC, __ F.4th__ (6th Cir. Dec. 17, 2025), a fast-food restaurant hired the plaintiff as a cashier/service-team employee. The job involved taking customer orders, stocking the restaurant's drink station and refrigeration unit, preparing beverages, and delivering food and beverages to customers at checkout or at their tables, as well as cleaning tables, vacuuming, taking out trash, and cleaning customer bathrooms. During the interview, the plaintiff disclosed that she had difficulty standing for long periods of time and would require unspecified periods of rest while working. In her onboarding documents, the plaintiff indicated that she would be required to "sit down when needed" or "sit and work." When the plaintiff arrived for her first day of work, the company's HR manager asked for medical documentation of her condition and information about the frequency and duration of her seating requirements. After submitting information from her doctor indicating that she had knee arthritis and required a chair for work, the plaintiff requested an accommodation allowing her to sit for five minutes after every ten minutes of standing. When the HR manager informed the plaintiff that it could not accommodate her request and did not have any positions that would allow her to sit, the plaintiff filed suit alleging failure to accommodate and failure to engage in the interactive process in violation of the ADA and Kentucky Civil Rights Act. After the district court granted summary judgment for the employer, the plaintiff appealed to the Sixth Circuit.

Assessing the array of duties in the job description, the Sixth Circuit found that the plaintiff failed to show that her requested accommodation was "objectively reasonable" because it would fundamentally alter the nature of the "jack-of-all-trades" position that required the plaintiff to "perform multiple tasks" to one in which many of the essential functions of the job would necessarily be reallocated to other employees. Citing prior Sixth Circuit decisions holding that a request to reallocate essential functions of a job to other team members is not reasonable, the court affirmed summary judgment on the failure to accommodate claim. The Sixth Circuit also affirmed summary judgment on the plaintiff's interactive process claim, holding that the viability of that claim "presuppose[s] the existence of a reasonable accommodation," which did not exist.

Seventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Constitutional and Title VII Religious Discrimination Claims Over COVID-19 Test Reporting Rule

In Kondilis v. City of Chicago, 160 F.4th 866 (7th Cir. Dec. 2, 2025), the employer granted the plaintiffs a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, but placed them on "non-disciplinary, no-pay status" for refusing to comply with the requirement to report vaccination status and weekly COVID-19 test results in an online employee portal. The plaintiffs resigned and filed suit under Title VII and the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act (IRFRA) for religious discrimination and under 42 U.S.C. §1983, asserting the requirement to report their vaccination status and COVID-19 test results violated their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The district court dismissed all claims and the plaintiffs appealed to the Seventh Circuit.

On appeal, the Seventh Circuit first addressed the plaintiffs' First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion claim and Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection claim. On both of these claims, the court found that the plaintiffs failed to allege how the reporting requirements burdened their free exercise of religion or that the requirements were not equally applied, given that the neutral policy did not distinguish between religious and nonreligious employees. In response to plaintiffs' argument that the employer applied the policy inconsistently, the court stated "[i]t is not enough for Plaintiffs ...to show that the Policy was inconsistently applied...they must plausibly show that this inconsistency bore upon religion in some way." Ultimately, applying a rational basis review, the Seventh Circuit concluded the employer's tracking of the plaintiffs' COVID-19 test results and vaccination status was rationally related to stopping the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the safety of its employees and the public.

The court also found that because plaintiffs' constitutional claims failed, so did their IRFRA claim, and that plaintiffs waived their Title VII claim by omitting any argument in their brief about how the Title VII analysis differed from their other claims.

Eleventh Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment on Hostile Environment, Religious Discrimination, and Retaliation Claims

In Mukhina v. Walmart, Inc., __ F.4th __ (11th Cir. Dec. 22, 2025), the plaintiff alleged her employer subjected her to a hostile work environment based on her national origin, discriminated against her based on her religion, and retaliated against her for complaints about the alleged discrimination in violation of Title VII. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the employer and the plaintiff appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.

In support of her national origin hostile environment claim, the plaintiff, who was Russian, alleged that customers, coworkers, and supervisors laughed at, mocked, and became angry with her due to her inability to communicate in English. The Eleventh Circuit held that although "comments about an employee's accent or linguistic mannerisms can support an inference of discrimination when combined with other harassing conduct motivated by national origin," the comments alleged by the plaintiff did not constitute harassment based on national origin and the alleged conduct was not severe or pervasive. Moreover, the plaintiff failed to establish any basis for holding the employer liable as it took "immediate and appropriate corrective action" after learning of the alleged conduct.

The Eleventh Circuit also upheld summary judgment on the plaintiff's religious discrimination claim because she failed to include a religious discrimination claim in her administrative charge with the EEOC, which alleged only "retaliation" and "national origin" discrimination, not religious discrimination. Although in the intake questionnaire the plaintiff complained that her employer denied her time off on New Year's Eve, which she compared to "Christmas in America," the questionnaire neither stated that New Year's Eve was a religious holiday nor mentioned the plaintiff's religious beliefs. In addition, the court stated, "the employee's formal charge, not the intake questionnaire, is what counts."

Similarly, the plaintiff's claim that her employer assigned two attendance points and constructively discharged her in retaliation for complaining about her working conditions lacked merit. The court found that, consistent with the employer's attendance policy, the plaintiff was assigned attendance points because she missed work. The court also concluded that no causal connection existed between the plaintiff's alleged constructive discharge and her complaints, noting that after she complained, the employer transferred her, the working conditions improved, and she did not quit until several months after the transfer.

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