In late February, 2025, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued an important procedural decision in discrimination cases on an appeal argued by David Cohen, in which Zach Phillipps and Emma Dignoti assisted on the brief. The case, entitled City of Stamford v. Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and John Ward, involves a former Stamford employee who is disabled following his service as a United States Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. He claims that the City refused to accommodate his war-related disabilities when it terminated his probationary status as a municipal employee. After years before the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO), Mr. Ward moved to amend his complaint to clarify that the City’s failure to provide workplace accommodations, as federal and Connecticut law require, was a central issue for the public hearing. The presiding Human Rights Referee has discretion to grant amendments that are justified and did so after considering briefs and arguments. Rather than proceeding with the hearing after an opportunity for additional investigation and discovery, however, the City attempted to stop all progress in the case while it took an appeal to the court system by filing what is referred to as an interlocutory appeal. Our firm took the position, which the CHRO’s counsel also joined, that this type of appeal was impermissible before a CHRO decision on the merits of the discrimination charge, and that allowing the appeal to proceed prematurely would sabotage any discrimination victim’s right to have his case heard without interminable delay. A Superior Court judge refused to dismiss the City’s appeal, and our firm and the CHRO believed the issue was so important in this and other discrimination cases that it was worth the effort to ask the Supreme Court to intervene, which happens seldom. After briefing and oral argument, a unanimous Supreme Court agreed and held that the City of Stamford had no legal basis for its interlocutory appeal and the CHRO case must proceed.

The CHRO has become an important agency for addressing employment discrimination and ordering remedies in cases that need not be litigated in the Connecticut or federal courts. Its investigators, attorneys, and Human Rights Referees handle as many as 2,000 cases per year, although a far smaller number proceed to a final judgment after a full public hearing. The caseload dictates that employees face a long wait before a public hearing is available and can proceed. Mr. Ward’s tenacity and his court victory have helped protect the lengthy CHRO complaint and hearing process from being interrupted by premature employer appeals that could delay the case by two years or more. If Mr. Ward prevails after a full hearing, Stamford will then have the opportunity to pursue its arguments on a full record after a final decision. But until then, our Supreme Court has ruled with no dissenting votes that Stamford is limited to one bite of the apple.