The four plaintiffs — Robyn Bomar, Letina Hall, Jonise Stallings, and Shakera Adkins — were assistant principals in Harford County Public Schools until 2019, when Superintendent Sean Bulson launched a budget-driven restructuring that significantly reduced administrative staff. Under the resulting 2019 Reassignment Plan, all sitting assistant principals had to reapply for their positions through a competitive process that included recorded video and written responses to uniform interview questions, supervisor references, and ranked lists from school principals. None of the four women was selected. They were the only Black women over forty who had applied, and while Black applicants made up roughly 11 percent of the 101-person pool, they accounted for approximately 30 percent of the thirteen applicants not selected.
The women sued the School Board and Superintendent Bulson under Title VII, the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, asserting both disparate-treatment and disparate-impact theories. Hall and Adkins added FMLA retaliation claims, arguing their medical leaves — taken while applications were being evaluated — cost them their positions. All four also alleged retaliation for raising discrimination complaints, and they brought Section 1983 claims against Bulson individually.
The district court, Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby of the District of Maryland, granted summary judgment to the defendants across the board. A per curiam panel of Judges Niemeyer, Gregory, and Berner affirmed in full on April 16, 2026.
On the disparate-treatment claims, the court assumed without deciding that the plaintiffs made out prima facie cases, then held they failed at the pretext stage. The record showed that Bomar ranked seventeenth out of fifty-three secondary applicants, Hall ranked forty-fifth, and Stallings ranked fifty-second; Adkins ranked thirty-fifth out of thirty-nine elementary applicants. Bomar's immediate supervisor did not recommend that she be rehired, noting she had been repeatedly reprimanded. Hall's immediate supervisor recommended her with reservations, and Adkins's immediate supervisor gave her a recommend with reservations reference. Stallings did not appear on any principal's top-five list. The court held the plaintiffs produced no evidence from which a reasonable jury could find those explanations were cover for discrimination.
The disparate-impact claims failed on a different ground. Assuming a prima facie showing that the plan fell more harshly on Black women, the court held the plaintiffs never identified an available alternative employment practice that would have produced less disparate impact while still serving the School Board's legitimate business needs — a burden Title VII places squarely on plaintiffs once an employer justifies its practice by business necessity.
The retaliation claims fared no better. The Title VII and MFEPA retaliation claims failed at the prima facie stage because the plaintiffs produced no evidence that School Board decision-makers knew of their protected complaints before taking the adverse actions — a ground the Fourth Circuit noted differed from the district court's basis for dismissal. Hall and Adkins cleared the prima facie bar on their FMLA claims tied to the 2019 plan — their leaves and their receipt of non-selection letters in June 2019 were sufficiently close in time — but the court held they could not show the School Board's performance-based explanations were pretextual. Their separate FMLA claims based on exclusion from the applicant pool in 2020 and 2021 failed because more than a year separated their leave from those later exclusions, a gap the court held insufficient to support a causal inference without additional evidence. The Section 1983 claims against Bulson fell with the Title VII claims.
The opinion is unpublished and carries no precedential weight in the circuit.