Jemmott v. McDonough
| Decision Date | 22 April 2022 |
| Docket Number | 3:21-cv-00486 |
| Parties | MARCIA JEMMOTT, Plaintiff, v. DENIS McDONOUGH, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Tennessee |
Plaintiff Marcia Jemmott brings suit against Denis McDonough, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, for (1) disability discrimination in violation of the Rehabilitation Act (“RA”), 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.; (2) failure to provide a reasonable accommodation for a disability, in violation of the RA; and (3) retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (“Title VII”), 42 U.S.C. § 2000 et seq. (Doc. No. 1.) Now before the court is the defendant's Partial Motion to Dismiss or Alternatively for Partial Summary Judgment (“Motion to Dismiss”), [1] seeking dismissal the plaintiff's RA claims and her claim for punitive damages.[2] (Doc. No. 17.) The defendant submitted a Statement of Material Undisputed Facts and several Affidavits in support of the motion. (Doc. Nos. 19-23.)
In her Response, the plaintiff concedes that she is not entitled to recover punitive damages and that her claim for such damages is subject to dismissal. (Doc. No. 26, at 1.) The court therefore, will grant that portion of the defendant's motion without further discussion.
Although she responded to the defendant's Statement of Material Undisputed Facts (see Doc. No. 26-2), the plaintiff objects to treating the defendant's motion as one for summary judgment and asserts that she should be entitled to conduct discovery on her RA claims. The defendant filed a Reply (Doc. No. 27), arguing that the plaintiff's disability claims are inadequately pleaded and that the plaintiff is not entitled to discovery to further establish them.
The court will treat the motion as one under Rule 12(b)(6) and will grant it in its entirety, without reference to the evidentiary materials submitted by the defendant.
In deciding a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6), the court will “construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff accept its allegations as true, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff.” Directv, Inc. v. Treesh, 487 F.3d 471, 476 (6th Cir. 2007); Inge v. Rock Fin. Corp., 281 F.3d 613, 619 (6th Cir. 2002). “Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires only ‘a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,' in order to ‘give the defendant fair notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957)). The court must determine only whether “the claimant is entitled to offer evidence to support the claims, ” not whether the plaintiff can ultimately prove the facts alleged. Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 511 (2002) (quoting Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974)).
The complaint's allegations, however, “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555. To establish the “facial plausibility” required to “unlock the doors of discovery, ” the plaintiff cannot rely on “legal conclusions” or “[t]hreadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, ” but, instead, the plaintiff must plead “factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678-79 (2009). “[O]nly a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss.” Id. at 679; Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556. According to the Supreme Court, “plausibility” occupies that wide space between “possibility” and “probability.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. If a reasonable court can draw the necessary inferences from the factual material stated in the complaint, the plausibility standard has been satisfied.
Generally, if “matters outside the pleadings are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion must be treated as one for summary judgment under Rule 56.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(d). At the same time, however, it has long been the rule that a court may consider not only the complaint and exhibits attached to it, but also exhibits attached to a defendant's motion to dismiss, “so long as they are referred to in the Complaint and are central to the claims contained therein.” Brent v. Wayne Cty. Dep't of Human Servs., 901 F.3d 656, 694 (6th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted).
The plaintiff references her EEOC complaint in her federal Complaint, and the defendant submitted it with his Motion to Dismiss. (Doc. No. 18-1.) Because the EEOC complaint is referenced in the Complaint and central to the plaintiff's claims, insofar as exhaustion is a threshold matter in a federal employment discrimination claim, the court will consider the EEOC complaint in ruling on the Motion to Dismiss.
Plaintiff Marcia Jemmott is a resident of Montgomery County, Tennessee and a disabled veteran. (Doc. No. 1 ¶¶ 2, 8.) She was employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs as a Veterans Service Representative in August 2019. (Id. ¶ 7.) She was terminated in July 2020. (Id. ¶ 24; see also Doc. No. 18-1, at 2.) As pertains to the RA claims, the plaintiff alleges that she “suffers from several physical and mental conditions that cause her difficulty walking, among other things.” (Doc. No. 1 ¶ 9.)
