Opinion
Case No. 15 C 2958
05-05-2015
ELSIE KELLY, Plaintiff, v. PATRICK R. DONAHOE, Postmaster General United States Postal Service (Great Lakes Area) Agency, Defendant.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
In accordance with its invariable practice in connection with every case newly assigned to its calendar, this Court promptly reviewed the self-prepared Complaint of Employment Discrimination that had been filed on April 3 by Elsie Kelly ("Kelly") against Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. It then issued a brief April 17 memorandum order ("Order") that directed Kelly's attention to some added documentation that was needed to evaluate her Complaint on an informed basis:
Although her Complaint was timely filed in relation to the February 5, 2015 denial of reconsideration by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("Commission") attached to Kelly's Complaint, the sprawling nature of her hodgepodge narrative makes it impossible for this Court to address her claims without further input from her.Accordingly the Order directed Kelly to provide specified materials needed for such an evaluation, and she has now complied with that directive.
At the threshold it should be said that although Kelly's EEO Complaint had not included part of the entire laundry list that she had checked off in Complaint ¶ 9 (which asserted in part that she had suffered discrimination based on color, disability and national origin, none of which had been specified in the EEO Complaint), those deviations are truly minor in relation to a far more fundamental flaw: her failure to connect the purported adverse decision reached by her employer in April 2011 and assertedly repeated on unspecified dates thereafter to any of the categories of purported employment discrimination to which she claims she was subjected. No better demonstration of that fatal defect can be made than to attach to this opinion the July 25, 2014 decision by the Commission and to refer to critical aspects of that decision.
Although the Commission's decision should be read in full to capture its entire flavor, particular note should be taken of the entire discussion that occupies page 2 of that decision. Those findings understandably resulted in a post-hearing summary judgment in favor of the Agency, which in turn led to a final order adopting those findings by the Agency and ultimately to an affirmance of that final order by the Commission. After analysis the Commission found at page 5 of its decision "that the Agency provided legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for its actions," a finding that was further bolstered by facts demonstrating that Kelly was a poorly performing employee who "engag[ed] in time-wasting practices such as reading magazines, sitting unproductively at her case [sic], backtracking on her route, sitting in her vehicle, and otherwise not performing work" (id.). Then, when Kelly thereafter sought reconsideration of that adverse judgment, the Commission denied that request in a February 5, 2015 formal denial attached as an exhibit to Kelly's Complaint.
In sum, this is clearly a case for which the requirement of "plausibility," added by the Twombly-Iqbal canon to replace the overly generous Conley v. Gibson standard that had been in place for many years, might well have been specifically designed. Indeed, although the Commission's original decision had "without so finding, . . . assume[d] that the Complaint had established a prima facie case of discrimination on all alleged bases," that assumption was itself overgenerous because Kelly had not done so at all. In short, because of Kelly's failure to have advanced any plausible basis for her complaint of employment discrimination on any ground, both the Complaint and this action are dismissed.
This dismissal causes Kelly's In Forma Pauperis Application [Dkt. 4] and her Motion for Attorney Representation [Dkt. 5] to be denied as moot, and this Court so orders.
/s/_________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: May 5, 2015
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