Craig v. Yale Univ. Sch. of Med.

• Decision Date: 22 December 2011
• Docket Number: Civil No. 3:10cv1600(JBA).
• Citation: 838 F.Supp.2d 4,281 Ed. Law Rep. 370
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: Anthony CRAIG, M.D., Ph.D., Plaintiff, v. YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE et al., Defendants.

838 F.Supp.2d 4

281 Ed. Law Rep. 370

Anthony CRAIG, M.D., Ph.D., Plaintiff,

v.YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE et al., Defendants.

Civil No. 3:10cv1600(JBA).

United States District Court,

D. Connecticut.

Dec. 22, 2011.

W. Martyn Philpot, Jr., Law Offices Of W. Martyn Philpot, Jr., LLC, New Haven, CT, for Plaintiff.

Patrick M. Noonan, Donahue, Durham & Noonan, Guilford, CT, Margaret P. Mason, LeClairRyan, New Haven, CT, for Defendants.

RULING ON DEFENDANTS' MOTIONS TO DISMISS

JANET BOND ARTERTON, District Judge.

Plaintiff Anthony Craig, M.D., Ph.D., is an African-American male and former resident in the Obstetrics & Gynecology Residency Program (the “Program”) at Yale-New Haven Hospital (“YNHH”). Following the termination of Craig's employment in the Program on April 23, 2009, he sued Defendants—the Yale University School of Medicine (“YUSM”), YNHH, Dr. Errol Norwitz (in his individual capacity and as the Director of the Program), and Dr. Julia Shaw (in her individual capacity and as the Associate Director of the Program). Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint [Doc. # 33] asserting seven causes of action, five of which is he pursuing ¹: Count One: Title VII ( 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.), Race and Color Discrimination (against YNHH); Count Two: 42 U.S.C. § 1981, Race and Color Discrimination (against Norwitz and Shaw); Count Three: Title VII ( 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.), Gender Discrimination (against YNHH); Count Five: Breach of Contract (against YUSM and YNHH); Count Seven: Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (against all Defendants). All Defendants have moved to dismiss Count Seven of the complaint for failure to state a claim. ( See YUSM, Norwitz, and Shaw's March 3, 2011 Motion to Dismiss [Doc. # 36]; YNHH's March 4, 2011 Motion to Dismiss [Doc. # 37].) YNHH has also moved to dismiss Count Three. ( See YNHH Mot. Dismiss.) For the reasons that follow, Defendants' motions will be granted in part and denied in part.

I. Factual Allegations

Plaintiff alleges the following facts. He began employment with YNHH in June 2008 when he entered the Obstetrics & Gynecology Residency Program run by YUSM and was scheduled to graduate in 2012. (Am. Compl. ¶ 8.) On November 4, 2008, Norwitz, then Director of the Program at YNHH, met with Craig to discuss unfavorable preliminary evaluations of his performance to date. ( Id. ¶ 9.) Plaintiff was informed that his evaluations would be revisited at his formal six-month evaluation. ( Id.) During a follow up meeting on November 11, 2008, Norwitz expressed that Craig had been doing a “good job.” ( Id. ¶ 10.)

Craig was “utter[ly] shocked” when, despite his “significant and measurable improvements,” Norwitz dismissed him from the program at the time of his formal six-month evaluation on December 15, 2008. ( Id. ¶¶ 13–14.) Following his dismissal, YUSM took seven days to provide Craig with copies of all the evaluations that he was entitled to under the Accreditation Council's Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) policy. ( Id. ¶¶ 15–16.) Norwitz told Plaintiff that he did not need to see his evaluations and that he should aim to work in a lab rather than in a residency program. ( Id. ¶ 15.)

The YNHH “House Staff Manual” suggests, and the ACGME policy mandates, that the dismissal process be “progressive in nature”; that is, the process should include a verbal warning, a written warning, and then probation. ( Id. ¶ 12.) On December 22, 2008 Craig filed a grievance with the Office of Graduate Medical Education claiming that YNHH did not comply with either the staff manual or the ACGME policy in terminating his residency. ( Id. ¶ 12.) The grievance panel agreed and found that YNHH had failed to follow its own progressive discipline policy. ( Id. ¶ 21.) As a result, Craig was reinstated to the Program on a probationary basis. ( Id.)

Shaw, the Associate Director of the Program, told Craig that he had a “1 in 1000” chance of satisfactorily completing the probationary period, that he would “not be treated fairly” upon his return, and advised him to seek work in another hospital. ( Id. ¶¶ 22–23.) In a March 11, 2009 email, Shaw also told Craig that other residents in the program were “unhappy” with the grievance council's decision to reinstate him and that the other residents, as well as the faculty, needed to be “counseled” prior to his return. ( Id. ¶ 30.)

