Davis v. Dist. of Columbia
| Decision Date | 07 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action 10-1564 (RC) |
| Parties | RONDA L. DAVIS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
The District of Columbia, the defendant in this long-running employment discrimination case, asks the Court to dismiss certain plaintiffs for lack of prosecution because they have not responded to the District's interrogatories. Because dismissal is generally a last resort and the District has not yet asked for any alternative, milder measures, the Court denies this motion without prejudice. The District also asks the Court to compel further interrogatory responses from the remaining plaintiffs, a request the Court grants in part and denies in part.
The District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency (“CFSA” or the “Agency”) exists “to ensure the safety, permanence, and well-being of abused and neglected children and to strengthen troubled families in the District.” Def.'s Resp. to Pls.' Statement of Undisputed Material Facts ( ) ¶ 1, ECF No. 171-1. CFSA experienced significant budgetary pressure in fiscal years 2010 and 2011. “In Fiscal Year 2010 (October 1, 2009-September 30, 2010), CFSA's local funds' budget was reduced by $25.3 million from the [previous year.]” Id. ¶ 8. The FY 2010 budget reduced the number of approved full-time employees and, as a result, CFSA implemented personnel reductions to its information technology unit and public information office. Id. ¶¶ 9-10. The D.C. Council further reduced the funds available to CFSA in FY 2011 by $12.1 million. Id. ¶ 11. To address the reduction in funding in FY 2011, CFSA used a reduction in force (“RIF”) with an effective termination date of June 11, 2010. Id. ¶ 13. The RIF is the subject of Plaintiffs' lawsuit.
The RIF resulted in the elimination of 123 positions, which translated to the separation of 115 employees from the agency. Id. ¶¶ 14-15. The elimination of two types of positions in their entirety-the Social Services Assistant (“SSA”) and the Social Worker Associate (“SWA”)- accounted for the majority of the 115 employees terminated. See id. ¶¶ 13, 22. The District explains that the elimination of these positions resulted from the agency's conversion of “its workforce to the ‘team model,' which grouped social workers with a set of skilled partners to serve client needs together.” Def.'s Material Facts ¶ 12, ECF No. 169. According to the District, the SSA and SWA positions were “no longer needed under the new model.” Id. ¶ 13. Though the exact percentages are disputed, Plaintiffs object to the elimination of these positions
Nevertheless, the Court highlights the factual and procedural background relevant to the pending motions, including by repeating some of the background found in previous opinions. Because the Court's and the D.C. Circuit's decisions have significantly narrowed the scope of this case, and because the pending motions pertain only to procedural and discovery issues, the Court will keep its review of the factual background brief. because, according to their calculations, 98 percent of the eliminated SSAs and eleven of the thirteen eliminated SWAs were African-American. Def.'s Resp. Material Facts ¶¶ 23-24.
Plaintiffs filed their initial complaint on September 16, 2010. See Compl., ECF No. 1. The current operative complaint is Plaintiffs' Third Amended Complaint, filed on May 31, 2013. See 3d Am. Compl., ECF No. 66. The Third Amended Complaint brings claims of age discrimination pursuant to the District of Columbia Human Rights Act (“DCHRA”) and race discrimination pursuant to Title VII and the DCHRA. See id. ¶¶ 78-105. Plaintiffs' racial discrimination claim based on a theory of disparate impact caused by the manner in which the RIF was conducted is the sole remaining claim.
In 2017, this Court granted summary judgment in favor of the District on this claim because it determined that Plaintiffs had “failed to identify a specific employment practice” susceptible to challenge under Title VII. Davis, 246 F.Supp.3d at 394. The Court found that “simply pointing to a RIF generally is not sufficient” to support a disparate impact claim. Id. at 395 (citing Leichihman v. Pickwick Int'l, 814 F.2d 1263, 1269 n.5 (8th Cir. 1987)). The Court noted that Plaintiffs' expert “analyzed the agency-wide termination rates for African Americans” and that she “analyzed the RIF as if every employee stood an equal chance of termination.” Id. at 396 (emphasis in original). Because Plaintiffs did not more specifically identify the employment practice for the observed statistical disparities, the Court granted summary judgment for the District. Id. at 397.
