Finn v. Kent Sec. Servs., Inc.
| Decision Date | 06 November 2013 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 13–60631. |
| Citation | 981 F.Supp.2d 1293 |
| Parties | Heatherlee FINN, Plaintiff, v. KENT SECURITY SERVICES, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Richard Bernard Celler, Morgan and Morgan, Plantation, FL, Bernard R. Mazaheri, Morgan & Morgan, Orlando, FL, for Plaintiff.
Adan A. Aulet, Jr., Frank Howard Henry, Bluerock Legal, P.A., Miami, FL, for Defendant.
ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS
This matter is before the Court upon Defendant's Motion to Dismiss [D.E. 4] and Defendant's Motion to Strike [D.E. 8]. The Court has reviewed Defendant's Motions, all supporting and opposing filings, and the record in this case and is otherwise fully advised in the premises. For the reasons set forth below, the Court grants Defendant's Motion to Dismiss and denies Defendant's Motion to Strike.
On March 18, 2013, Plaintiff filed a Complaint against her employer, a security-services company, alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (“Title VII”) (Count I), and the Florida Civil Rights Act, Fla. Stat. 760–01 et seq. (“FCRA”) (Count II). D.E. 1 at 6–8, ¶¶ 46–65. Plaintiff's Complaint asserts that on December 18, 2012, Plaintiff received from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) a right-to-sue letter authorizing her to file suit against Defendant for the alleged violations of Title VII. Id. at 3, ¶ 14.
According to Plaintiff, Defendant discriminated against security guards and applicants in its hiring and placement procedures. D.E. 1 ¶¶ 18, 21–23, 30–37. Specifically, Plaintiff contends that Defendant would honor its clients' requests to place security guards based on their race, sex, national origin, or skin color. Id. at 1, ¶ 1. Although Plaintiff is not a security guard herself, she argues that Defendant required Plaintiff to carry out these allegedly illegal hiring and placement procedures that were based on the protected statuses of the security guards. Id. ¶¶ 25, 27, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45. Plaintiff also asserts that she was harassed and retaliated against because of her objection to these alleged illegal practices. D.E. 1 at 4, ¶ 24.
Defendant now moves to dismiss Plaintiff's Complaint in its entirety under Rule 12(b)(6), Fed.R.Civ.P. D.E. 4. In support of its Motion, Defendant asserts that Plaintiff failed to adequately plead her claims. Id. at 2. Defendant claims that Plaintiff does not allege that she was ever a security guard or applicant and has not pled any form of discrimination or injury against her. Id. at 1. In addition, Defendant contends that Plaintiff's Complaint fails to provide any facts necessary to allege a plausible Title VII claim. Id. at 2. Plaintiff responds that all of her claims are properly pled and she has the right to sue on behalf of other employees because Title VII protects advocacy on behalf of the rights of others. D.E. 7 at 1–2.
Rule 12(b)(6), Fed.R.Civ.P., governs motions to dismiss. That rule provides, in relevant part,
(b) How to Present Defenses. Every defense to a claim for relief in any pleading must be asserted in the responsive pleading if one is required. But a party may assert the following defenses by motion:
(6) failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted; ....
Id. The Court, therefore, considers the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they set forth the requirements for stating a claim.
Rule 8(a)(2), Fed.R.Civ.P., demands that a pleading contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). While a complaint need not provide detailed factual allegations, the standard “requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007)); see also Wilchombe v. TeeVee Toons, Inc., 555 F.3d 949, 958 (11th Cir.2009); Corbitt v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 573 F.3d 1223, 1256 (11th Cir.2009); Cobb v. State of Florida, 293 Fed.Appx. 708, 709 (11th Cir.2008); Watts v. Fla. Int'l Univ., 495 F.3d 1289, 1295 (11th Cir.2007). “[N]aked assertion[s]” bereft of “further factual enhancement” do not suffice. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557, 127 S.Ct. 1955. As the Supreme Court has explained, a complaint's “factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Id. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955. “Moreover, the facts supporting the claim must be ‘consistent with the allegations in the complaint.’ ” Wilchombe, 555 F.3d at 958 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 562, 127 S.Ct. 1955). On a motion to dismiss, the Court should accept the non-conclusory allegations in the complaint as true and evaluate all plausible inferences derived from those facts in favor of the plaintiff. See Hughes v. Lott, 350 F.3d 1157, 1159–60 (11th Cir.2003) (internal citation omitted); see also Cobb, 293 Fed.Appx. at 709;Brown v. Budget Rent–A–Car Syst., Inc., 119 F.3d 922, 923 (11th Cir.1997).