Upon his return, Craig felt constantly isolated and had little if any interaction with his colleagues as a result of Shaw's email ( id. ¶ 31), unlike any of the other, similarly-situated white male residents ( id.). Craig was unable to properly care for his patients because he was assigned “complicated high-risk patients” that were usually not seen until a resident's third year in the Program. ( Id.¶ 24.) Craig endured multiple comments from Norwitz suggesting that he seek “counseling for depression.” ( Id. ¶ 28.) He also received failing grades from “several physicians” on his surgical skills, when he had in fact never performed any surgeries. ( Id. ¶ 25.) Additionally, over the past ten years, African–American male residents have been terminated from the Program at a rate of approximately 67 percent. ( Id. ¶ 32.) Another African–American male was terminated from the program in 2007. ( Id. ¶ 33.)

II. Discussion²A. Gender–Based Title VII Claim

YNHH moves to dismiss Count Three, in which Craig claims that YNHH subjectedhim to a “pattern and practice of discrimination” that was “in substantial part due to his gender.” (Am. Comp. ¶¶ 32, 35 (Count Three).) Specifically, YNHH argues that Plaintiff's allegations of gender—based discrimination in Count Three are either conclusory, e.g., Defendants discriminated against “African American male candidates in general and the plaintiff in particular” (Am. Compl. ¶ 32); their conduct was “motivated, at least in part, by Plaintiff's gender” ( id. ¶ 34); and the acts of their agents against Craig were “in substantial part due to his gender” ( id. ¶ 35), or do not state a claim for gender discrimination. (YNHH Mot. Dismiss at 5.) The non-conclusory statements that YNHH contends do not state a claim for gender discrimination are (1) Craig is “male of gender” (Am. Compl. ¶ 3); (2) “none of the other similarly situated student residents who were Caucasian of race, white of color, and male of gender had to endure this type of isolation” ( id. ¶ 31); (3) “the termination rate of African American male residents in the program over the past ten (10) years has been approximately sixty-seven percent (67%)” ( id. ¶ 32); and (4) another African American male resident was terminated in 2007 ( id. ¶ 33). (YNHH Mot. Dismiss at 4–5.)

Craig argues that the fact that white male residents were not subjected to discrimination, that another black male resident was terminated, and that 67% of black male residents are terminated from the program reveals an underlying discriminatory motivation for his “specific bad treatment,” including (1) disparate, harassing treatment by the Program's directors; (2) not being given a proper chance to prove himself on probation; (3) improperly being terminated without first being placed on probation; (4) being called ‘boy'³; (5) receiving failing grades for surgeries he never performed, and (6) causing his isolation and lack of interaction with his colleagues. (Craig Opp'n at 9.) Craig also maintains that the ‘big picture’ includes continuous “latent prejudice and long standing bigotry,” stemming from the historical “social taboo towards African American men, particularly when they are involved in interpersonal relationships with Caucasian of race and white of color women.” ( Id. at 8.) He contends “YNHH's horrendous track record of failing to graduate African American males from its OB/GYN Program,” in light of this “historical shame of bigotry and prejudice ... gives rise to an inference of discrimination against African American males in YNHH's OB/GYN Program in general, and the plaintiff in particular.” ( Id. at 9.) YNHH responds that the cited termination rate and the recent termination of another African American male resident are irrelevant as a measure of the comparative termination rates of male and female residents. (YNHH Mot. Dismiss at 4–5.)

While Craig's reliance on other males as comparators cannot support a pure gender discrimination claim,⁴ the 67 percent terminationstatistic and the termination of another black male plausibly claim that Plaintiff's race plus his gender, taken together, were factors in Defendant's decision-making and actions. From Plaintiff's counsel's remarks at oral argument, it is clear that this statistic illustrates the crux of Craig's allegations—that he was discriminated against because he was an African–American male who sought to practice medicine in the OB/GYN field. Under Count One, Plaintiff has pled sufficient facts to make out a cognizable “intersectional claim,” or a “race plus” claim of discrimination against black males, which can exist even without proof of discrimination against African–American women or against white males.⁵See, e.g., Jefferies v. Harris County Community Action Ass'n, 615 F.2d 1025 (5th Cir.1980) ( “discrimination against black females can exist even in the absence of discrimination against black men or white women”); Kimble v. Wis. Dept. of Workforce Development, 690 F.Supp.2d 765, 770–71 (E.D.Wis.2010) ( “Conceptualizing separate over-lapping black and male categories has sometimes interfered with the recognition that certain distinctive features of being black and male serve as the target for discrimination.”); Jeffers v. Thompson, 264 F.Supp.2d 314, 326 (D.Md.2003) (“some characteristics, such as race, color, and national origin, often fuse inextricably ... Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on any of the named characteristics, whether individually or in combination.”).⁶

Accordingly, because Plaintiff has not pled sufficient facts to support a plausible claim of pure gender...