On June 9, 2025, the Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed in part and vacated in part the First Circuit Court ruling in the case of Gima v. City and County of Honolulu(SCAP-23-0000416). The plaintiff had filed claims of disability discrimination and retaliation after her employer gave her a substandard performance evaluation and subsequently demoted her, shortly after her return to work following 4 years of intermittent workers compensation leave, and after the denial of a reasonable accommodation to work under a different supervisor than the one she alleged was verbally harassing her. The circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of the employer, concluding that the employee failed to present sufficient evidence of disability discrimination or retaliation to establish her case, and that her accommodation request was unreasonable as a matter of law.
The Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s summary judgment on the reasonable accommodation claim, but vacated the summary judgment on the disability discrimination and retaliation claims, remanding the case back to the circuit court. Specifically, finding that a reasonable trier of fact could determine that the employee had presented evidence of a connection between her protected activities (requesting accommodations and filing complaints against her supervisor) and subsequent negative evaluation and demotion, the Supreme Court held that the employee had demonstrated genuine issues of material fact as to whether the employer discriminated against her because of her disability, and retaliated against her when she had made complaints alleging discriminatory treatment and had requested accommodations.