Gray v. Dane County

• Decision Date: 28 July 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-2770,87-2770
• Citation: 854 F.2d 179
• Parties: 47 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 886, 47 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 38,194 Cheryll GRAY, f/k/a Cheryll Lengyel, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COUNTY OF DANE, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 179

854 F.2d 179

47 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 886,

47 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 38,194

Cheryll GRAY, f/k/a Cheryll Lengyel, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COUNTY OF DANE, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 87-2770.

United States Court of Appeals,

Seventh Circuit.

Argued March 28, 1988.

Decided July 28, 1988.

A. Steven Porter, Madison, Wis., for plaintiff-appellant.

Judith H. Toole, Dane County Corp. Counsel, Madison, Wis., for defendant-appellee.

Before BAUER, Chief Judge, CUDAHY and RIPPLE, Circuit Judges.

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge.

Cheryll Gray sued Dane County, Wisconsin, under section 1983 ¹ and Title VII ² for sexual harassment, wage discrimination and workplace retaliation against her for protesting against the County's employment practices. The district court dismissed the section 1983 count of Gray's complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The Title VII count was later dismissed with prejudice pursuant to a stipulation by the parties. Gray appeals from the dismissal of her section 1983 claim and also contests the district court's refusal, prior to the stipulation of the parties, to dismiss the Title VII count without prejudice. We affirm the dismissal and decline on mootness grounds to assess the refusal to dismiss the Title VII claim without prejudice.

I.

For purposes of reviewing the dismissal of the section 1983 claim, we summarize the facts as they appear in Gray's complaint. In March 1977, Gray, who had been working for the County since 1974, was hired for the position of Communication Officer I in the Dane County Sheriff's Department. She and four co-workers who started at roughly the same time were the first five women to hold nonclerical positions in the Department. Thereafter ensued a protracted series of disputes between Gray and her supervisors over sexual harassment and discrimination at the Sheriff's Department and over on-the-job retaliation against Gray for protesting these conditions.

Soon after Gray began her new job, a supervisor solicited sexual favors from her, promising employment advantages in return. Gray complained to other supervisors both about the supervisor who had propositioned her and about co-workers whom Gray suspected of having accepted the bargain. Complaint p 10. Gray also became aware of wage discrimination in the Sheriff's Department. In July 1979, Gray and two female co-workers filed union grievances alleging that the Sheriff's Department was discriminating against women Communications Operators by paying them less than the men who had formerly held those same jobs. Id. p 11. Six months later, Gray renewed her sexual harassment charge in a complaint to the Dane County Affirmative Action Committee, adding charges that her supervisors had singled her out for unfavorable treatment in retaliation for her earlier protests. She alleged that her supervisors penalized her through adverse shift assignments and unjustified opposition to requests for sick leave and vacation time. Id. paragraphs 12, 20-21. The complaint does not disclose the results of these early efforts to halt the discrimination and retaliation at the Sheriff's Department.

In August 1980, Gray filed complaints with the Equal Rights Division of the Wisconsin Department of Industry, Labor and Human Resources (the "ERD") and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Five months later, an ERD investigator determined that probable cause existed to support Gray's claims of discrimination and retaliation. Gray and the County settled the ERD claim in September 1981, and the case was dismissed.

Two years later, Gray, who had apparently changed jobs within the Sheriff's Department, encountered a second instance of wage discrimination. She filed a grievance with the County alleging that she and the other jail booking clerks, an all-female group at the time, were being paid less than the men who had previously performed the same duties. In December 1984, this dispute was settled, when the County agreed to a retroactive increase in the pay grades of the booking clerks. Id. p 16.

Finally, in April 1985, Gray "filed a grievance with defendant alleging that defendant had unfavorably changed her schedule, reprimanded her, and shortened her lunch hour ... in retaliation for her [1983] grievance." This grievance reached the personnel committee of the Dane County Board of Supervisors. The committee, according to the complaint, first "recommended," then "pressure[d]" the Sheriff to reassign Gray to another supervisor and a job more appropriate to her qualifications. Id. p 17. Gray broadly asserts that her supervisor's discriminatory and retaliatory actions were undertaken "with the knowledge and ratification of ... the sheriff and chief deputy" and "the express or tacit approval of ... members of defendant's board of supervisors." Id. paragraphs 23-24. However, the complaint is devoid of specific factual allegations that support this claim.