The D.C. Circuit reversed this Court's decision on this issue. Davis, 925 F.3d at 1254. The court explained that “[d]isparate impact analysis is ‘no less applicable to subjective employment criteria than to objective or standardized tests.'” Id. at 1249 (quoting Watson v. Fort Worth Bank and Tr., 487 U.S. 977, 990 (1988)). For this reason, “[a]n employer's undisciplined system of subjective decisionmaking [can have] precisely the same effects as a system pervaded by impermissible intentional discrimination.” Id. (quoting Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338, 355, (2011)). The court stated that “[t]here is no mystery in this case as to the layoff practices plaintiffs challenge: the Agency's choices to (a) target the SWA and SSA job categories for elimination; and (b) allow managers to make putatively individualized, discretionary and subjective choices of which positions to winnow from other units.” Id. at 1249-50. In other words, “[w]hat is at issue here is not a RIF in the abstract . . . but the means by which the Agency implemented it.” Id. at 1243. Noting that the District explained that CFSA did not use uniform criteria to select positions for termination, the court stated “[a]s the Agency itself describes it, the procedures for culling jobs fit Watson's description of ‘an employer's undisciplined system of subjective decisionmaking' as to which ‘it is difficult to see why Title VII's proscription against discriminatory actions should not apply.'” Id. at 1250 (quoting Watson, 487 U.S. at 990-91). Accordingly, the court remanded to determine whether “plaintiffs clear the statistical hurdle” of making out a prima facie case in light of the identified employment practices. Id. at 1253.
On remand, after review of renewed motions for summary judgment and competing expert analyses, this Court held that Plaintiffs had cleared this hurdle. Plaintiffs' expert's analysis showed “that the processes by which CFSA implemented the RIF-the challenged employment practices identified by Plaintiffs and the D.C. Circuit-disproportionately impacted African Americans.” Davis, 496 F.Supp.3d at 318 (D.D.C. 2020). Thus, the Court denied the District's motion for summary judgment and the parties commenced discovery on the District's defense of business necessity. Min. Order of November 17, 2020.
During this discovery phase, the District served its First Set of Interrogatories and Requests for Production. Def. District of Columbia's First Set of Interrogs. and Reqs. for Produc. (“Defendant's Interrogatories”), ECF No. 184-4. These “primarily seek to determine whether [P]laintiffs intend to challenge the District's basis for terminating positions in those six areas as well as to determine whether plaintiffs intend to argue that the District terminated those positions despite the availability of other, less discriminatory options that would have equally advanced the District's objectives.” Def.'s Mem. Supp. Mot. Compel (“Mem.”) at 4, ECF No. 184-1. As of September 7, 2021, the District had received responses from sixteen plaintiffs. Id. at 2. But four of these responses were unverified, and, according to the District, all of them were incomplete. Id. The District identified a list of twenty Plaintiffs who had not responded at all, months after service of the interrogatories. Id.
Thus, on September 7, the District moved to dismiss these twenty non-responsive plaintiffs for lack of prosecution and to compel full responses from the others pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37 and 41(b). Def.'s Mot. Dismiss for Lack of Prosecution and Mot. Compel, ECF Nos. 184, 185.[2] While the motion was pending and before the September 17, 2021 close of discovery, eleven additional plaintiffs responded to Defendant's Interrogatories. Pls.' Opp'n Def.'s Mot. Compel and Mot. Dismiss (“Opp'n”) at 11-12, ECF No. 189. After the close of discovery, six more plaintiffs responded. Id. at 12. Also, the District apparently had inadvertently included one plaintiff, Carla Johnson, on its list of non-responsive plaintiffs even though she had responded back in May.[3] Id. at 15.[4] All told, of the twenty plaintiffs whose claims the District moved to dismiss, only four have still not responded to Defendant's Interrogatories: Clarence Evans, Angela Khan Thomas, Celciel Moore, and Wanda Williams. Id. at 16. In its reply brief, the District pursues its motion to dismiss only insofar as it relates to these four non-responsive plaintiffs. Def.'s Reply Supp. Mot. Compel and Mot. Dismiss (“Reply”) at 3, ECF No. 190 (“[T]he Court should dismiss plaintiffs Clarence Evans, Angela Khan Thomas, Celciel Moore, and Wanda Williams for failure to prosecute this action.”).
Representing 38 of the 42 plaintiffs who remain in the action, including the four non-responsive plaint...
To continue reading
Request your trial