Courts therefore conduct a “two-pronged approach” when considering a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679, 129 S.Ct. 1937. A court should first ask whether the pleading properly asserts “well-pleaded factual allegations” or, whether, instead it merely asserts “ ‘legal conclusions' [that are] not entitled to the assumption of truth.” Id. at 679–680, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955). If the complaint contains factual allegations that are well pled, the court should assume their veracity and then move to the next step, asking whether the factual allegations “plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.” Id. at 679, 129 S.Ct. 1937. Thus, where the pleading asserts non-conclusory, factual allegations that, if true, would push the claim “across the line from conceivable to plausible,” the motion to dismiss should be denied. Id. at 680, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955) (quotation marks omitted).
Defendant asserts that Plaintiff's claims should be dismissed because she does not have standing to sue. D.E. 4 at 9. Although the Court disagrees that Plaintiff necessarily lacks standing, the Court agrees that, as currently pled, the Court is unable to discern from the Complaint whether Plaintiff satisfies the standing requirement.
Only a “person aggrieved” may file suit under Title VII. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–5(b), (f)(1). The Supreme Court recently held that standing for those “aggrieved” under Title VII must be construed more narrowly than the outer boundaries of Article III. Thompson v. N. Am. Stainless, LP, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 863, 869, 178 L.Ed.2d 694 (2011). Instead of Article III standing, the proper test to determine standing under Title VII is the “zone of interests” test. Id. at 870. Under this test, review must be denied “if the plaintiff's interests are so marginally related to or inconsistent with the purposes implicit in the statute that it cannot reasonably be assumed that Congress intended to permit the suit.” Id. at 870 (quoting Clarke v. Securities Industry Assn., 479 U.S. 388, 399–400, 107 S.Ct. 750, 93 L.Ed.2d 757 (1987)).
In Thompson, the Court determined that Article III standing would be too expansive for Title VII purposes because it would allow, for instance, a shareholder to sue a company for firing a valuable employee for racially discriminatory reasons, even though this type of indirect, monetary injury is not the type of interest that Congress intended to protect under Title VII's enforcement provisions. Id. at 869. On the other hand, however, the Court concluded that the plaintiff in Thompson fell within Title VII's zone of interests because his employer fired him in an effort to retaliate against the employee's fiancee, a co-worker who had filed a sex-discrimination claim against the employer with the EEOC. Id. at 870. This type of third-party retaliation claim—where the alleged retaliation results from the employer's attempt to retaliate against an individual who engaged in protected activity under Title VII—is actionable under Title VII. Id.
Defendant suggests that Plaintiff's claim here is different from the type that the Supreme Court permitted under Thompson and more like the kind that the Court found fell outside the zone of interests protected by Title VII. In support of its position, Defendant directs the Court to Cochran v. Five Points Temporaries, LLC, 907 F.Supp.2d 1260 (N.D.Ala.2012). In Cochran, the plaintiff employee alleged that her employer honored customers' discriminatory requests for temporary employees based on racial biases but did not contend that she herself enjoyed protected status. Id. at 1266–69. Significantly, the white plaintiff did not allege that her employer took discriminatory action against African–American co-workers with the intent to affect the plaintiff. Id. at 1269. Instead, the plaintiff's complaint understandably expressed that the plaintiff was “personally offended by and opposed” to the defendant's placement procedures and ridiculing remarks. Id.
The court distinguished the plaintiff in Cochran from the victim of third-party retaliation in Thompson, noting that the Thompson plaintiff alleged that the employer there undertook its action with the intent to retaliate for conduct protected by Title VII. Id. at 1268–69. In Cochran,however, the court reasoned, the plaintiff was “an ‘accidental’ victim of discriminatory action” because she did not allege that her employer engaged in any discriminatory action against its African–American employees with the intent to affect her. 907 F.Supp.2d at 1268. Rather, the court explained, the plaintiff “was merely a bystander to whom no discriminatory or harassing conduct was actually directed.” Id. As a...
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