Gibson-Carter v. Rape Crisis Ctr., CIVIL ACTION NO.: 4:19-cv-122

• Decision Date: 29 May 2020
• Docket Number: CIVIL ACTION NO.: 4:19-cv-122
• Citation: Gibson-Carter v. Rape Crisis Ctr., CIVIL ACTION NO.: 4:19-cv-122 (S.D. Ga. May 29, 2020)
• Parties: KESHA GIBSON-CARTER, Plaintiff, v. RAPE CRISIS CENTER; GILBERT BALLARD; CHERYL BRANCH; HEATHER BOOTH; ROBERT BRYSON; DEENA CAMACHO; SANDRA CLARK; PAT DOUGLAS; KIMBERLY FRITZ-TANNER; WENDY FUREY; ROSE GRANT-ROBINSON; MEG HEAP; JOSEPH HOGAN; MIKE HUGHES; A. BLAIR JEFFCOAT; KATIE JOYNER-BARBER; MATT LIBBY; JOSEPH LUMPKIN; BRETT LUNDY; MARK MERRIMAN; MARK REVENEW; MARY ROBERTS; CHERYL ROGERS; KEVIN SHEA; and LYNNE WOLF, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Georgia

KESHA GIBSON-CARTER, Plaintiff, v. RAPE CRISIS CENTER; GILBERT BALLARD; CHERYL BRANCH;HEATHER BOOTH; ROBERT BRYSON; DEENA CAMACHO;SANDRA CLARK; PAT DOUGLAS; KIMBERLY FRITZ-TANNER;WENDY FUREY; ROSE GRANT-ROBINSON; MEG HEAP; JOSEPH HOGAN;MIKE HUGHES; A. BLAIR JEFFCOAT; KATIE JOYNER-BARBER; MATT LIBBY;JOSEPH LUMPKIN; BRETT LUNDY; MARK MERRIMAN; MARK REVENEW;MARY ROBERTS; CHERYL ROGERS; KEVIN SHEA;and LYNNE WOLF, Defendants.

CIVIL ACTION NO.: 4:19-cv-122

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA SAVANNAH DIVISION

May 29, 2020

ORDER

This action concerns Plaintiff Kesha Gibson-Carter's employment (and eventual termination) as the executive director of the Rape Crisis Center. On June 3, 2019, Plaintiff filed a Complaint alleging claims of race discrimination and violations of her First Amendment rights pursuant to a variety of federal statutes. (Doc. 1.) Presently before the Court are a Motion to Strike certain paragraphs from the Complaint, (doc. 54), and various Motions to Dismiss filed by all but two of the Defendants in this case, (docs. 27, 30, 41, 45, 55-67, 85, 92). The Defendants who move to dismiss Plaintiff's claims do so pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that Plaintiff fails to state claims upon which relief can be granted because the claims are insufficiently pled. Some Defendants also contend that qualified immunity insulates them from liability.

For the reasons discussed herein, the Court DENIES the Motion to Strike filed by Defendants Rape Crisis Center, Lynne Wolf, Deena Camacho, Sandra Clark, Pat Douglas, Kimberly Fritz-Tanner, Joseph Hogan, Mike Hughes, Katie Joyner-Barber, Brett Lundy, Mary Roberts, and Kevin Shea, (doc. 54). As to the Motions to Dismiss, Plaintiff has asserted some viable claims against some Defendants but has failed to do so for many of her claims against several of the named Defendants. Thus, as explained below, the Court GRANTS the Motions to Dismiss filed by Defendants Wendy Furey, Gilbert Ballard, Robert Bryson, A. Blair Jeffcoat, Joseph H. Lumpkin, Matthew Libby, Mark Revenew, Meg Heap, Heather Booth, Rose Grant-Robinson, and Robert Merriman, (docs. 27, 30, 41, 45, 57, 85, 92), as to all claims asserted against each of them. The Court further GRANTS in part and DENIES in part the Motions to Dismiss filed by Defendants Rape Crisis Center, Lynne Wolf, Deena Camacho, Sandra Clark, Pat Douglas, Kimberly Fritz-Tanner, Joseph Hogan, Mike Hughes, Katie Joyner-Barber, Brett Lundy, Mary Roberts, and Kevin Shea, (docs. 55, 56, 58-67).

BACKGROUND

At the motion-to-dismiss stage, all well-pleaded factual allegations in a complaint must be taken as true and the complaint must be construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Applying this standard to Plaintiff's Complaint, the salient facts for purposes of evaluating Defendants' Motions are discussed below.

I. Overview of Parties

Plaintiff, an African American female, worked as the Executive Director for Defendant Rape Crisis Center (hereinafter the "RCC") in Savannah, Georgia from 2013 until her termination in June 2018. (Doc. 1, pp. 3-4.) The RCC is funded by the City of Savannah, Chatham County, the United Way of the Coastal Empire, and Georgia's Criminal Justice Coordinating Council ("CJCC"), and it serves and advocates on behalf of sexual assault victims in Chatham County and six other nearby counties. (Id. at p. 5; see id. at pp. 2-3.) Plaintiff filed this lawsuit to challenge her termination and alleges that, prior to her termination in June 2018, she received positive feedback and performance reviews and that the Board of Directors for the RCC had specifically commended her advocacy and public speaking skills. (See id. at pp. 33-35.)

