Even if a former employee of a St. Louis school district balked at learning to read, the district is still liable for firing him because officials “perceived” him as having a learning disability, he argues in court papers.

Tommie Robinson, 55, filed a discrimination suit in July, claiming he has a disability within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and that disability was a “motivating factor” in the Normandy School District's decision to terminate him after 24 years of service as a groundskeeper.

“Robinson is 'disabled' ... because he has a[n] impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities in that he is unable to read at a first grade level,” the complaint says.

The district disagrees with Robinson on its motivation for firing him, pointing instead to his failure to provide evidence that he was attending a literacy program. It also argues in a motion for summary judgment that he has not alleged a “legally recognized disability.”

“Numerous cases have determined that, without a medical cause, illiteracy is not a 'physical or mental impairment' and therefore is not a disability,” the motion says, going on to note that Robinson does not claim he suffers from dyslexia or dysgraphia.

“While illiteracy is a serious problem, it does not always follow that someone who is illiterate is necessarily suffering from a physical or mental impairment,” the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Morisky v. Broward County, 80 F.3d 445 (1996).

But Robinson now appears to be making the rather artful –- if not disingenuous -– claim that he was fired not so much because he can't read, but because the district “perceived” him as having a “learning disability.”

“[I]f the Defendant treated the Plaintiff as if his illiteracy were caused by a learning disability, he is still protected under [the ADA] regardless of whether he actually has a learning disability,” Robinson says in a brief opposing summary judgment.

The district accommodated Robinson's illiteracy by, for example, giving him verbal instructions until October 2006, when it adopted a new policy requiring employees to show that they had basic literary skills. Robinson claims he provided the district with proof April 6 that he was enrolled in a literacy program, but district superintendent Dr. Connie Calloway recommended his termination five days later.

Calloway has testified that “no one discussed with me any disability which may have caused his illiteracy,” but, noting her “extensive experience” as a reading specialist, Robinson contends that she “could have diagnosed him with a learning disability, or at the very least suspected a learning disability was behind his illiteracy.”

Under Robinson's theory, therefore, it wouldn't matter if he really did not attend the required classes –- as long as the district fired him because it perceived him as having a disability.

But Robinson seems to be confusing two separate issues. While the district required him to take classes because of his disability, it does not follow that it fired him for the same reason rather than because he simply couldn't prove he was taking the classes.

Insubordination, after all, is insubordination.

By Peyton Burgess
9/22/07