In early 2020, a co-worker who, like Jemmott, is Black, walked past their supervisor's office. The supervisor, Adrienne Becnel-Taylor, told the co-worker “not to walk in front of her office.” (Id. ¶ 10; Doc. No. 18-1, at 2.) Jemmott subsequently walked past Becnel-Taylor's office on her way to lunch, which “led the supervisor to order her to never walk in front of her office, even when Ms. Jemmott protested that she had a disability that made walking difficult, which was obvious to anyone who saw her walk.” (Doc. No. 1 ¶ 11.) Jemmott's Black co-worker filed a complaint regarding Becnel-Taylor's conduct. Investigators assigned to the complaint questioned Jemmott, who described her supervisor's order that she not walk by her office. (Id. ¶¶ 12, 13.)
Shortly thereafter, in April 2020, Jemmott's entire team began working remotely, due to Covid-19. (Id. ¶ 14.) Jemmott “continued to have the same supervisor leading her team as well as a new direct supervisor.” (Id. ¶ 15.) The new supervisor was James Benesch. (Doc. No. 18-1, at 2.)
For the month of April 2020, Jemmott had poor production numbers because of difficulties the defendant had in configuring her computer profile for remote work. Her direct supervisor told her these numbers would not “count against her.” (Doc. No. 1 ¶ 16.) The defendant resolved the configuration issues, but the plaintiff continued to have difficulty working remotely due to technical problems with the computer assigned to her by the defendant. (Id. ¶ 17.) In May, she reported the problems to Benesch and requested a new computer, but he “frequently failed to respond and, when he did respond, ignored her explanation that her poor production was because” of the technical difficulties with her computer. (Id. ¶ 18.)
She tried to catch up during those times when her computer was functioning properly, but “her supervisors assigned her different claims than the rest of her team.” (Id. ¶ 19.) Specifically, she alleges that the claims she was assigned to work on were “complex claims that took hours to process, ” while her colleagues worked on “easy” claims that could each be resolved in fifteen minutes. (Id. ¶ 20.) She asked Benesch to assign her a mixture of both complex and easy claims, “rather than the full queue of complex claims that was artificially deflating her production numbers, but he refused.” (Id. ¶ 21.)
Jemmott then emailed the “acting director, ” whom she does not identify, to ask to be assigned to a different team. (Id. ¶ 22.) “An employee” called her in response to the email, and Jemmott detailed “her entire ordeal” to that employee. (Id. ¶ 23.) A few days later, Jemmott received an email from the same “employee” requesting a meeting. (Id. ¶ 24.) Jemmott arrived at the meeting expecting to be moved to a different team but learned, instead, that her employment was terminated. (Id. ¶ 24.)
Based on these allegations, Jemmott asserts that the defendant “subjected her to disparate treatment because of her disability or because it regarded her as disabled, ” in violation of the RA. (Id. ¶¶ 28, 29.) She also asserts that the defendant violated the RA by (Id. ¶ 36.)
The plaintiff states that she filed a “timely charge of discrimination with Defendant's Equal Employment Opportunity office regarding her disability claims.” (Id. ¶ 6.) As noted above, the defendant filed a copy of the plaintiff's formal EEOC Complaint of Discrimination with its Motion to Dismiss. (Doc. No. 18-1.) In this document, the plaintiff alleged that her former co-worker “filed a complaint against Adrienne Becnel-Taylor” and that John McDonald, the National Call Center Manager, asked Jemmott to participate in “a fact finding investigation.” (Doc. No. 18-1, at 2.) The EEOC complaint does not contain any additional details regarding the plaintiff's interaction with Becnel-Taylor. Instead, the entire remainder of the narrative contained in the EEOC complaint concerns the plaintiff's difficulties in working remotely, her interactions with her direct supervisor, James Benesch (who “report[ed] directly” to Becnel-Taylor (id.)), the plaintiff's request for a transfer to a...
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