Defendants Heather Booth, Lynne Wolf, Deena Camacho, Sandra Clark, Pat Douglas, Kimberly Fritz-Tanner, Joseph Hogan, Mike Hughes, Katie Joyner-Barber,¹ Brett Lundy, Mary Roberts, and Kevin Shea were all members of the Board of Directors for the RCC during some or all of the events at issue in the Complaint. (See id. at pp. 5-9.) Throughout this Order, the Court will occasionally refer to the foregoing individuals as the "RCC Board" or the "Board Defendants." The Court will also use the term "RCC Defendants" to refer collectively to Defendant RCC and the Board Defendants.

The remaining Defendants are not directly affiliated with the RCC but, through their employment with or representation of other organizations, had some sort of working relationship with Plaintiff and the RCC. Those Defendants are:

• Joseph Lumpkin, Chief of the Savannah Chatham Metropolitan Police Department (hereinafter "Savannah Police Department");

• Meg Heap, District Attorney for the Eastern Judicial District in Georgia;

• Rose Grant-Robinson, employee of the Coastal Children's Advocacy Center;

• Wendy Furey, Special Assistant Attorney General for the Chatham County Department of Family and Children's Services ("DFACS");

• Gilbert Ballard, Chief of the Garden City Police Department;

• Matt Libby, Chief of the Port Wentworth Police Department;

• Robert Bryson, Chief of the Tybee Island Police Department;

• Robert Merriman, Chief of the Thunderbolt Police Department;

• A. Blair Jeffcoat, Chief of the Bloomingdale Police Department;

• Mark Revenew, Chief of the Pooler Police Department;

• Cheryl Branch, Executive Director of SAFE Shelter, Center for Domestic Violence;

• Cheryl Rogers, Director of a Victim-Witness Assistance Program.

(Id. at pp. 9-12, 15.) According to Plaintiff, these individuals are also members of a group Plaintiff refers to as the "Savannah Community Partners" (at times, the "SCP") and refers to these Defendants collectively as the "SCP Defendants." For ease of reference, the Court will do the same.² Ten of the twelve SCP Defendants are Caucasian. (Id. at p. 15.) Lumpkin and Grant-Robinson are African American. (Id. at pp. 7, 11.)

Labels aside, it is not clear from the Complaint whether the "SCP" is an organized group with additional members other than the named Defendants. For instance, the Complaint notes that non-parties "Savannah-Chatham County Public School System Chief Terry Enoch and Savannah State Police Chief James Barnwell were not asked to sign the SCP's January letter of concern, despite the fact that [Plaintiff] had more cases with the Board of Education and Savannah State University than many of the law enforcement agencies who signed the January letter." (Id. at p. 15.) In her briefing, Plaintiff refers to Enoch and Barnwell as "[t]wo African American SCP members," (doc. 48, p. 17), indicating that the SCP is an organization with membership beyond the twelve SCP Defendants named in her Complaint. The Court concludes that Plaintiff's use in the Complaint of the term "the SCP Defendants" at some points and her use of the broader and vaguer term "the SCP" at other points was deliberate, and the Court therefore declines to assume that an allegation that "the SCP" committed some act necessarily means that all of "the SCP Defendants" committed the act.³

II. Factual Allegations

A. The "Memorandum of Understanding"

It appears from the Complaint that the RCC had some sort of working relationship with each of the SCP Defendants' respective organizations; in February 2017, Plaintiff and Defendants Heap, Lumpkin, Grant-Robinson and Branch signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" on behalf of their organizations. (Doc. 1, p. 28.) In the Memorandum, each agency pledged to take on various responsibilities to effectively serve victims of sexual assault and related crimes. (Id.) For example, the RCC agreed to "educate the community about sexual assault prevention." (Id.)

B. Plaintiff's Comments at December 2017 City Council Meetings

In December 2017, roughly ten months after she signed the Memorandum, Plaintiff attended a Savannah City Council meeting where she "publicly expressed her concerns about deficiencies in the Chatham County District Attorney's Office and its law enforcement affiliates' arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates of sexual assault offenders." (Id. at p. 12.) Defendant Lumpkin, the then-Chief of the Savannah Police Department, was present at this council meeting, but Plaintiff does not allege that he reacted or responded to Plaintiff's comments.⁴ (Id.) There is also no allegation that any other Defendants were present at this meeting when Plaintiff spoke.

At some point after the City Council meeting, Defendant Heap, the District Attorney, "sat down with" Plaintiff and advised her "that she could be charged with a misdemeanor for neglecting to redact a [minor] child's [last] name from an email [she sent] in August 2017 . . . ."⁵ (Id. at pp. 13-14.) According to her Complaint, Plaintiff had already "acknowledged and [taken] responsibility" for this "oversight" in an October 2017 letter to an assistant district attorney ("ADA") in Heap's office, (id. at p. 20), and "this issue was never brought up by Defendant Meg Heap until after [Plaintiff had] publicly stated her concerns about the deficiencies [in] the Chatham County District Attorney's office," (id. at p. 13).

Plaintiff subsequently attended a second Savannah City Council meeting in December 2017; during that meeting, she "publicly remarked" that Defendant Heap and her Office's "reaction to [Plaintiff's] comments at the last city council meeting was 'workplace bullying at its finest.'" (Id. at pp. 13-14.) Plaintiff also commented that she would not "give up, let up or stop or keep quiet." (Id. at p. 14.)

C. Letter from the SCP to the RCC Board of Directors

The Complaint next alleges that, in the following month (January 2018), "a collection of Savannah Community Partners" delivered a letter to the RCC Board "complaining that 'important community relationships ha[d] become unnecessarily strained and less than productive.'"⁶ (Id.) The letter "complained of dissatisfaction but did not provide specifics as to any of the perceived challenges or suggestions on how to solve them; rather, the SCP...