Judge lets fired Bristol County sheriff's captain press his claim that he was let go for taking medical leave
Bettencourt was the only member of a disbanded joint task force with Dartmouth police who was fired rather than reassigned. The office says it had independent reasons. The judge ruled for the office on part of his case and let the rest go forward.
DARTMOUTH A former Bristol County Sheriff's Office captain who was fired in 2023, weeks after he came back from medical leave, can keep pressing his claim that the office let him go because he took that leave, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy denied the sheriff's office's request to end the retaliation part of Robert Bettencourt's lawsuit in an order dated Oct. 16. Murphy granted the office's motion on Bettencourt's separate interference claims. The retaliation claims, brought under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave law, remain in the case.
Murphy pointed to two things: how quickly the firing followed the leave, and the timing of an internal affairs report the office finished after Bettencourt sued. "[A]lthough [Bettencourt's] claim is by no means a lock, there is enough to give pause in [the] circumstances surrounding" his termination, the judge wrote, quoting an earlier ruling.
What the record shows
Bettencourt started as a corrections officer with the sheriff's office in 1993, according to the facts laid out in the order, and was assigned in 2018 or 2019 to a joint task force with members of the Dartmouth Police Department.
Paul Heroux took office as sheriff in January 2023 and set out to reorganize the office and eliminate units not directly tied to the county jail, among them the task force, the order says. By early February 2023, Superintendent Steven Souza told Bettencourt he would no longer be assigned to it. The other three sheriff's office employees on the task force were reassigned to other jobs.
Bettencourt applied for medical leave on Feb. 1, 2023. The office approved it and granted each monthly renewal through June, then extended it through Aug. 2 so he could care for a family member. On Aug. 1, he was told he would be placed on administrative leave on Aug. 2, the day his medical leave was set to end.
A Sept. 15, 2023, letter from Heroux told Bettencourt that the task force had been disbanded, that his captain's position had been eliminated and that he would be "separated from employment." The letter also said preliminary results of an internal investigation indicated he "likely did engage in misconduct related to neglect of duty" during a significant portion of his time on the task force. His firing took effect Sept. 29, 2023.
The internal affairs report
On Oct. 23, 2023, the office told Bettencourt the investigation had "stopped," that "there [was] no final investigation report" and that it had "no current plans to continue and complete the investigation," while saying it "reserve[d] the right" to finish it, the order says. He filed suit March 6, 2024. The office filed its answer May 6, 2024, and the finished internal affairs report is dated May 9, 2024.
That report found Bettencourt had logged "substantial hours" of task force work with no matching fuel use in his work vehicle, had run no investigative database searches in three years, and from July 2022 through January 2023 regularly "didn't show up to work" while reporting full eight-hour days. It concluded he had broken office policies, including the rule on accurately reporting his hours.
Bettencourt disputes those findings and says that when he occasionally did not work full shifts, he had his superiors' permission. "I did not work my scheduled shift on some occasions; however, this was communicated directly to my supervisors," he said in a court filing the order quotes. Quoting an earlier ruling, Murphy wrote that the court "make[s] no judgment as to whether [Bettencourt] actually committed this misconduct."
What each side argued
The sheriff's office argued that "the undisputed summary judgment record establishes that both the office-wide reorganization and the IA [internal affairs] investigation leading to termination were initiated by Sheriff Heroux before the Plaintiff engaged in any [protected leave] activity." Murphy agreed the investigation began before the leave and rejected Bettencourt's argument that it was opened because of it. He also found the office had offered a non-discriminatory reason for the firing: the reorganization together with the investigation's preliminary findings.
Bettencourt argued that the reason he was given "was blatantly false and a pretext to justify Plaintiff's termination." Murphy found the reorganization alone could not explain the firing, because Bettencourt "was the only member of the Task Force to be terminated instead of reassigned." He also noted that the termination letter and Heroux's deposition both say Bettencourt was not fired "because of" the internal affairs report.
With the report completed only after the lawsuit began, Murphy wrote, a jury could see some of the office's reasons as "after-the-fact justifications, provided subsequent to the beginning of legal action," quoting a 2000 federal appeals court ruling. He added that the state law is stricter than the federal one: it presumes retaliation when an employer makes a negative change in a worker's status within six months of leave, and puts the burden on the employer to rebut that with clear and convincing evidence.
Why the office won part of the case
Murphy ruled for the sheriff's office on the interference claims because the office approved all of Bettencourt's leave, he took all of it, and his claim is that the leave was held against him, which the law treats as a retaliation claim rather than interference.
What happens next
As of the Oct. 16 order, Bettencourt's retaliation claims under both leave laws remain pending against the sheriff's office. The order did not set a trial date.
Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.
Notes
Every fact in this story comes from Judge Brian E. Murphy's 13-page memorandum and order of Oct. 16, 2026, in Bettencourt v. Bristol County Sheriff's Office, No. 24-10561-BEM, which we read in full on Oct. 30 as published by the federal courts on GovInfo. Quotes from the termination letter, the office's letters, the internal affairs report and both sides' filings are as the order quotes them. Each date was checked against the order. The order describes the internal affairs findings as findings Bettencourt disputes and makes no judgment on whether he committed the misconduct. Each side's position is given as the order reports it from that side's court filings.
Corrections
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Sources (1)
- U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts: Bettencourt v. Bristol County Sheriff's Office, No. 24-10561-BEM, Memorandum and Order on Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 49)Signed by Judge Brian E. Murphy and filed Oct. 16, 2026; 13 pages, published in the GovInfo U.S. Courts opinions collection. Every fact, date and quote in this story comes from it. Read Oct. 30, 2026.