Alston v. Anderson
| Decision Date | 25 January 2023 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action 3:21-cv-733 |
| Parties | KEITH ALSTON, Plaintiff, v. WILLIAM ANDERSON, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia |
Keith Alston worked as a part-time tester/trainer for the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (“DMV”) from January 2018 through March 2020. Although his contract required that he not exceed 29 hours per week or 1,500 hours within the calendar year, Alston regularly worked 40 hours or more per week. The DMV only paid Alston for some of the hours he worked. Alston asserts claims against three DMV employees-William Anderson, Jeffrey Harper, and Tracey Keller-for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and associated regulations, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), and various Virginia statutes.[1] He seeks $332,633.00 in damages.
The defendants moved to dismiss Alston's complaint pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. Because sovereign immunity bars Alston's FLSA claim against the DMV and Alston fails to state a Title VII claim, the Court will dismiss Alston's federal claims with prejudice. Because the Court will dismiss Alston's federal claims, the Court declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Alston's state law claims and will dismiss those claims without prejudice.
I. FACTS ALLEGED IN THE AMENDED COMPLAINT[2]
In January 2018, the DMV hired Alston as a tester/trainer in its Workforce Efficiency Group (“WEG”). The DMV paid Alston $22.00 per hour. Alston's hourly employee contract exempted him from most state benefits and limited him to working “no more than 29 hours per week over the course of a twelve-month period [from] May 1-April 30.” (ECF No. 4-1, at 1.) The contract designated Alston as an at-will employee.
On February 26, 2018, Keller, Alston's manager, asked Alston to “lead a project that required supervision of 9 full time contract workers.” (ECF No. 4, at 11.) Starting the week of March 4, 2018, Alston worked 40 hours per week.[3] After working this schedule for two weeks Alston became concerned that the DMV would not pay him for all the hours he worked because his employment contract only allowed him to work 29 hours per week over a twelve-month period. Keller, however, reassured Alston that the DMV would pay him for the additional hours worked. On March 23, 2018 Alston entered 80 hours for his previous pay period into the timecard system. Keller rejected Alston's timecard and instructed him to subtract an hour each day for lunch from the previous week, even though Alston “had already deducted lunches.” (Id. at 3.) After Alston resubmitted his hours with the time deducted for lunch, the DMV accepted Alston's timecard but failed to pay him for the full 80 hours worked.
On August 23, 2018, the DMV asked Alston to join its Remote Processing Project. This project included extensive travel to “every DMV statewide” to train employees on a new initiative. (Id. at 4.) Alston accepted the position with the understanding that he would begin a full-time analyst position with the DMV before the project ended or when he exhausted all 1,500 hours under his contract. During the project's fifteen-month period, Alston traveled to sixty-eight DMV locations. His work responsibilities “increased 3 fold” and required him to “stay[] at hotels for 6 weeks at a time” without any help from the full-time analysts. (Id. at 4-5.) The DMV did not compensate Alston for travel time during this period.
In January 2019, Alston worked 59 hours in one week. Alston asked Keller and Harper, the WEG Director, to assure him that the DMV would pay him for the additional hours he worked each week. Both Keller and Harper reassured Alston that he would receive payment for all hours he worked. Specifically, Harper “claimed that overtime was approved by his superior and [Alston] would be paid for all hours worked and would receive a promotion at the end of the project.” (Id. at 11.)
During the twelve-month period starting February 19, 2019, Alston worked “on holidays, weekends, and overtime.” (Id. at 12.) When the head of the Remote Processing Project retired in June 2019, Alston took over the project and “worked 40+ hours per workweek going to an average of 3-4 DMV locations per week.” (Id. at 4.) Due to his “constant travel,” the DMV provided Alston with a state vehicle for ten months out of the year. (Id. at 11.) The DMV told Alston that he would receive compensation for all working hours during this period, including overtime hours, holiday pay, and travel time. But the DMV did not pay Alston for his work on state holidays, did not pay him at holiday rates, and denied his requests for time off.
