"Aren't you being discriminatory?" asked Mary Casna in response to her supervisor's questions about her hearing disability, "How can you work if you cannot hear?" Casna's supervisor immediately reported Casna's statement to her supervisor, wrote up a job evaluation for Casna and Casna was filed three days later. Casna sued claiming that her statement to her supervisor ("Aren't you being discriminatory?") was protected activity and she claimed that her firing was unlawful retaliation in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
This informal complaint, the Seventh Circuit ruled in Casna v. Loves Park, No. 07-1044 (7th Cir., July 24, 2009), was "protected activity for purposes of retaliation claims." The court ordered that Casna's retaliation claim under the Americans With Disabilities Act must be decided by a jury at trial.
