Seventh Circuit Sides With DHS in Worker’s Disability Bias Case

The Seventh Circuit declined to revive a former Department of Homeland Security employee’s lawsuit challenging his termination and alleging disability discrimination, ruling that he failed to timely follow administrative requirements before filing a complaint in court.

Dored Shiba, who worked as an immigration officer for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, didn’t initiate an internal equal employment opportunity complaint within 45 days of the alleged discrimination, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held Tuesday.

The court affirmed summary judgment to DHS on Shiba’s claims that the agency failed to accommodate a disability tied to a workplace injury and subjected him to harassment.

The appeals court also declined to invoke the continuing violation doctrine to keep Shiba’s claims alive, saying it only applies to allegedly hostile actions that are part of the same claim. Nothing in the record suggests Shiba’s workplace was permeated with discriminatory ridicule, intimidation, and insult to give rise to a hostile work environment claim, Judge Diane Sykes, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the panel.

Shiba’s failure-to-accommodate claim also failed because he wasn’t a qualified individual under the Rehabilitation Act who could perform their essential job functions with an accommodation, the court added. It cited his own statements to the Labor Department that he needed his workers’ compensation benefits renewed because he wasn’t able to work.

Shiba was injured in a workplace fall in 2007, shortly after starting at USCIS. He remained on medical leave for years.

After initially being terminated and then reinstated by the Merit Systems Protection Board, court papers said his return to work in late 2010 failed due to worsening symptoms. The DHS Office of Inspector General later investigated him for improperly using his federal role to do freelance work by representing refugees before the United Nations Refugee Agency. He was fired in 2014.

Judges Robert Kirsch and Michael Scudder, both Trump appointees, sat on the Seventh Circuit panel.

Abraham Law & Consulting LLC represents Shiba. The US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois represents DHS.

The case is Shiba v. Mullin, 7th Cir., No. 24-2514, 5/5/26.