Maron v. Legal Aid Soc'y
| Decision Date | 02 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21 Civ. 5960 (KPF) |
| Parties | Maud MARON, Plaintiff, v. The LEGAL AID SOCIETY and Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Marc John Randazza, Randazza Legal Group, PLLC, Las Vegas, NV, Jay Marshall Wolman, Randazza Legal Group PLLC, Hartford, CT, for Plaintiff.
Christopher Daniel Belelieu, Jabari Julien, Lee Ross Crain, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, New York, NY, Lauren Kole, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Denver, CO, for Defendant The Legal Aid Society.
Allyson Leigh Belovin, Levy Ratner, P.C., New York, NY, Rebekah Beth Cook-Mack, South Brooklyn Legal Services, Brooklyn, NY, for Defendant Association of Legal Aid Attorneys.
On July 23, 2020, Plaintiff Maud Maron, a career public defender at Defendant The Legal Aid Society ("LAS"), penned an op-ed in the New York Post entitled "Racial Obsessions Make it Impossible for NYC Schools to Treat Parents, Kids As People" (the "Op-Ed"). Speaking simultaneously in her capacities as a mother, public defender, elected public school council member, and then-candidate for New York City Council, Plaintiff recounted in the Op-Ed her experience at an anti-bias training run by the New York City Department of Education ("DOE"). She decried what she perceived as DOE's endorsement of the "chilling doctrine called anti-racism," which she asserted "insists on defining everyone by race, invites discrimination[,] and divides all thought and behavior along a racial axis." Responding to the Op-Ed, the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid ("BALA"), a caucus of Defendant Association of Legal Aid Attorneys ("ALAA," or the "Union," and together with LAS, "Defendants"), issued a public statement denouncing Plaintiff's "racist" views and characterizing her "as a classic example of what 21st century racism looks like." LAS followed with its own statement, which similarly rebuked Plaintiff's "racist perspective" and questioned the ability of any public defender to "effectively and fully" engage in public interest work if they do not embrace an anti-racist mandate.
Plaintiff alleges that Defendants’ statements were riddled with falsehoods and singled her out because she is white. For such conduct, Plaintiff brings this civil rights suit, asserting claims of hostile work environment and constructive termination pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-17, on the grounds that Defendants’ statements were so permeated with discriminatory intimidation that they altered the terms and conditions of Plaintiff's employment and made it impossible for her to return to LAS from the sabbatical she took to run for City Council. Defendants have each moved to dismiss Plaintiff's claims pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). For the reasons outlined in the remainder of this Opinion, the Court grants Defendants’ motions in their entirety.
For most of her legal career, Plaintiff has served as a public defender with LAS, first from 1998 to 2006 and then from 2017 through at least the initiation of the instant lawsuit in 2021. (Am. Compl. ¶ 7). During her time at LAS, Plaintiff held the titles of staff attorney and Director of Training and received invitations to serve as a faculty lecturer at LAS's trial advocacy programs. (Id. ).
On December 30, 2019, Plaintiff circulated an officewide email announcing that she would be taking a leave of absence from LAS in 2020 to campaign full time for City Council. (Belovin Decl., Ex. 1).2 Several hours after sending this email, Rigodis Appling, an LAS staff attorney, replied to Plaintiff's message, copying the office listserv, and stated in full: "Requesting that you please leave the Legal Aid Society's name and recognition out of your campaign materials and speeches." (Id. ). The message continued, "[i]t's not a good look for us." (Id. ). Underneath the text of this message, Appling included several links to materials criticizing Plaintiff for her position on New York City's efforts to expand "Culturally Responsive Education" in public schools and calling for Plaintiff to resign from her elected position as a public school council member. (Id. ; see also Wolman Decl., Ex. 2-4).3 Plaintiff replied to Appling's email explaining that these sources were part of "the smear campaign by people who disagree with [her] and think the way to conduct public discourse is to attack people instead of engaging in constructive conversation." (Belovin Decl., Ex. 1). Appling responded in the final email of the chain by affirming her belief in "engaging in constructive public discourse" and inviting Plaintiff to "discuss [her] position on school segregation with union members[.]" (Id. ).
