PITTSBURGH (LN) — A western Pennsylvania federal judge refused to dismiss an ADA associational discrimination and retaliation suit brought by a former retirement-facility security guard who alleges his employer fired him, then handed him a 30-day eviction notice, because his disabled wife's ongoing litigation against the same facility had become an unwelcome presence on campus.
The ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer matters beyond this one case: employers defending associational-discrimination claims routinely argue that a fired worker has merely alleged adverse action tied to caregiving burdens, not disability-based animus. Judge Fischer's order draws a sharp line between those two theories, and lets Robert Garvin's suit proceed on the theory that Masonic Village wanted him — and his wife — physically gone from its grounds for reasons rooted in her disability itself.
Garvin worked at Masonic Village at Sewickley, a retirement, personal nursing, and memory care residential facility, from June 2017 until his termination in September 2024, first as a driver and then as a reception screener and security guard. His wife, Robin Kusnirak-Garvin, was a Registered Nurse Supervisor at the same facility, employed from October 2022 until her termination in July 2023, while she was on light duty following a February 2023 work-related injury that included a broken right foot requiring surgery. The couple lived in housing leased from the facility. After her termination, Ms. Kusnirak-Garvin filed a workers' compensation claim, an EEOC charge, and a federal ADA lawsuit against Masonic Village. Garvin was listed as a witness in that litigation — a fact, the complaint alleges, that was common knowledge on campus.
The precipitating incident came on September 1, 2024, when Garvin found an elderly resident apparently unconscious on the floor, with a nurse's aide already summoned, and continued monitoring both his entrance post and the resident's care. His supervisor, Michael Wrbas, approved a security-camera review and asked Garvin to write a report; three days later Wrbas told Garvin the response times were reasonable and thanked him for the report. Two days after that, Garvin was suspended. His termination letter cited violations including "inconsistent treatment of residents" and "dishonesty," gave him no opportunity to respond, and directed him to vacate the couple's leased home within 30 days.
On the associational discrimination count, Masonic Village argued Garvin had not plausibly alleged his termination was motivated by his wife's disability or by unfounded stereotypes about it. Judge Fischer rejected that framing. Accepting the complaint's well-pled allegations as true, as required at the pleading stage, the court concluded that the complaint plausibly alleges the facility held animosity toward Ms. Kusnirak-Garvin on account of her continuing work-related disability and desired to remove what it perceived to be the unfavorable distraction and reminder she and that disability presented to its residential care community. Terminating Garvin and the couple's lease would, the complaint alleges, accomplish exactly that. The court held that Garvin had met the applicable pleading standard on this count.
The retaliation count required a closer look. Judge Fischer drew a distinction that will interest employment practitioners: she held that Garvin's physical and logistical support for his wife — transportation, mobility assistance, accompanying her to an independent medical examination — did not, standing alone, constitute protected opposition activity under any law cited or of which the court was presently aware. What did suffice, she held, was Garvin's own direct objection to the facility's alleged discrimination against his wife, including discussions with the defendant about her rights to be free of discrimination. His status as a named witness in her federal lawsuit independently satisfied the participation prong of the ADA's anti-retaliation provision. On causation, the court pointed to temporal proximity between his termination and his wife's advancing claims, the facility's ongoing antagonism toward those claims, and the vague and procedurally irregular manner in which Garvin was discharged.
Judge Fischer was candid that the amended complaint, while sufficient, could have been stronger, and signaled the case will benefit from a fuller factual record in discovery. Masonic Village's motion was denied without prejudice.
The termination letter that ended Garvin's roughly seven years of employment also handed him a 30-day notice to leave the home where he and his wife had been living — on the same campus where her disability and her lawsuits against the facility were, by the complaint's account, a continuing source of inquiry and concern.