As COVID was ‘raging,’ Georgia prof claims he was fired after refusing to teach in person
A former associate professor at Georgia Military College who suffers from chronic illnesses is suing the school for wrongful termination, claiming he was fired early last year after refusing to return to in-person teaching when the school relaxed its coronavirus protocols.
Joshua Fields taught biology primarily at the college’s Augusta campus from 2013 until his dismissal last February.
Fields, 42, suffers from what the lawsuit describes as “serious medical conditions,” including Crohn’s disease and kidney failure, which “compromise his immune system” and “place him at higher risk for serious illness ... were he to contract COVID-19.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Macon, contends that the college violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, and notes that from March 2020 until August 2020, Fields taught classes remotely from home when the school — as many other colleges did — curtailed in-person instruction.
In August of that year the school began requiring professors to return to on-campus teaching, the lawsuit says, and Fields informed the college that, for him, doing so would be against the advice of his doctor. He asked to be allowed to continue providing remote instruction through the end of 2020, at which point returning to campus might be “safe for him,” the lawsuit notes.
“GMC summarily dismissed Dr. Fields’s request for reasonable accommodations of his disabilities,” the lawsuit states. “It responded in a cursory fashion that it did not intend to grant any accommodations for COVID-19. GMC knew, however, that Dr. Fields was not requesting an accommodation for COVID-19, but a reasonable accommodation for disabilities that he suffers from which place him at higher risk ... if he were to contract COVID-19.”
The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit goes on to state that the school, in August 2020, gave Fields two options: return to in-person teaching on campus or take unpaid leave. He chose the latter.
“At the end of the 2020,” the lawsuit states, “the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging and it remained unsafe and against medical advice for Dr. Fields to return to in-person teaching in January 2021. This was in part due to the fact that since the return to in-person instruction in August 2020, GMC was not rigorously enforcing COVID safety precautions such as social distancing and mask wearing.”
After taking two quarters’ leave, Fields requested that he return to teaching, though remotely, in January 2021. The lawsuit says the request was denied and Fields was fired Feb. 1, 2021.
Fields is described in the lawsuit as an “exemplary educator,” one of the school’s “most popular and requested instructors,” whose classes “students flocked to.”
He is seeking a jury trial as well as unspecified damages for “pain and emotional distress,” back pay and “other lost benefits.”