Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—PREGNANCY—D. Md.: Reduction of therapist’s clients under extended leave policy not pretextual, (May 29, 2025)

By Marjorie Johnson, J.D.

The employer’s owner told the employee that she would not be assigned new clients for the next twelve weeks because “the baby might come early.”

A licensed graduate professional counselor (LGPC), who was given fewer clients during the final months of her pregnancy and assigned administrative tasks pursuant to the employer’s extended leave policy, failed to defeat summary judgment on her Title VII pregnancy discrimination claim since there was no evidence suggesting pretext. However, while she also failed to advance her constructive discharge claim, a jury will decide whether the employer’s owner retaliated against her for complaining internally and filing an EEOC charge by giving her a poor performance review and written warning and refusing to support her state licensing application (Williams v Silver Psychotherapy, LLC, No. 8:24-cv-00476-DKC (D. Md. May 27, 2025)).

25-hour requirement. On October 28, 2023, the employee began working for the employer as a LGPC. This role meant that while she had received a degree in counseling, she still needed to obtain supervised experience in order to seek full licensure by the state. Her employment agreement required her to bill a minimum of 25 hours of counseling services a week to be eligible for health insurance. However, during the weeks that she worked prior to announcing her pregnancy she did not meet the minimum requirement.

Pregnancy announced. On March 23, 2023, she told the employer’s owner that she was pregnant. She allegedly received her performance review that same day, which reflected that she had not met the employer’s expectations. Nonetheless, she claimed the supervisor told her she was “doing a good job.”

Extended leave policy. Under the employer’s leave policy, a therapist planning to take an extended leave must briefly reroute new, long-term clients from their schedule and replace that work with short-term clients and numerous other administrative tasks. The employer claimed that the policy was implemented uniformly and regardless of the reason for the extended leave. Prior to a therapist’s extended leave, the owner notifies their patients of their upcoming leave and allows them to choose whether to receive care from a new therapist in the interim. The employer contended that the purpose of the policy was to ensure that patients with serious trauma issues did not experience a break in continuity with a therapist just as they are beginning to develop trust with her therapist.

Fewer clients. On May 18, the owner told the employee that she would not be assigned new clients for the next twelve weeks because “the baby might come early.” The employee claimed the owner then disciplined her for not maintaining her hours and threatened to take away her health insurance benefits. Conversely, the employer provided examples of where she gave away patients herself and refused to perform tasks offered to her to allow her to reach the hour requirements.

Written warning after internal complaint. On May 18, the employee sent a letter to the owner alleging pregnancy discrimination and retaliation. The employer’s attorney responded that the changes were due to her impending maternity leave, reiterated the other tasks available to her, and asked whether she wanted to remain on full-time status or change to part-time status and lose health insurance. On May 26, she declined the “demotion” and asked to be assigned “adequate clinical hours” to allow her to remain on full-time employment during her pregnancy. On June 1, she received a written warning for insubordination.

Negative reference after EEOC charge. On June 2, she filed an EEOC charge and notified the owner. Afterwards, the owner told her that she would not verify her counseling hours to the state health department or support her license application. On July 21, the owner provided multiple negative ratings on her professional reference assessment and answered “no” to the question of whether she would recommend her for licensure. The employee claimed these actions caused her to be constructively discharged.

Pregnancy discrimination. The court declined to decide if a triable issue existed as to whether she was fulfilling the employer’s legitimate expectations of the weekly 25-hour requirement or whether those hours were in fact required. Even if she could establish a prima facie case of discrimination, summary judgment was warranted because she failed to show how the employer’s application of its universal extended leave policy was really a pretext for discrimination against her as a pregnant woman.

Significantly, she did not identify any non-pregnant person with a comparable need for leave who was treated differently. In contrast, the employer provided two recent examples of other therapists who took extended leave—one for medical reasons in October 2022 and April and October 2023, and the other for a planned surgery and recuperation in January 2023. In both cases, neither employee was assigned new patients prior to their respective scheduled leaves.

Retaliatory actions. Partly allowing her retaliation claim to proceed, the court held that her negative performance review and formal written warning, taken together with the owner’s refusal to support her licensing application, could be deemed sufficiently “materially adverse” such that they “might have dissuaded a reasonable worker” from engaging in protected Title VII activity. The temporal proximity of events also suggested a causal connection.

No constructive discharge. However, her constructive discharge claim failed to pass muster. While the owner’s actions relating to her licensure might itself constitute an adverse action for purposes of her retaliation claim, they were not “so intolerable” that a reasonable person in her position would have felt compelled to leave the job. “Although it may have been difficult or impossible for [her] to earn her clinical professional counselor license … there are other reasons for employment, and a reasonable person may have stayed to earn a living,” stated the court.

The case is No. 8:24-cv-00476-DKC.

Judge: Chasanow, D.

Attorneys: James Martin Ray, II (Ray Legal Group) for Emily Williams. Stephen Samuel Burgoon (The Law Firm of Stephen S. Burgoon) for Silver Psychotherapy, LLC.

Companies: Silver Psychotherapy, LLC

Cases: PregnancyDiscrimination SexDiscrimination Discrimination Discharge Retaliation MarylandNews