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A former associate professor at Georgia Military College who suffers from chronic illnesses is suing the college for wrongful termination, saying that he was fired last year after refusing to return to in-person teaching, The Macon Telegraph reported.
Joshua Fields taught biology, primarily at the college’s Augusta campus, from 2013 until his dismissal last February. Fields 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 in federal court, contends that the college violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. The suit notes that from March 2020 until August 2020, Fields taught classes remotely from home when the college limited in-person instruction.
In August of that year, the college began requiring professors to return to on-campus teaching, the suit 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 college 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 respond to a request for comment.
