Appellate Court Reverses Denial of Summary Judgment in FCRA Retaliation Case

A trial court’s denial of summary judgment was overturned after an appellate court found that a job applicant failed to meet the statutory deadline for filing a retaliation claim under the Florida Civil Rights Act (FCRA). The applicant, who previously sued two school boards for alleged FCRA violations, applied for three positions with the Jackson County School Board, but was denied employment. The court ruled that each hiring decision was a separate, distinct act rather than part of a continuing violation, and because the applicant failed to file his claims within the required 365-day period, summary judgment should have been granted.

The trial court denied a school board’s motion for summary judgment, which was based on an applicant’s alleged failure to exhaust administrative remedies. Davis, the job applicant, was previously employed by the Washington County School Board and the Calhoun County School Board, and he ultimately sued both school boards for alleged violations of the FCRA.

Davis later applied to three jobs with the Jackson County School Board, the employer in this matter. He was denied employment. He then sued for retaliation, but he did not timely file charges with the Florida Commission on Human Relations or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 365 days, as required by section 760.11, Florida Statutes.

The District Court discussed the rule that a discrete act of discrimination (i.e., the declination to hire as unlawful retaliation) is an act that in itself constitutes a separate actionable unlawful employment practice that is temporally distinct. Thus, the order denying the employer summary judgment was reversed because the three declinations to hire were temporally distinct events, as opposed to a continuous purported violation, and the 365-day deadline to file an FCRA claim was not met.