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. His entitlement to future courses depended on course availability, seniority rules, and his qualifications. For fall 2022, he received appointments in anthropology and human development, with contracts stating that those semester appointments did not establish rights to subsequent appointments.
Belletto reported student disruptions, insulting messages, and threatening communications in his human development class. Administrators discussed classroom management and safety resources with him and approved moving his lectures, labs, and office hours online. On September 26, 2022, he disclosed Asperger's Syndrome and associated anxiety and panic attacks. University police later determined that an emailed gun image had been sent mistakenly by a former student, while student-conduct investigators found Belletto's accusations against the current students unsubstantiated.
After students complained about cancellations and insufficient instruction, Associate Dean Daniel O'Connor removed Belletto from the human development class on October 26 while continuing his pay through the semester. Belletto finished teaching anthropology, later took approved medical leave, and was told in January 2023 that enrollment and curricular changes left no spring courses for him. His operative complaint alleged six FEHA violations, a CFRA violation, and Labor Code retaliation. The superior court granted summary judgment, and Belletto appealed.
The Court’s Holding
Reviewing summary judgment de novo, the Court of Appeal held that the university provided reasonable accommodations by meeting with Belletto, investigating his reports, and permitting remote instruction. His proposed alternative—removing allegedly disruptive students—was unreasonable because he admitted that managing classroom disruption was an essential lecturer duty, and FEHA does not require elimination of an essential function. The same reasoning defeated his interactive-process claim because he identified no available reasonable accommodation that further discussion would have produced.
The court rejected Belletto's challenge to the trial judge's hearing questions because those questions did not concern the accommodation claims and the written ruling applied the correct standard. It also distinguished his circular-reasoning argument: that theory presumes a reasonable requested accommodation, whereas removing students was not reasonable. His new feasibility argument based on one student's later independent-study arrangement was doubly forfeited because it appeared neither in his summary-judgment opposition nor his opening appellate brief.
The disability-discrimination claim failed because Belletto did not separately engage with the governing burden-shifting framework and instead treated discrimination as derivative of the unsuccessful accommodation claims. The alleged harassment was neither objectively connected to his disability nor sufficiently severe or pervasive; his subjective reaction to O'Connor's remarks could not establish harassment. Additional incidents were forfeited because his opposition below addressed only two meetings. His newly framed CFRA and retaliation theories were likewise forfeited. The judgment was affirmed, with defendants awarded appellate costs.
Key Takeaways
- An employer need not remove essential job functions as a disability accommodation, and the court treated managing student disruption as an essential function of Belletto's lecturer position.
- A failure-to-engage-in-the-interactive-process claim requires an available reasonable accommodation that the process could have produced.
- A trial judge's oral questions do not impeach a written summary-judgment analysis that applies the correct legal standard.
- Harassment requires objective conduct connected to a protected characteristic and sufficient severity or pervasiveness, not merely the employee's subjective interpretation of remarks.
- New accommodation, harassment, CFRA, and retaliation theories can be forfeited when omitted from the summary-judgment opposition or opening appellate brief.
Why It Matters
The decision applies established FEHA principles to a university lecturer's request to transfer disruptive students, distinguishing operational changes such as remote teaching from eliminating classroom-management responsibilities. It also illustrates how accommodation and interactive-process claims can fail together when the employee identifies no reasonable alternative accommodation.
The unpublished opinion is not certified for publication under California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a). Its practical appellate lesson is the court's repeated enforcement of forfeiture: parties must develop each claim with supporting authority and present their factual theories in opposition to summary judgment rather than reformulate them on appeal.