Harbour v. Univ. Club of Wash.
| Decision Date | 27 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 21-cv-2047 (CRC) |
| Citation | 610 F.Supp.3d 123 |
| Parties | Wenda HARBOUR, Plaintiff, v. UNIVERSITY CLUB OF WASHINGTON, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
Donald Melvin Temple, Law Offices of Donald M. Temple, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.
Anna M. Sheridan, Chelsea Michelle Smialek, Ethan Daniel Balsam, Littler Mendelson, P.C., Washington, DC, for Defendant.
Plaintiff Wenda Harbour is the Director of the Events Department at the University Club of Washington ("the University Club" or "the Club"), a social club and events venue. In this suit against her employer, she raises discrimination, failure to accommodate, and wage and hour claims arising out of the University Club's treatment of her request to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic due to an alleged high-risk respiratory condition. The Club moves to dismiss nine of the fourteen claims in the complaint. Harbour opposes dismissal of some claims and withdraws others. She also requests—although not through formal motion—that the Court accept a proposed amended complaint. For the reasons below, the Court will allow Harbour to amend her complaint and will grant the motion to dismiss in part and deny it in part.
Ms. Harbour has served as the Director of the Events Department at the University Club since November 2018.1 Am. Compl. ¶¶ 5, 14. She was and remains the only African American woman department director at the Club. Id. ¶ 6. As the Events Director, Harbour plans, markets, and coordinates staffing for events at the University Club, and also manages the Department's operations. Id. ¶ 8. When she began in that role, Harbour had sixteen direct reports—including two employees who worked directly on-site to manage events. Id. ¶ 10. Because Harbour could arrange events by email and telephone and her staff largely handled on-site management during events, Harbour regularly worked remotely after her hiring. Id. ¶¶ 11–15.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University Club temporarily suspended all events, but it began reopening in late April 2020. Id. ¶¶ 19–20. Harbour has pre-existing health conditions, including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
, that make her both more susceptible to COVID and higher risk should she contract the virus. Id. ¶¶ 25, 29. So when the Club summoned Harbour to return to work in-person in June 2020, she asked to continue to work remotely as a reasonable accommodation for her health risks, consistent with the recommendation of her doctor. Id. ¶ 27.
Harbour alleges that the University Club's management did not accommodate this request, and instead began to retaliate against her in several ways. Among other things, she claims that management threatened to demote her to Banquet Manager—a position that would require on-site work and come with a $27,000 pay cut. Id. ¶ 31. That December, the Club insisted that Harbour return to work in-person full time, despite her physician's continued recommendation that she stay home whenever possible, and despite Harbour's ability to complete the job from home. Id. ¶¶ 46–47. When Harbour refused and continued to work from home, the Club required her to count half the hours she worked from home as "sick leave"—in other words, to record an eight-hour work day as four hours of work and four hours of leave, taken from the bank of sick leave she had accrued since beginning her job. Id. ¶¶ 52–56. Finally, Harbour alleges that, after she hired counsel to pursue various claims arising out of these incidents, management further retaliated against her by hiring another director above her in the chain of command and moving her former direct reports into another department. Id. ¶¶ 67, 76–77.
Separately, Harbour alleges that she was exposed to COVID at a University Club event that management required her to work in-person before she was vaccinated against the virus. Id. ¶ 37. She contends that the Club was informed of the exposure just a few days after an event attendee tested positive, but did not tell her until more than ten days later. Id. ¶¶ 37–40. Harbour fell ill during the interim and continues to suspect that she had COVID, although she tested negative at the time. Id. ¶¶ 42–44.
In June 2021, Harbour filed suit against the University Club in District of Columbia Superior Court. See Compl. ¶¶ 1–4. The complaint includes fourteen claims. They include claims for race, gender, and disability discrimination and retaliation in violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act; claims for violations of the D.C. Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act and D.C. Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act; and several common law claims. See id. ¶¶ 70–205. The original complaint frames two of the claims—for improper record keeping under D.C.’s sick leave statute and for failure to pay accrued sick leave—as collective, on behalf of Harbour and other similarly situated University Club employees. See id. ¶¶ 191–205.
