Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Vincent Belletto was a temporary part-time lecturer at California State University Long Beach during the 2021-2022 academic year and received a one-year contract for 2022-2023 after teaching consecutive semesters. His entitlement to future courses depended on availability and seniority-based assignment rules. In fall 2022 he taught in both the Anthropology and Human Development departments under contracts limited to that semester. He reported student interruptions, online name-calling, threatening messages, and an encounter in which students surrounded him and yelled insults. Administrators discussed support, referred him to campus student-conduct resources, and investigated his reports.
After Belletto disclosed Asperger's Syndrome and associated anxiety and panic attacks on September 26, 2022, the university approved moving his Human Development lectures, labs, and office hours online. Police determined that an emailed gun image had been sent mistakenly by a former student, while student-conduct investigators found his accusations against current students unsubstantiated. Belletto nevertheless sought removal of the allegedly disruptive students, began canceling classes, and stopped teaching online lectures synchronously. Associate Dean Daniel O'Connor removed him from that course on October 26 while continuing his pay through the semester; he kept teaching anthropology. The university later approved medical leave through December 23, and in January told him no spring courses were available because enrollment and curricular changes left too few classes after seniority-based assignments.
Belletto sued the Board of Trustees and O'Connor in July 2023, alleging six Fair Employment and Housing Act claims, a California Family Rights Act violation, and Labor Code retaliation. The superior court granted summary judgment, and Belletto appealed. The Court of Appeal reviewed that ruling de novo, viewing the evidence favorably to Belletto and asking whether any material factual dispute required trial.
The Court’s Holding
In its October 14, 2026 opinion, the court held that the university provided reasonable accommodations by repeatedly meeting with Belletto, investigating his concerns, offering classroom support, and permitting fully remote instruction. His proposed alternative—transferring selected students out of his course—was unreasonable as a matter of law because he admitted that managing classroom disruption was an essential lecturer duty, and FEHA does not require elimination of an essential function. The interactive-process claim failed for the same reason: Belletto could not identify an available reasonable accommodation that further discussion would have produced. The court also rejected challenges based on the trial judge's hearing questions and alleged circular reasoning, and held his independent-study argument doubly forfeited because it appeared only in his appellate reply.
The disability-discrimination claim failed because Belletto did not separately engage with the governing burden-shifting framework; any derivative version fell with the accommodation claims, and any independent version was forfeited. On hostile-environment harassment, the court found no objectively offensive disability-based conduct in O'Connor's remarks about the gun image, exaggerated safety concerns, a cartoon, or workers' compensation. Even assuming offense, the remarks were not sufficiently severe or pervasive to interfere unreasonably with Belletto's work. His broader totality-of-the-circumstances argument was forfeited because his summary-judgment opposition identified only two meetings. New CFRA and retaliation theories raised first on appeal were likewise forfeited.
The October 14, 2026 opinion affirmed the judgment and initially awarded defendants appellate costs. The November 5, 2026 order did not revisit the merits; it denied Belletto's petition for rehearing and modified only the disposition to require each party to bear its own costs on appeal, expressly stating that there was a change in the judgment. The modification does not alter the affirmance or the substantive claim rulings.
Key Takeaways
- An employer need not remove an essential job function as a disability accommodation, even when the employee identifies a different way to structure the workplace.
- A lecturer's request to transfer allegedly disruptive students was unreasonable where managing student disruption was an essential duty of the position.
- An interactive-process claim cannot succeed without an available reasonable accommodation that the process could have produced.
- Subjective perceptions that remarks were mocking did not establish objectively severe or pervasive disability-based harassment.
- New summary-judgment theories and undeveloped appellate arguments were forfeited, and the rehearing order changed only the allocation of appellate costs.
Why It Matters
The decision applies established FEHA principles to a university setting by separating meaningful accommodations—remote teaching, meetings, and investigations—from a request that would effectively remove the lecturer's classroom-management responsibility. It also illustrates how accommodation, interactive-process, discrimination, and harassment theories require distinct analytical showings rather than rising together automatically.
Procedurally, the opinion underscores the consequences of failing to present arguments in summary-judgment opposition or develop them in an opening appellate brief. The later rehearing order is narrowly significant: it preserves the university's victory on the employment claims while replacing the original costs award with mutual responsibility for appellate costs.