A resident physician at Meharry Medical College failed to show he was suspended from work as retaliation for taking Family and Medical Leave Act leave, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined Tuesday.
The plaintiff in Adefurin v. Meharry Medical College took FMLA leave after the birth of a child in spring 2018. In the fall of that year, he was suspended by a disciplinary committee after he missed work for a job interview without providing notice and responded to the chief resident in a “contemptuous” manner when asked about it.
The committee noted “that previous chief residents had raised concerns about [the plaintiff’s] unprofessionalism, and that several attendings expressed no surprise at the incident given their prior impressions of him,” according to the 6th Circuit opinion.
The doctor sued, arguing that Meharry’s attending physicians “had grown wary of residents’ use of FMLA leave,” citing a WhatsApp group message from a classmate to other residents referencing comments from a meeting of program leaders. But that argument failed because the chief resident who initiated the disciplinary action was not connected to either the message or the meeting, the court noted.
The doctor also pointed to another resident who took leave and was given a suspension. But that resident “repeatedly lied about her whereabouts to program leadership,” the court said. Rather than support his claim that the school showed a pattern of FMLA retaliation, the comparison supported the school in showing it “treated unexcused absences consistently.”
Among his other alleged evidence, the doctor pointed to a resident who had an unexcused absence but did not take FMLA leave and was not suspended. But this colleague was not “similarly situated,” the 6th Circuit said, because he had no history of unprofessional conduct to which the plaintiff could point.
A member of the firm that represented the plaintiff declined to comment on Monday.
