M.O.C.H.A. Soc., Inc. v. City of Buffalo

• Decision Date: 16 March 2002
• Docket Number: No. 98-CV-99C.,98-CV-99C.
• Citation: 199 F.Supp.2d 40
• Parties: M.O.C.H.A. SOCIETY, INC., Michael Brown, and Otto Brewer, Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF BUFFALO, City of Buffalo Fire Department, Cornelius Keane, John D. Sixt, Buffalo Professional Firefighters Association, Inc., Local 282 AFL — CIO — CLC, and Ronald Cassel, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of New York

199 F.Supp.2d 40

M.O.C.H.A. SOCIETY, INC., Michael Brown, and Otto Brewer, Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF BUFFALO, City of Buffalo Fire Department, Cornelius Keane, John D. Sixt, Buffalo Professional Firefighters Association, Inc., Local 282 AFL — CIO — CLC, and Ronald Cassel, Defendants.

No. 98-CV-99C.

United States District Court, W.D. New York.

March 16, 2002.

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Saperston & Day, P.C. (Thomas S. Gill and Michael C. Driscoll, of counsel), Buffalo, NY, for plaintiffs.

Michael B. Risman, Corporation Counsel of the City of Buffalo (Jeffrey Reed, Assistant Corporation Counsel, of counsel), Buffalo, NY, for defendants City of Buffalo, City of Buffalo Fire Department, Cornelius Keane, John D. Sixt.

Schwan, Sammarco & Sammarco (Andrea Sammarco, of counsel), Buffalo, NY, for defendants Local 282, Ronald Cassell.

INTRODUCTION

CURTIN, District Judge.

Plaintiffs Men of Color Helping All Society, Inc. ("MOCHA") and Michael Brown — as well as nineteen other individually named plaintiffs¹ — bring this employment discrimination action pursuant to various sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, 1985(3), and §§ 2000e-2 and 2000e-5 (Title VII).² On the basis of these statutes, MOCHA and the individually named plaintiffs assert various discrimination claims against the City of Buffalo, the City of Buffalo Fire Department, Fire Commissioner Cornelius Keane, Deputy Fire Commissioner John Sixt, Buffalo Professional Firefighters Association, Inc., Local 282 ("the Union"), and Union President Ronald Cassell. The City, the Fire Department, Keane, and Sixt (collectively, "the City defendants" or "the City") now move to dismiss plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaints "A" and "B."³ The court heard oral argument on the City defendants' motions on August 17, 2001, and has received and considered subsequent supplemental filings. For the following reasons, the City's motions are granted in part and denied in part.

BACKGROUND

In the amended pleadings, MOCHA describes its constituency and organizational purpose as follows:

MOCHA ... is a Not-for-Profit corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of New York. It is an organization of African American firefighters employed by the City of Buffalo Department of Fire and it is a member organization of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters ("IABPFF").... MOCHA's organizational purpose is to promote understanding, friendship and cooperation among all members of the fire department of the City of Buffalo; to see that competent Blacks are recruited and employed as firefighters; [and] to encourage and aid in the advancement of Blacks to elevated ranks within the fire department....

(Item 55, ¶ 2.)

Plaintiffs make a number of allegations in support of their claims regarding the Fire Department's allegedly discriminatory enforcement of its drug-testing policy. Among other things, plaintiffs claim that nineteen of the twenty-one firefighters who have been terminated as a result of failure to abide by the drug abuse and testing policies have been Black (see Item 55, ¶ 63). In addition, plaintiffs allege that White firefighters receive superior out-patient drug treatment at the Beacon Center's Amherst offices and that the Fire Department treats White firefighters more leniently in terms of the disciplinary consequences of testing positive for drug use. By way of example, plaintiffs allege that the Fire Department has terminated one Black firefighter for a positive drug test while allowing a White firefighter to return to work for a substantially identical test result (see Item 66, p. 3).

MOCHA asserts standing to sue by virtue of the direct harm it suffers as a result of the City's discriminatory enforcement of its drug-testing program. Specifically, MOCHA claims that it loses members and membership dues each time the City fires a Black firefighter for failure to comply with the Fire Department's drug-testing policy, thereby frustrating MOCHA's corporate purposes (Item 55, ¶¶ 2, 68).

