Demarco v. Charter Oak Temple Restoration Assn., Inc.

Citations

• 226 Conn. App. 335

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed to this court from the judgment rendered for the defendant employer on the plaintiff's claim for employment discrimina- tion pursuant to the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (CFEPA) (§ 46a-51 et seq.). The defendant terminated the plaintiff's employment shortly after the plaintiff took a leave of absence to be with his newborn son. The son suffered from various ailments, all alleg- edly serious medical conditions that rendered him physically disabled within the meaning of CFEPA. The plaintiff alleged in his complaint that the defendant had violated a provision (§ 46a-60 (b) (1)) of CFEPA when it terminated the plaintiff's employment because of his association with a disabled individual, namely, his son. The trial court granted the defendant's motion to strike the operative complaint on the ground that § 46a-60 (b) (1) did not apply to claims of discrimination arising from an employee's association with a physically disabled individual. Held that the trial court properly concluded that CFEPA does not create a cause of action for associational discrimination: although the plain and unambiguous language of § 46a-60 (b) (1) clearly protects physically disabled employees from being discharged from their employment on account of their own physical disabilities, there is no language in § 46a- 60 (b) (1) or elsewhere in CFEPA that extends protection to employees who, though not physically disabled themselves, associate with physi- cally disabled individuals; moreover, although CFEPA is remedial in nature and, therefore, must be interpreted, whenever reasonably possi- ble, to effectuate the beneficent purpose of eliminating employment related discrimination, that principle of statutory construction did not authorize this court to ignore the plain language of § 46a-60 (b) (1) and the limits that the language places on achieving this purpose; further- more, the application of the plain and unambiguous language of § 46a- 60 (b) (1) does not lead