The Club removed the case to federal court under this Court's diversity jurisdiction. See Notice of Removal at 1–2. It then moved to partially dismiss for both lack of jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6). See Mem. in Supp. of Mot. Partially Dismiss ("MTD") at 2. The motion does not touch the race, gender, and disability discrimination and retaliation claims (Claims I–V), but it mounts a variety of attacks on the nine other claims in the complaint (Claims VI–XIV).
Harbour largely opposes the motion to dismiss. She asks, however, to withdraw one negligence claim (Claim XI) and her proposed collective claims (Claims XIII and XIV). See Opp'n at 16. In her opposition, Harbour also seeks leave to amend her complaint. In particular, she seeks to reinstate one of her collective claims—alleging violation of a record-keeping requirement in the D.C. Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act—as an individual claim. See id. She also seeks to add factual allegations. She attaches the proposed amended complaint as an exhibit, but has not filed any separate motion for leave to amend.
A motion under Rule 12(b)(1) "presents a threshold challenge to the court's jurisdiction." Haase v. Sessions, 835 F.2d 902, 906 (D.C. Cir. 1987). "[T]he plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating the court's subject-matter jurisdiction over its claim by a preponderance of the evidence." Marine Wholesale & Warehouse Co. v. United States, 315 F. Supp. 3d 498, 508 (D.D.C. 2018) (citing Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) ). In evaluating a 12(b)(1) motion, the Court "must accept as true all uncontroverted material factual allegations contained in the complaint and ‘construe the complaint liberally, granting plaintiff the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged and upon such facts determine jurisdictional questions.’ " Id. (quoting Am. Nat'l Ins. Co. v. FDIC, 642 F.3d 1137, 1139 (D.C. Cir. 2011) ). Where necessary, the Court may also consider "undisputed facts evidenced in the record" or its own "resolution of disputed facts" to assure itself that it has jurisdiction. Herbert v. Nat'l Acad. of Scis., 974 F.2d 192, 197 (D.C. Cir. 1992).
Rule 12(b)(6) requires dismissal of a complaint that fails "to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." When evaluating a 12(b)(6) motion, the court must determine whether the complaint "contain[s] sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ " Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) ). A claim is plausible "when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Id. A court "must treat the complaint's factual allegations as true and must grant plaintiff the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged." Sparrow v. United Air Lines, Inc., 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (cleaned up). Although a complaint need not provide "detailed factual allegations" to withstand a 12(b)(6) motion, it must offer "more than labels and conclusions." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955.
As outlined below, the Court will grant the University Club's motion to dismiss in part and deny it in part. Harbour's common law claims must be dismissed because the D.C. Workers’ Compensation Act provides her the exclusive remedy for such workplace injuries. But the Court will not dismiss the remaining challenged claims, which center on various alleged violations of the D.C. Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act and the D.C. Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act. These claims—along with the race, gender, and disability claims untouched by the Club's motion—remain to be tested at summary judgment and/or trial.
The Court begins with Harbour's request to amend her complaint, which she presented on the final page of her opposition to the motion to dismiss. See Opp'n at 16. Although the amended complaint was not properly presented, the Court will construe her opposition as a motion to amend and grant Harbour leave to do so.
Harbour is not entitled to amend as a matter of course because her proposed amendment was untimely. Rule 15(a)(1) allows a plaintiff to amend its complaint once as a matter of course within 21 days of service of a 12(b) motion. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1)(B). Although Harbour moved to extend her time to respond to the Club's motion, she did not similarly request extension of her amendment deadline. See Pl.’s Mot. for Extension of Time, Sept. 15, 2021, ECF No. 9. Her later-filed amendment request thus does not fall within the parameters of Rule 15(a)(1). See Hayes v. District of Columbia, 275...
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