Plaintiff alleges that at the end of 2019, BALA prompted LAS to open a baseless investigation into her. (Am. Compl. ¶ 13). The investigation entailed a wholesale review of Plaintiff's caseload and interviews of three of her supervisors concerning her work as a public defender. (Id. at ¶ 15). None of Plaintiff's supervisors identified any concerns regarding the quality or nature of her client representations, and the investigation was ultimately deemed unfounded. (Id. at ¶ 16). Plaintiff learned of the results of this investigation on January 13, 2020, during a meeting with her union representative and Tina Luongo, the Attorney-in-Charge of LAS's Criminal Defense Practice. (Id. at ¶ 17). In addition to informing Plaintiff that she had been fully cleared of any wrongdoing, Luongo warned Plaintiff that the same attorneys who initiated the investigation portended to "leak" the fact of the investigation to the press to harm Plaintiff's campaign. (Id. at ¶ 18). Concerned about the risk to her reputation, Plaintiff requested that LAS issue an approbative statement if information concerning the investigation were leaked, prompting Luongo to interrupt and state that "IT WILL be leaked." (Id. at ¶¶ 19-20). Luongo then acceded to Plaintiff's request that LAS release a statement acknowledging Plaintiff's exemplary record when the attempt to damage her reputation materialized. (Id. at ¶ 21). Plaintiff does not allege that the investigation was leaked, and LAS never released the statement discussed during Plaintiff's meeting with Luongo and her union representative. (Id. at ¶ 22).
On July 23, 2020, while on sabbatical from LAS, Plaintiff published the Op-Ed in the New York Post. .4 In the Op-Ed, Plaintiff took issue with a DOE anti-bias training that she attended, at which she was instructed to refer to herself as a "white woman," and which classified concepts such as "worship of the written word," "individualism," and "objectivity" as "white-supremacy culture." (Op-Ed 1). Drawing from this experience, Plaintiff took aim at the City's push to instill in public schools the "benign-sounding but chilling doctrine called anti-racism, which insists on defining everyone by race, invites discrimination[,] and divides all thought and behavior along a racial axis." (Id. ). Plaintiff highlighted her perception that "[t]hose who oppose this ideology are shunned and humiliated, even as it does nothing to actually improve our broken schools." (Id. ). Plaintiff expressed support for "more integrated schools, regardless of whether integration is an academic booster," but urged people to "think through all this with nuance, not by vilifying some parents or setting parents against each other." (Id. at 2).
Three days after the publication of the Op-Ed, on July 26, 2020, BALA issued a statement "respond[ing] to [Plaintiff's] recent anti-racism philippic" and "denounc[ing] [her] as the racist that she is." (Pl. Ex. B ("BALA Statement") at 1). According to BALA, that Plaintiff finds anti-racism to be chilling "tells true racial advocates all they need to know: she's racist, and wants the school system ... to remain unequal." (Id. ). Plaintiff is, in BALA's eyes, one of the "many white practitioners" who subscribes to the "common myth ... that being public defenders preclude[s] them from being racist." (Id. ). Relatedly, the authors professed that "we know for a fact that [Plaintiff's] commitment to zealous representation of poor people of color is questionable at best" (id. at 1), and that she has been "tasked with representing a constituency she clearly has no regard for" (id. at 3). The statement proclaimed that one "cannot oppose anti-racism and effectively represent Black and Brown people," and concluded by saying that Plaintiff "has no business having a career in public defense, and we're ashamed that she works for the Legal Aid Society." (Id. ).
LAS's official Twitter account retweeted the BALA Statement, without any commentary. . Thereafter, on July 27, 2020, LAS released its own statement responding to the Op-Ed, co-signed by LAS leadership, including the organization's Attorney-in-Chief and CEO, General Counsel, Chief Human Resources Officer, and Chief Operating Officer, as well as the Attorneys-in-Charge of the Civil, Juvenile Rights, and Criminal Defense Practices. .5 The LAS Statement claimed that Plaintiff "denies the existence of structural and institutional racism," and ascribed to her the position that "by the mere nature of working in public interest and being a public defender you get a pass at looking at your privilege, your role in social dominance and white supremacy." (LAS Statement 1). "This racist perspective," according to LAS, "is disgusting and results in Black and Brown people being harmed by individuals in public interest roles[.]" (Id. ). On LAS's view, Plaintiff revealed that she is "not only complicit in this...
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