Gray filed her complaint in the district court on January 23, 1987. The County counterclaimed, asserting that Gray's district court action constituted an actionable violation of the September 1981 settlement of Gray's ERD complaint, which provided in part that Gray would not use events described in her ERD complaint as the basis for a later action. In April 1987, the district judge dismissed Gray's section 1983 count for failure to state a claim. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). The district judge declined to dismiss the Title VII count, however, finding that the complaint had made out a Title VII claim by alleging that the County had punished her for her complaints about sexual harassment and wage discrimination.

The dismissal of only the section 1983 count left Gray in an awkward position. The remedies authorized by Title VII include "reinstatement or hiring ..., with or without back pay ..., or any other equitable relief as the court deems appropriate." 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-5(g) (1982). This court has held that "other equitable relief" does not include compensatory damages for injuries unconnected to discharges in violation of Title VII or nominal damages which plaintiffs might seek as a form of public vindication or as a basis for the award of attorneys' fees. Hale v. Marsh, 808 F.2d 616, 620 (7th Cir.1986); Bohen v. City of East Chicago, 799 F.2d 1180, 1183-84 (7th Cir.1986). Gray therefore faced the prospect of a full-blown trial on the Title VII count for what her attorney believed would be, at most, a minimal recovery. (In light of Bohen, this assessment probably overestimated the dollar value of Gray's Title VII claim.) ³ After delaying for five months following dismissal of her section 1983 claim until only three weeks before the scheduled trial date, Gray moved to dismiss the Title VII count without prejudice and to amend the complaint to add individual defendants under the section 1983 count. At the pretrial conference, held on the day when this motion was filed, the district judge summarily rejected Gray's request to join individual defendants for the appeal of a claim that had already been dismissed; he also ruled that the Title VII count would only be dismissed at such a late date on terms amenable to the County. Tr. at 5-6 (Sept. 18, 1987). On September 30, 1987, the district judge entered an order formally denying the motion to amend and, pursuant to a stipulation of the parties, dismissing the Title VII claim with prejudice and the county's counterclaim without prejudice. ⁴

II.

The April 23, 1987 order recited two justifications for dismissing the section 1983 count of Gray's complaint under rule 12(b)(6). First, the judge found that Gray had failed to allege that the discrimination and retaliation that she experienced were attributable to a policy or custom of Dane County, rather than to the unauthorized actions of particular officials. He also found that the alleged actions of county employees did not violate the equal protection clause, since Gray's complaint dealt principally with retaliation based on conduct rather than discrimination based on membership in a protected class, or based on the first amendment (as incorporated by the fourteenth amendment), since the complaint described efforts by Gray to vindicate personal rights rather than to speak out on matters of broad public concern. We uphold the district court's first ground for dismissing the complaint, making it unnecessary for us to consider whether Gray properly pleaded deprivations of the equal protection clause or the first amendment.

The system of notice pleading embodied in the federal rules of civil procedure does not favor dismissals for failure to state a claim. See Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-02, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). Despite their liberality on pleading matters, however, the federal rules still require that a complaint allege facts that, if proven, would provide an adequate basis for each claim. Rodgers v. Lincoln Towing Serv., Inc., 771 F.2d 194, 198 (7th Cir.1985); Strauss v. City of Chicago, 760 F.2d 765, 767 (7th Cir.1985); Sutliff, Inc. v. Donovan Cos., 727 F.2d 648, 654 (7th Cir.1985). In ruling on motions to dismiss, courts must presume that all facts fairly alleged in the complaint are true. The courts are not obliged, however, to ignore any facts set forth in the complaint that undermine the plaintiff's claim or to assign any weight to unsupported conclusions of law. See American Nurses' Ass'n v. Illinois, 783 F.2d 716, 724 (7th Cir.1986); Vilter Mfg. Co. v. Loring, 136 F.2d 466, 468 (7th Cir.1943). See generally 5 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure Sec. 1363 at 658-59 (1969).

The principle that municipalities may only be held liable for constitutional violations arising under formal policies or well-established customs derives from Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Monell found that section 1983 imposes liability on municipalities for deprivations...