Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia

Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Navy photo

Navy Follows Through on Firing Employee After Failing for 4 Years to Accommodate Her Disability

The department is pressuring Dawn Dunphy to take a settlement, but she is promising to fight instead.

The Navy fired a civilian employee this week after a years-long struggle to accommodate her disability, citing her medical condition as the reason for her termination.

Government Executive profiled Dawn Dunphy in November, detailing her battle with the Navy, the manufacturer of the speech-assistance software she was promised when the department recruited and hired her, and the contractors that maintain the Navy Marine Corps Intranet platform upon which most Navy computers operate. In September, four years after hiring her, the Navy sent Dunphy a notice of proposed removal. The actual removal date was delayed several times, but Dunphy was given a letter cementing her firing on Tuesday.

“The purpose of this letter is to notify you that I have decided to remove you from your position as a financial management specialist at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD), for your inability to perform as a result of a medical condition,” Thomas Perotti, the head of Dunphy’s soon-to-be former office, wrote in her letter.

Dunphy suffers from a condition that drastically reduces the use of her hands and prevents her from typing. She used a speech recognition program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking during the Navy’s recruitment event, the same program she used to complete her coursework for her master’s degree in business administration. The department promised “reasonable accommodations” to allow Dunphy to perform her job, internal documents and emails showed, and the Dragon software was already pre-approved by the Defense Department’s Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program (CAP) to function on NMCI.

After two years of sitting with various information technology professionals, both internal and external, as well as her own management, to demonstrate the failures of the program on the NMCI network and repeated troubleshooting efforts, the Navy placed Dunphy on paid administrative leave in 2015. She returned to the office every three months to demonstrate to different levels of management that her promised “reasonable accommodation” still had not been delivered.

The Navy “invested significant time and effort” to accomodate Dunphy, Perotti wrote in his letter, which served as a decision on the initial proposed removal.

“Although the Americans with Disabilities Act provides a right to a reasonable accommodation, it does not provide a right to any specific request or preferred accommodation,” Perotti said. “At this stage, there are no other viable reasonable accommodations available to you.” The removal, he added, was consistent with other employees medically unable to perform their duties and is “the only remedy available that will promote the efficiency of the service.”

Dunphy is currently pursuing a case before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and considering other options available to her, such as bringing a wrongful termination case before the Merit Systems Protection Board or a whistleblower retaliation claim before the Office of Special Counsel. The Navy is pressuring her to take a lump sum payment through a settlement, she said, but she is not inclined to accept it.

“I can’t condemn everybody else” to the same fate, Dunphy said. “I don’t know what route I will go through but I am fighting. I will not give up.”

Dunphy entered the settlement conference last month without legal representation, as she feared no longer being able to make payments to her lawyer after her paychecks stop coming in. She was accompanied instead by her daughter, who was one year away from graduating from Penn State University with an aerospace engineering degree before she delayed her senior year due to her mother’s financial constraints. Dunphy’s daughter had a job lined up as an engineer at Lockheed Martin, but it is now in limbo as it was contingent upon her graduation.

As far as gaining legal representation, Dunphy said she is “at a loss.” She has reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union, which expressed interest but only if it could pursue the case as a class action. Dunphy was in Washington, D.C., last week to meet with several lawmakers about potentially drafting a letter to support her, an idea to which she said they seemed receptive.

“I’m still running around in circles trying to figure out what to do,” Dunphy said.

Despite failing for four years, the Navy maintains that it will get Dragon to work on its network. The department just does not know when, Dunphy recalled the Navy telling the EEOC administrative judge. Between 2013, the year Dunphy was hired, and November 2017, CAP purchased 311 licenses for Dragon speech recognition software on the Navy’s behalf. It is unclear how many of those licenses went to employees working on NMCI machines, but Dunphy said one Navy IT employee told her more than 200 disabled workers were facing the same problem. CAP said it has no plans to stop purchasing Dragon licenses for the Navy.

EEOC has scheduled the final settlement conference for March 9, the same day Dunphy’s termination will officially take effect. She suspects the Navy will fail to meet her demands to resolve the problem rather than just pay her a lump sum and the case will instead play out over the course of the next few years.

For now, she is overwhelmed. On Thursday night, she said, she slept for the first time in a week.

Read the original story on Dunphy and the Navy’s struggle with accommodating the disabled here.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.