Transgender Northrop Grumman Worker Lacks Disability Bias Claim

A Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. field engineer who was transitioning genders can’t sue for disability bias based on a new manager’s alleged attempt to derail his career, the Northern District of Alabama ruled.

John Doe says his new manager at Northrop Grumman’s Way facility in Hunstville, Ala., denied his request to deploy overseas and sought to transfer him out of the Air Defense Airspace Management Systems Division because of his “rapidly developing female characteristics” and transitioning status. Doe says in his lawsuit he is a “formerly transitioning transgender individual.” He continues to use the masculine pseudonym in all pleadings, according to the court.

He sued the aerospace and defense technology giant for alleged sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But “gender dysphoria,” the new clinical term used by the American Psychiatric Association, is expressly excluded as a covered disability under the ADA unless it’s the result of a physical impairment, and Doe’s lawsuit doesn’t allege that his need to transition genders has a physical cause, Judge C. Lynwood Smith Jr. said Oct. 22. “There is simply no such assertion, and that is fatal to plaintiff’s ADA claim,” the judge said.

The ADA still uses the APA’s previous description “gender identity disorder,” but the two terms are “legally synonymous,” Smith said. Decisions by the District of Massachusetts and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania holding to the contrary “are not binding” in the Eleventh Circuit and “are not persuasive,” he said.

But Doe can continue to pursue his claim that Northrop paid him less and otherwise treated him less favorably based on sex, the court said. Doe’s sex bias allegations are “bare-bones” but sufficient to survive dismissal on the pleadings, the court said.

Doe’s assertion that the sex discrimination included to a hostile work environment, which he mixed into his unequal terms and conditions claim, was unsupported by specific allegations and Doe conceded as much, Smith said. It was therefore also dismissed.

Mastando & Artrip LLC represents Doe. Littler Mendelson P.C. represents Northrop.

The case is Doe v. Northrop Grumman Sys. Corp., 2019 BL 403979, N.D. Ala., No. 5:19-CV-00991, 10/22/19.