Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—M.D. Tenn.: Sephora’s motion to dismiss succeeds due to employee’s vague allegations, (Sep 9, 2025)

By Tulay Turan, J.D.

She wanted the company to accommodate a personality conflict with her managers, not her disability.

Granting Sephora’s motion to dismiss a disabled employee’s ADA and FMLA claims, a federal district court in Tennessee found she had not sufficiently pled failure to accommodate, discrimination, hostile work environment, or retaliation claims. Her request to work with different managers was objectively unreasonable, she quit and was not terminated, and stray comments about another employee’s mental health were not sufficiently severe to alter the conditions of her employment. In addition, one text from her manager while she was on leave was insufficient to support an FMLA interference claim (Perry v. Sephora USA, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-1157 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 5, 2025)).

The employee began working at Sephora in 2015 and was ultimately promoted to assistant store manager. Thereafter, she served as acting store manager for two months, and told the district manager that she would like to be considered for a store manager position if one became available.

Diagnosis. In 2021, the employee was diagnosed with acute anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. After telling her manager about her condition, she received approval to take leave, starting in December 2022. She alleged that the store manager discouraged her from taking leave and that she witnessed the manager mocking another manager because she had a mental disability.

Text during leave. About five weeks into the employee’s FMLA leave, the store manager texted her to tell her that one of the manager’s trainees had received a store manager position. When the employee returned from leave, she contacted HR to explain that working with her store manager and district manager “aggravated her disabling conditions because they were harassing her.” She told HR that she did not see how she could return to work if she had to face “discrimination, bullying, and retaliation” from the managers. She said she would resign, and, thereafter, she received a letter stating that her benefits had been terminated.

Complaint filed. The employee filed ADA and FMLA claims against Sephora. She claimed the company failed to accommodate her disability, discriminated against her because of her disability, created a hostile work environment for people with mental health disorders, and retaliated against her after she requested leave based on her mental health. She also claimed that Sephora violated the FMLA by interfering with her leave and by retaliating against her for requesting leave. The company filed this motion to dismiss.

Unreasonable request. Addressing the employee’s failure-to-accommodate claim, the court found her request to work with different managers was objectively unreasonable and, thus, her claim failed. The court noted the ADA does not require a company to “reshuffle its management structure to accommodate a single employee’s stress or anxiety.” Here, she not only asked to be supervised by a different store manager but also a different district manager. That request, the court said, was unreasonable on its face.

The court also noted there were no allegations that the employee requested that she be transferred to a different Sephora store or district. Correspondingly, she did not allege there were vacancies she could have filled in other stores or districts. Although under certain circumstances a request by an employee to be transferred can be a reasonable accommodation, she did not allege that she requested to be transferred. Instead, she wanted Sephora to transfer her district manager or store manager to create a special chain of command for her. “In other words, [the employee] wanted Sephora to accommodate a personality conflict with her managers, not her disability,” the court wrote.

Failure-to-promote. Next, the court found the employee failed to state a discrimination claim based on a failure-to-promote theory. She did not allege she applied for the store manager position. Suggesting to the district manager that she would like to be considered for future store manager openings was not equivalent to applying for an actual vacancy, the court said.

In addition, she failed to allege that the person selected for the store manager position was not in the protected class herself. If that employee also were disabled, there could be no inference of disability discrimination. These pleading failures were insufficient to state a discrimination claim.

No hostile work environment. Likewise, the employee failed to state a hostile-work-environment claim. She could not show that the store manager’s off-hand remarks about another manager being “crazy’ and having “mental health issues” was harassment “based on her disability.” The court noted she had not even alleged these comments were made after she told the store manager about her own diagnosis. The comments could not be based on her disability if they preceded the store manager’s knowledge of the employee’s condition.

Moreover, these stray comments—while offensive—were not, standing alone, sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the employee’s employment, the court found.

Retaliation claim fails. Turning to the employee’s ADA retaliation claim, the court found she had not pleaded sufficient facts to establish that Sephora took an adverse employment action against her. The company did not terminate her employment. Rather, she quit. Although failure to promote could constitute an adverse employment action, she did not allege she applied for the job in question. “An employer does not retaliate against an employee by failing to offer them a job for which they never applied,” the court wrote.

No causal connection. The court also noted that even if the employee had alleged an adverse employment action, she failed to establish a causal connection between the protected activity and the failure to promote. She appeared to rely on temporal proximity alone but did not allege when the protected activity took place. The court found the span of time between requesting leave for her disability and not being promoted could have been as much as seven months. Citing Sixth Circuit precedent, the court wrote that “a plaintiff cannot rely on temporal proximity alone to establish causation if the span between the protected activity and the adverse employment action is greater than ten weeks.”

De minimis contact. Finally, the court addressed the employee’s FMLA claims, finding that both her interference and retaliation claims failed. The only basis for her interference claim was that the store manager texted her once while she was on leave to tell her that another employee had been promoted to manager. Although it was unclear why the manager texted her, it was a single instance of contact and was more personal in nature. Sephora had no obvious business need for the manager to text the employee while she was on leave.

Even if business interests motivated the text, the court noted that an employer can engage in de minimis contact with an employee on leave without violating her rights. The employee did not allege Sephora contacted her repeatedly or asked her to perform intensive tasks. Because the store manager texted only once and did not ask her to perform any work-related functions, the employee’s allegations fell short of establishing FMLA interference.

As to the FMLA retaliation claim, the court found it failed for the same reasons as the ADA retaliation claim. Thus, the court granted Sephora’s motion to dismiss all her claims.

The case is No. 3:24-cv-1157.

Judge: Crenshaw, W., Jr.

Attorneys: David B. Weatherman (The Weatherman Firm) for Sara Perry. Keith D. Frazier (Ogletree, Deakins) for Sephora USA, Inc.

Companies: Sephora USA, Inc.

Cases: Discrimination DisabilityDiscrimination EmployeeLeave Retaliation TennesseeNews