Opinion
CV-23-00747-PHX-JJT
07-29-2024
Brittney Gault, Plaintiff, v. Charles Schwab Corporation, Defendant.
ORDER
HONORABLE JOHN J. TUCHI, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
At issue is Defendant Charles Schwab Corporation's Partial Motion to Dismiss with Prejudice (Doc. 28, Mot.), to which Plaintiff Brittney Gault filed a Response (Doc. 38, Resp.), and Defendant filed a Reply (Doc. 31, Reply). The Court has reviewed the parties' briefs and finds this matter appropriate for decision without oral argument. See LRCiv 7.2(f). For the reasons set forth below, the Court grants Defendant's Motion.
I. BACKGROUND
In her Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 26-1, Am. Compl.), Plaintiff makes the following allegations, which the Court construes as true for purposes of resolving Defendant's Motion. Plaintiff, an African American woman, applied to Defendant for the role of Participant Services Associate on September 30, 2022. (Am. Compl. ¶ 1.) After completing the interview process, Plaintiff received an offer of employment contingent on background checks and drug testing. (Am. Compl. ¶ 7.) On October 31, 2022, Defendant rescinded the conditional offer of employment “based on information from her background,” specifically, “multiple terminations from at-will employment.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 14, 17.)
Plaintiff filed a charge of discrimination against Defendant with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on December 2, 2022. (Doc. 28-1, Ex. B.) The EEOC issued Plaintiff a notice of right to sue on February 6, 2023. (Doc. 26 at 5.) Plaintiff filed her original Complaint on May 2, 2023. (Doc. 1.) Plaintiff later filed her Second Amended Complaint, alleging “Title VII Employment Discrimination on the Basis of Disparate Treatment by Race, Sex” and violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.(Am. Compl.) Defendant now moves to dismiss only the sex discrimination claim.
The Court will treat this as two separate claims of employment discrimination: one on the basis of race and one on the basis of sex.
Plaintiff's original Complaint also alleged a Title VII disparate impact claim, which Judge Morrissey recommended be dismissed in his Report and Recommendation on May 24, 2023. (Doc. 7 at 4-5.) Before the Court could rule on the Report and Recommendation, Plaintiff filed a First Amended Complaint striking through the disparate impact claim and indicating that it was “dismissed 05/26/2023.” (Doc. 12 at 11.) Judge Morrissey noted that the Court never adopted the original Report and Recommendation because it was mooted by the First Amended Complaint, but because Plaintiff did not reallege the disparate impact claim, he did not address it. (Doc. 14 at 2 n.2.) In Plaintiff's Second Amended Complaint here, she again notes that her disparate impact claim was “dismissed 05/26/2023,” and she does not reallege it. (Am. Compl. at 5.)
II. LEGAL STANDARD
Rule 12(b)(6) is designed to “test[] the legal sufficiency of a claim.” Navarro v. Block, 250 F.3d 729, 732 (9th Cir. 2001). A dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim can be based on either: (1) the lack of a cognizable legal theory; or (2) the absence of sufficient factual allegations to support a cognizable legal theory. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep't, 901 F.2d 696, 699 (9th Cir. 1990). When analyzing a complaint for failure to state a claim, the well-pled factual allegations are taken as true and construed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Cousins v. Lockyer, 568 F.3d 1063, 1067 (9th Cir. 2009). A plaintiff must allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” BellAtl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). “The plausibility standard is not akin to a ‘probability requirement,' but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id.
“While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (cleaned up and citations omitted). Legal conclusions couched as factual allegations are not entitled to the assumption of truth and therefore are insufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679-80. However, “a well-pleaded complaint may proceed even if it strikes a savvy judge that actual proof of those facts is improbable, and that ‘recovery is very remote and unlikely.'” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556 (quoting Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974)).
III. ANALYSIS
Plaintiff brings race and sex discrimination claims under Title VII, which prohibits employers from discriminating against an individual based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a). To seek relief under Title VII, a plaintiff must first exhaust any administrative remedy available under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5 by filing a charge of discrimination with the EEOC or appropriate state agency. Surrell v. Cal. Water Serv. Co., 518 F.3d 1097, 1104 (9th Cir. 2008). “Even when an employee seeks judicial relief for claims not listed in the original EEOC charge, the complaint nevertheless may encompass any discrimination like or reasonably related to the allegations of the EEOC charge.” Freeman v. Oakland UnifiedSch. Dist., 291 F.3d 632, 636 (9th Cir. 2002) (citation and quotation marks omitted). Allegations in a complaint are reasonably related to those in the administrative charge to the extent they are “consistent with the plaintiff's original theory of the case.” Id. The Ninth Circuit instructs that a plaintiff's administrative charge is to be interpreted liberally. Id.
Defendant moves to dismiss only Plaintiff's sex discrimination claim because Plaintiff “failed to invoke and exhaust her exclusive administrative remedies” before filing her sex discrimination claim by “not [including] any allegations in her EEOC charge that reasonably relate to sex.” (Mot. at 6.) In Plaintiff's EEOC charge, she indicated that her discrimination charge was based on “race” only and noted that she was “discriminated against because of [her] race, African American.” (Doc. 28-1, Ex. B.) The Court does not disagree with Plaintiff that individuals can “experience multiple forms of discrimination concurrently,” but because Plaintiff's charge is devoid of any allegations based on her gender so as to notify Defendant of such a claim at the EEOC level, the Court finds that Plaintiff failed to exhaust her administrative remedies as to her sex discrimination claim.
Furthermore, the Court will not grant Plaintiff leave to amend. Rule 15(a)(2) provides that leave to amend should be freely granted “when justice so requires,” and the Ninth Circuit has held that if a defective complaint can be cured, the plaintiff is entitled to amend the complaint before the action is dismissed. Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2); Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1129 (9th Cir. 2000). “The power to grant leave to amend, however, is entrusted to the discretion of the district court, which ‘determines the propriety of a motion to amend by ascertaining the presence of any of four factors: bad faith, undue delay, prejudice to the opposing party, and/or futility.'” Serra v. Lappin, 600 F.3d 1191, 1200 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting William O. Gilley Enters. v. Atl. Richfield Co., 588 F.3d 659, 669 n.8 (9th Cir. 2009)).
To state an actionable claim in federal court for a violation of Title VII, a charging party must file a charge with the EEOC within 300 days of the occurrence of each discrete discriminatory act prior to commencing federal action. Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 113 (2002) (“Each discrete discriminatory act starts a new clock for filing charges alleging that act.”). Plaintiff alleges that her conditional offer of employment was revoked on October 31, 2022. (Am. Compl. ¶ 14.) Defendant correctly notes that Plaintiff is now outside the 300-day period to file a charge with the EEOC, which would have ended on August 27, 2023. Therefore, any amendment to Plaintiff's Complaint would be futile.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED granting Defendant's Partial Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 29). The Court will dismiss Plaintiff's Title VII sex discrimination claim with prejudice.