Wallace v. Caring Solutions, LLC

Citations

• 213 Conn. App. 605

Syllabus

The plaintiff, a certified nursing assistant, sought to recover damages from the defendant for an alleged violation of the Connecticut Fair Employ- ment Practices Act (CFEPA) (§ 46a-60), for failing to hire the plaintiff, who is hard of hearing, on the basis of her disability. During the hiring interview with S, the owner and administrator of the defendant, the plaintiff asked S to speak up, as she had trouble hearing her. S subse- quently asked how the plaintiff would be able to hear her clients and the plaintiff responded that she had no problem communicating with her nonverbal autistic son. The interview continued with no further questions regarding the plaintiff's disability but, instead, focused on the plaintiff's sporadic work history. After the interview, S received a fax containing employment discrimination information from the plaintiff's mother, which S interpreted as a potential threat of litigation. Thereafter, the defendant did not hire the plaintiff. Subsequently, the plaintiff filed her discrimination action with the trial court, which determined that the plaintiff had not proven that the reason she was not hired by the defendant was because of her hearing disability, and that the reasons given by the defendant for not hiring the plaintiff, the gaps in her employ- ment history, her reliability, and the fax sent by her mother, were not due to intentional discrimination. On appeal to this court, the plaintiff claimed, inter alia, that the trial court applied the incorrect legal standard for determining the defendant's liability under CFEPA. Held: 1. The plaintiff could not prevail on her claim that the trial court erred in applying the but-for causation standard in reviewing her disability claim pursuant to CFEPA, as the trial court properly applied the motivating factor test as the causation standard, which required the plaintiff to prove only that the illegal discrimination was a cause of the adverse employment action: although the trial court's decis