LEE v. Lamas
| Docket Number | Civil Action 19-241 |
| Decision Date | 26 October 2023 |
| Parties | ROBERT LEE, JR., individually and for all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. MARIROSA LAMAS, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
Plaintiff a former Corrections Officer Trainee at the State Correctional Institution Chester (“SCI-Chester”) has filed a proposed collective action on behalf of similarly situated Corrections Officer Trainees and Corrections Officer 1s (collectively “COs”), alleging violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act[1] (“FLSA”) and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act[2](“PMWA”) by Defendants Marirosa Lamas, Michael Wenerowicz and Ty Stanton. Plaintiff claims that Defendants required COs to perform approximately 45 minutes of unpaid post-shift work each day. Defendants have moved for summary judgment, asserting that they are entitled to sovereign immunity.
Immunity under the Eleventh Amendment goes to the jurisdiction of the Court and therefore must be resolved before the Court reaches any conclusions on the merits or rules on Lee's motion for conditional certification.[3] In other words, the Court must determine first whether the Commonwealth is the real party in interest in this case. Because the suit is in effect one against the Commonwealth, Defendants' motion will be granted.
Lee was employed as a Corrections Officer Trainee at SCI-Chester from October 2017 until his termination in October 2018.[4] COs are assigned to eight-hour shifts that run from 6:00am to 2:00pm, from 2:00pm to 10:00pm and from 10:00pm to 6:00am.[5] The incoming officers relieve the working officer under the supervision of lieutenants and the shift commander.[6] Plaintiff alleged in the Amended Complaint that, once an officer's shift has ended, the officer is required to perform work-related activities, including inventorying and returning their equipment; debriefing the replacement officer about events that occurred last shift; completing paperwork; scanning their fingerprints; and entering their payroll number to clock out.[7]
Plaintiff originally filed this action against the Department of Corrections (“DOC”).[8]After the DOC moved to dismiss on the grounds of sovereign immunity,[9] Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint that named Marirosa Lamas, Michael Wenerowicz, and Ty Stanton in their individual capacities. During Lee's employment, Lamas served as the Superintendent of SCI-Chester; Wenerowicz served as the DOC's Regional Secretary; and Stanton served as the DOC's Bureau of Human Resources Director. Lee alleges that all three Defendants have significant responsibility for “devising, directing, implementing and supervising the wage and hour practices and policies relating to Corrections Officer Trainees and CO1s.”[10]
Defendants moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction under the Eleventh Amendment.[11]The Court dismissed Defendants' motion to allow for development of the record.[12] The Court then held a scheduling conference, and approved the parties' request for bifurcated discovery.[13]The first stage of discovery was limited to factual matters related to conditional certification, including the number of Collective Group members, the Collective Group members' job descriptions, wage and hour policies and procedures, relevant training provided to the Collective Group and written and verbal complaints made by the Collective Group members about overtime work or wages.[14] The second stage of discovery would include Parties' depositions, full discovery on the merits and damages, and any needed expert testimony. This would have occurred after the Court ruled on conditional certification.
After the initial discovery period, Lee moved for conditional certification of a collective action under the FLSA[15] and Defendants moved for summary judgment.[16] Lee responded to Defendants' motion with a declaration under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d) and requested that the Court defer consideration of Defendants' motion until after the second stage of discovery was completed. The Court deferred both Lee's motion for conditional certification and Defendants' motion for summary judgment until the parties engaged in a limited merits discovery period focusing on resolving the question of immunity under the Eleventh Amendment.[17] Since the discovery has concluded, Plaintiff has responded to Defendants' motion for summary judgment[18] to which Defendants filed a reply.[19]
A court will award summary judgment on a claim where there is “no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”[20] A dispute is “genuine” only if “the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.”[21] A fact is “material” if resolving the factually dispute “might affect the outcome of the suit under the governing law.”[22]
The Court's role on a motion for summary judgment is not to weigh the evidence or make a credibility determination.[23] Instead, the Court “must view the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party.”[24] Nevertheless, the party opposing summary judgment must support each essential element of the opposition with concrete evidence in the record.[25] “If the evidence is merely colorable, or is not significantly probative, summary judgment may be granted.”[26] This requirement upholds the “underlying purpose of summary judgment [which] is to avoid a pointless trial in cases where it is unnecessary and would only cause delay and expense.”[27]Therefore, if, after making all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party, the court determines that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact, summary judgment is appropriate.[28]
Under the Eleventh Amendment, suits against states are barred in federal court absent waiver by the state or valid congressional override.[29] Neither waiver nor abrogation is present here. Pennsylvania has expressly declined to waive its Eleventh Amendment immunity.[30] In Seminole Tribe v. Florida, the Supreme Court held that Congress could only abrogate a State's constitutional immunity through its Section 5 enforcement power under the Fourteenth Amendment.[31] It has since held that FLSA does not include explicit abrogation of a state's Eleventh Amendment immunity.[32] Eleventh Amendment immunity extends to subunits of the state, including the DOC.[33]State officials sued in their official capacities for monetary damages enjoy immunity.[34] However, the Eleventh Amendment does not protect state officials from being sued in their individual capacities, “even if the actions which are the subject of the suit were part of their official duties.”[35]
A suit against an official in her individual capacity may still be barred if the state or arm of the state is the “real party in interest.”[36] The Supreme Court has clarified that it is “the entity's potential legal liability, rather than its ability or inability to require a third party to reimburse it, or to discharge the liability in the first instance, that is relevant” in determining whether an official is the real party in interest.[37] “[A] suit is against the sovereign if the effect of the judgment would be to restrain the Government from acting, or to compel it to act.”[38]
Lee has sued Lamas, Wenerowicz, and Stanton in their individual capacities.[39] The Third Circuit has held that “the [Family and Medical Leave Act's (FMLA's)] similarity to the FLSA indicates that Congress intended for courts to treat the FMLA the same as the FLSA.”[40]Consequently, there is no dispute as to whether individual public officials may be sued under FLSA.[41] The question for the Court is whether the Department of Corrections or SCI-Chester is the real party in interest, which would prevent the Court from exercising jurisdiction over the FLSA claim.
Defendants cite to Luder v. Endicott, a Seventh Circuit case in which state prison employees sued their supervisors in their individual capacities to recover wages under the FLSA for work performed before and after their shifts.[42] Although the decision in Luder is not binding on this Court, it is persuasive authority. The Seventh Circuit held that the FLSA claim was barred by the Eleventh Amendment.[43]
The Court previously considered Luder in ruling on Defendants' motion to dismiss.[44] In Luder, the defendants were following a DOC policy that was not in compliance with FLSA. Therefore, the Luder plaintiff, by suing the officials, sought “to accomplish exactly what they would accomplish were they allowed to maintain this suit against the state and did so successfully: they [were] seeking to force the state to accede to their view of the Act and to pay them accordingly.”[45] In contrast, Lee alleged that Pennsylvania did have a FLSA-compliant timekeeping policy, but that the individuals themselves failed to follow the policy.[46] The Seventh Circuit stated that in such circumstances, a suit against an individual who failed to comply with a DOC policy would “advance rather than thwart state policy.”[47] If Plaintiff could show that the individual Defendants failed to follow a DOC policy, then his FLSA claim against the individuals would not be barred by the Eleventh Amendment. Lee has failed to do so.
Lee contends that SCI-Chester deviated from FLSA-compliant policies, because “facility-wide internal systems and/or procedures...failed to capture employees' actual post-shift work time.”[48] However, even if Plaintiff could establish this, without a showing that Defendants Lamas, Wenerowicz, or Stanton implemented a non-FLSA compliant policy, the real party in interest would be...
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