Plaintiffs' claims regarding the Fire Department's promotion practices — embodied in Second Amended Complaint "B" — relate to the way in which the Fire Department promotes firefighters to the rank of lieutenant (see generally Item 54). On this point, plaintiffs again make a number of specific allegations in support of their claims regarding the Fire Department's alleged discrimination. By way of example, plaintiffs allege that the Fire Department employs a subjective "points system" as the means of designating which firefighters are qualified to take the lieutenants' exam, and that this system is manipulated to favor Whites. Plaintiffs also claim that the Fire Department sponsors training sessions for the promotion exam and excludes Blacks from participating. Further, plaintiffs allege that Fire Department officials have actually released exam questions and subject areas to White firefighters in advance of the exam, but have not done the same for Blacks. Finally, plaintiffs point to statistical evidence indicating that the promotion exam is racially biased against Blacks (see Item 66, pp. 6-7).

As with the drug-testing policy, MOCHA claims that it is directly harmed by the Fire Department's discriminatory promotion practices in that promotion of mostly White firefighters to the rank of lieutenant has caused it to lose membership and, consequently, the increased membership dues that would come with a member's lieutenant's salary (see Item 54, ¶ 43; see also Item 64, ¶¶ 10, 13, 14).

The City moves pursuant to Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b) to dismiss both amended complaints "A" and "B" on the following grounds:

1. Lack of standing to sue;

2. Failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted;

3. Unavailability of punitive damages against a municipality;

4. Failure to state a Title VII claim against defendants Keane and Sixt in their individual capacities; and

5. Failure to state a claim against the Fire Department as a separate entity.

Each of these grounds is discussed in turn.

DISCUSSION

I. Standing

Whether a plaintiff has sufficiently alleged standing to sue presents a question of justiciability — i.e., "whether [a] plaintiff has made out a `case or controversy' between himself and the defendant within the meaning of Art. III." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). The court's jurisdiction therefore can only be invoked when a plaintiff has suffered "some threatened or actual injury resulting from the putatively illegal action...." Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 617, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973), quoted in Warth, 422 U.S. at 499, 95 S.Ct. 2197.

In United States v. Vazquez, 145 F.3d 74 (2d Cir.1998), the Second Circuit provided a comprehensive summary of the standing requirements:

[T]he party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing the elements of standing. To meet this burden, a plaintiff must show (1) that she suffered an injury in fact — an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particular, and not merely hypothetical; (2) that there is a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of; and (3) that it is likely that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision....

We have emphasized that the fundamental aspect of standing is its focus on the party seeking to get his complaint before a federal court and not on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated. The aim is to determine whether the plaintiff has alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to warrant his invocation of federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court's remedial powers on his behalf. The standing issue must therefore be resolved irrespective of the merits of the substantive claims.

Vazquez, 145 F.3d at 80-81 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

When standing is challenged at the pleading stage, the court must "accept as true all material allegations of the complaint, and must construe the complaint in favor of the complaining party." Warth, 422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197. Moreover, "general factual allegations of injury resulting from the defendant's conduct may suffice, for on a motion to dismiss we presum[e] that general allegations embrace those specific facts that are necessary to support the claim." Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (internal quotation omitted); see also Vazquez, 145 F.3d at 81.

There are two ways in which a plaintiff association may satisfy the standing requirement. First, an association has standing "in its own right to seek judicial relief from injury to itself ...," Warth, 422 U.S. at 511, 95 S.Ct. 2197, and in so doing may "assert the rights of its members, at least so long as the challenged infractions adversely affect its members' associational ties." Id. Alternatively, "[e]ven in the absence of injury to itself, an association may have standing solely as the representative of its members." Id. at 511, 95 S.Ct. 2197.

A. Injury to MOCHA

The City defendants argue that MOCHA does not allege any injury to itself in the promotions complaint (Complaint "B"), but instead merely pleads that it is a representative of its members. The City defendants curiously offer no argument as to whether MOCHA has standing on its own behalf to challenge the drug-testing policy. However, the court will presume that the City would seek to make substantially similar arguments in support of both motions — i.e., that MOCHA has failed to adequately allege an injury to itself and therefore has no standing to sue on its own behalf to challenge either the promotion policy or the drug-testing policy.

Having made the presumption, the court rejects the City's argument. In the drug-testing policy complaint (Complaint "A"), MOCHA claims that the City defendants' discriminatory...