Coates v. Brazoria Cnty. Tex.

• Decision Date: 11 December 2012
• Docket Number: CIVIL ACTION NO. 3-10-71
• Parties: DIANA COATES, et al, Plaintiffs, v. BRAZORIA COUNTY TEXAS, et al, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas

DIANA COATES, et al, Plaintiffs,

v.BRAZORIA COUNTY TEXAS, et al, Defendants.

CIVIL ACTION NO. 3-10-71

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS GALVESTON DIVISION

Date: December 11, 2012

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

This case arises out of allegations that James Blackstock, a former elected court-at-law judge for Brazoria County, sexually harassed and assaulted female county employees while the County acquiesced and ultimately retaliated against certain of those employees for blowing the whistle. Plaintiffs Diana Coates and Margo Green—who formerly worked as the Chief and Assistant Chief, respectively, of the Brazoria County Juvenile Probation Department—filed claims under section 1983 and Title VII against Blackstock, Brazoria County, and the Brazoria County Juvenile Board. This Court dismissed the claims against the Juvenile Board, holding that the Board lacked the capacity to sue or be sued, as it had not been vested with such statutory authority. Coates v. Brazoria County, No. G-10-71, 2012 WL 3930314, at *3 (S.D. Tex. Sept. 10, 2012).

Brazoria County now seeks dismissal, or alternatively summary judgment, on Plaintiffs' section 1983 claims.¹ The motion requires the Court to address a number of intricate areas of section 1983 law, including whether the Juvenile Board or District Attorney exercises final policymaker authority for Brazoria County in the challenged areas and whether a section 1983 claim can be based on failure to prevent a pattern of sexual harassment. Fifth Circuit section 1983 case law and Texas statutes governing juvenile boards provide the following answers to these questions: Plaintiffs' claims based on allegations about the conduct of the Juvenile Board survive, but those based on allegations that the District Attorney failed to prosecute Blackstock do not. Accordingly, the County's Motion to Dismiss or, Alternatively, Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs began working with Blackstock on a regular basis in January 2007 when he became Chairman of the Juvenile Board. According to Plaintiffs, Coates's relationship with Blackstock started as a friendship, but gradually developed into one filled with crude innuendo and advances, pornographic emails,intimidation, unwanted physical sexual contact, and retaliation. Plaintiffs allege that Blackstock subjected Green to similar conduct on several occasions. Coates, on behalf of herself and Green, reported Blackstock's harassment to County Judge Jerri Mills—a member of the Juvenile Board and one of Plaintiffs' immediate supervisors—in February 2008 after Blackstock instructed them to attend a conference with him in Corpus Christi. Plaintiffs allege that after the conference, Mills brought Coates to meet with two other members of the Juvenile Board— District Judges W. Edwin Denman and K. Randall Hufstetler—to whom Coates also reported the incidents. The judges advised Coates to file a grievance with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct, however, Coates and Green decided not to pursue a grievance, purportedly out of fear that it would be futile and risk their jobs.

Plaintiffs present evidence that at least seventeen other women were harassed or assaulted over Blackstock's thirty-year legal career. Many of these women were not county employees and many did not report the alleged harassment when it happened, though testimony demonstrates that members of the Juvenile Board and district attorney's office were aware of Blackstock's history. For instance:

• Mills testified that she was aware of a sexual harassment suit filed by an Adult Probation Officer against Blackstock in this Court in 1993 when Mills was chairwoman of the Adult Probation Board of Brazoria County. Docket Entry No. 145-6, Ex. F at 133:18-134:4. DistrictAttorney Jeri Yenne handled the matter as an assistant district attorney. Docket Entry No. 145-2, Ex. A-4 at 127:22-128:15;

• Lenette Terry, a lawyer in Brazoria County, testified that in 1995 or 1996, she was harassed by Blackstock and discussed the incident with Mills and other lawyers who later became assistant district attorneys for Brazoria County. Docket Entry No. 145-1, Ex. A-3 at 139:2—152:21. She stated that "very few" Brazoria County lawyers did not know about Blackstock's conduct, id. at 139:15—20, or, in other words, that "[e]veryone knew about it," id. at 45:1—5;

• Mills testified that she was aware of an incident where Blackstock inappropriately hugged and touched the breast of a Juvenile Probation Department secretary, Christie Strawn, who asked Mills not to report the incident. Docket Entry No. 145-6, Ex. F at 151:11—153:7, 159:17—160:13;

