Erin McHale v. Denis McDonough, 41 F.4th 866

Background

McHale worked as a VA pharmacy technician; side effects from diabetes medication in 2014 affected her attendance. Her supervisor reduced her rating and issued a sick-leave restriction.
McHale filed a union grievance complaining about the sick-leave restriction and later applied for multiple promotions (Dec 2014 and later) and was not selected. A hiring supervisor told a panel member McHale’s sick leave motivated the decision.
McHale made informal and formal EEOC complaints (Jan and Apr 2015) alleging unfair treatment and reprisal tied to sick-leave restrictions and prior grievance activity; she never alleged disability discrimination or a failure-to-accommodate in the administrative filings.
The agency investigated, issued an adverse final agency decision in Jan 2017, and McHale sued under the Rehabilitation Act alleging disability, failure to accommodate, hostile work environment, and retaliation.
The district court granted summary judgment: it held the disability and accommodation claims were unexhausted, hostile-work-environment claims lacked support, and retaliation failed for lack of comparators.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment on retaliation, but vacated and remanded to direct the district court to dismiss McHale’s disability and accommodation claims without prejudice for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether McHale exhausted administrative remedies for disability and failure-to-accommodate claims	McHale contends EEOC filings and investigation were reasonably related and should have revealed disability-based claims	Agency: EEOC charge only raised sick-leave and reprisal, never disability or accommodation; claims not exhausted	No exhaustion; disability and accommodation claims not raised and not reasonably discoverable by EEOC investigation
Whether Jenkins/"reasonably related" exception saves the new disability claims	The EEOC investigation should have led to uncovering disability discrimination	Agency: complaint scope limited to sick leave and retaliation; no factual narrative about disability	Exception fails — factual narrative concerned sick leave only, so disability claims not reasonably related
Whether McHale’s union grievance and EEOC complaints constituted statutorily protected activity for retaliation	McHale argues her grievance/EEOC activity was protected, so adverse actions were retaliatory	Agency: Complaints did not assert discrimination based on a protected class (disability) and thus were not protected activity for Rehabilitation Act retaliation	Not protected: complaints did not indicate discrimination based on disability, so retaliation claims based on those activities fail
Proper remedy where plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies	McHale sought merits adjudication in district court	Agency sought judgment on the merits	Court: exhaustion failure requires dismissal without prejudice; district court erred by entering summary judgment on unexhausted claims — remand to dismiss without prejudice

Key Cases Cited

Jenkins v. Blue Cross Mt. Hosp. Ins. Inc., 538 F.2d 164 (en banc 1976) (two-part "reasonably related" exception for claims not in EEOC charge)
Teal v. Potter, 559 F.3d 687 (7th Cir. 2009) (scope of EEOC charge governs what claims are exhausted; dismissal without prejudice required for failure to exhaust)
Chaidez v. Ford Motor Co., 937 F.3d 998 (7th Cir. 2019) (Rehabilitation Act claims require exhaustion like Title VII)
Miller v. Chicago Transit Auth., 20 F.4th 1148 (7th Cir. 2021) (a complaint is protected activity only if it attributes adverse treatment to a protected characteristic)
Tomanovich v. City of Indianapolis, 457 F.3d 656 (7th Cir. 2006) (informal EEOC complaints must indicate discrimination due to protected class to be protected activity)
McGuinness v. U.S. Postal Serv., 744 F.2d 1318 (7th Cir. 1984) (Rehabilitation Act exhaustion parallels Title VII)
Anderson v. Donahoe, 699 F.3d 989 (7th Cir. 2012) (retaliation claims under Rehabilitation Act require showing protected activity)
Swearnigen-El v. Cook Cnty. Sheriff’s Dept., 602 F.3d 852 (7th Cir. 2010) (investigation scope bounded by charging documents; court may rely on written administrative narrative)
Rush v. McDonald’s Corp., 966 F.2d 1104 (7th Cir. 1992) (use factual narrative of the charge to determine whether complaint invoked a protected characteristic)