In March 2019, Alston again notified Keller that the DMV had not paid him for all the hours he worked. By that point, the DMV had not paid Alston for 156 hours. Keller again “assured [Alston] that he would get paid for all hours worked, including holiday pay and overtime.” (Id. at 11.) Alston later received a paycheck for $0.00 despite working 83 hours during the pay period because he failed to use the “in-house time system” to complete his timecard. (Id. at 11-12.) Alston alleges that he could not use the in-house system from his remote travel location.
Between April 28, 2019, and May 11, 2019, Alston worked 81 hours and spent 12 additional hours traveling to different DMV locations, but the DMV only paid him for 65 hours of work. For a two-week pay period in January 2020, Alston worked 85.4 hours. Initially, he did not receive a paycheck at all. Then he received an “IOU” for the overtime hours from Keller. When Alston spoke with the DMV's HR department about the issues with that paycheck, they told him that Keller and Harper had changed his timecard.
Throughout his employment, Alston tried to “rectify the problem” many times by speaking with Harper, Keller, and the DMV payroll and HR departments. (Id. at 8, 12.) In March 2020, Harper terminated Alston because he had exceeded his position's 1,500-hour allotment. The DMV still had not paid him for the hours he worked overtime, on holidays, and while traveling. Alston alleges that during this entire period he worked 40 hours or more per week without receiving pay for overtime or total hours worked. The DMV has since removed Alston's timecards and pay information from the State Online Payline System for most of the time he worked there.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require a plaintiffs complaint to contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2).
Courts do not hold pro se complaints to the same stringent standards of formal pleadings drafted by lawyers. Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007). Accordingly, courts construe pro se complaints liberally. Beaudett v. City of Hampton, 775 F.2d 1274, 1278 (4th Cir. 1985). This principle of liberal construction, however, has its limits. Id. Courts need not discern the unexpressed intent of the plaintiff or assume the “improper role of an advocate seeking out the strongest arguments and most successful strategies for a party.” Id.
The defendants move to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1) places the burden on the plaintiff to prove the court has subject matter jurisdiction. Adams v. Bain, 697 F.2d 1213, 1219 (4th Cir. 1982). When considering a Rule 12(b)(1) motion, the Court presumes the truth of the facts asserted in the complaint. Kerns v. United States, 585 F.3d 187, 192 (4th Cir. 2009).
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion gauges the sufficiency of a complaint without resolving any factual discrepancies or testing the merits of the claims. Republican Party of N.C. v. Martin, 980 F.2d 943, 952 (4th Cir. 1992). In considering the motion, a court must accept all factual allegations in the complaint as true and must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd. v. Consumeraffairs.com, Inc., 591 F.3d 250, 253 (4th Cir. 2009) (citing Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 244 (4th Cir. 1999)). The principle that a court must accept all allegations as true, however, does not apply to legal conclusions. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a complaint must state facts that, when accepted as true, state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. Id. A claim is plausible on its face when enough factual allegations have been made “to raise a right to relief above the speculative level” and across the line “from conceivable to plausible.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 545, 570 (2007).
III. DISCUSSION
Applying the principles of liberal construction, Alston's complaint asserts the following claims: (1) unpaid wages in violation of the FLSA; (2) pay discrimination in violation of Title VII; and (3) violations of several Virginia statutes.
The defendants move to dismiss Alston's FLSA claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction based on state sovereign immunity. The defendants move to dismiss Alston's Title VII claim for failure to state a claim because Alston fails to allege facts necessary to establish a discrimination claim. The defendants raise numerous other challenges to the remaining state law claims, which the Court will not address because it will decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over those claims.
A, FLSA Claim[4]
The defendants argue that state sovereign immunity bars Alston's FLSA claims because the DMV, as an agency of the Commonwealth...
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