• Yenne testified that, in 2006, Brazoria County Clerk Joyce Hudman reported an incident of Blackstock's sexual assault to the district attorney's office, but Hudman did not want to pursue charges. Docket Entry No. 145-8, Ex. I at 34:25—41:7;

• Coates testified that when she met with Mills in February 2008, Mills confided that "she knew about his past history," "she wasn't really surprised [because] there had been allegations before," and "one of the people that came forward got fired." Docket Entry No. 145-5, Ex. D at 131:20-132:19, 158:21-159:12; and

• Coates testified that during the meeting with Mills, Denman, and Hufstetler, they discussed Blackstock's assault on Strawn, and Coates provided the judges with pornographic emails that Blackstock sent her and other juvenile probation department employees, id. at 218:8-220:14; Docket Entry No. 147-3.

In August 2008, juvenile probation officer Mikka Kalina reported to her supervisor that Blackstock had harassed and assaulted her. After learning of Kalina's situation, Coates and Green went to Judge Hufstetler, who then reported to the district attorney. The district attorney's office quickly began aninvestigation and uncovered numerous other alleged victims of Blackstock's harassment. The district attorney filed criminal charges against Blackstock on August 12, 2008, and he was immediately suspended from the bench. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) also conducted an investigation, and found that Brazoria County supervisors and judges "shirked their responsibility to prevent and correct sexual harassment by Judge Blackstock in the workplace" and that the judges of the Juvenile Board who knew of the sexual harassment and did nothing should be reported to the state judicial committee. Docket Entry No. 145-9, Exs. M-1, M-2, N.

Plaintiffs allege that after the EEOC issued its determinations, they became the target of County retaliation, which included unprecedented poor performance evaluations, the denial of their requests for supplies at the detention facility, and eventually their terminations.

The County tells a different story. On December 12, 2009, the County received an e-mail from the counsel of Christie Strawn, who decided to pursue claims against Blackstock after Kalina came forward. Among other things, the letter stated:

I need your immediate help. One of my clients, Christie Strawn, reports to me today that Diana Coats [sic] and Margo Green (both supervisors) have been engaging in what I believe is retaliatory conduct. Each in their own way have discussed the pending case with Ms. Strawn and encouraged her to drop her case. Among other things, they are stating that things may drag on for a long time andMs. Coats [sic] states that she (Ms. Coats) [sic] will be the one hurt if the remaining suits do not settle. Other conversation has been very blunt that the suits should be dropped.

Docket Entry No. 132-4, Ex. K; see also id., Ex. L-2. In response, the County initiated an investigation and held an emergency meeting of the Juvenile Board on December 22, 2009 "[t]o assure immediate compliance" with its obligations under a conciliation agreement that it had entered with the EEOC in November 2009. Id., Ex. M. After reviewing the e-mail from Strawn's counsel and speaking separately with Coates and Green, the Board voted unanimously to terminate Coates and Green for "lack of confidence." Id., Ex. N. Coates and Green later filed a charge of retaliation with the EEOC, which found that Plaintiffs were subject to termination "in retaliation for [their] charge filing activity and the aftermath of ongoing protected activity that followed [their] charge of discrimination." Docket Entry No. 145-9, Ex. R-1; see also id., Ex. R-2.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

The County's motion seeks dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) or summary judgment under Rule 56, without further differentiating between the two. Because summary judgment encompasses challenges to both the legal and factual sufficiency of allegations, whereas a Rule 12 motion can only challenge the legal sufficiency, the Court will review the County's defenses under the summary judgment standard.

That standard provides that the reviewing court shall grant summary judgment "if the movant shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A dispute about a material fact is genuine "if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party." Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). All reasonable doubts on questions of fact must be resolved in favor of the party opposing summary judgment. See Evans v. City of Houston, 246 F.3d 344, 348 (5th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted).

III. DISCUSSION

Plaintiffs advance two separate claims under section 1983. First, they claim that the County violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection from sexual harassment. See Southard v. Tex. Bd. of Criminal Justice, 114 F.3d 539, 550 (5th Cir. 1997) (noting that sexual harassment in public employment violates the Equal Protection Clause and that circuit courts have allowed plaintiffs to assert such claims under both Title VII and section 1983) (citations omitted). Specifically, they argue that...