Schweikhardt v. Sch. Bd. of Collier Cnty.
| Decision Date | 21 October 2015 |
| Docket Number | Case No: 2:14-cv-466-FtM-29MRM |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Florida |
| Parties | M. KATHLEEN SCHWEIKHARDT, Plaintiff, v. THE SCHOOL BOARD OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA, in their individual capacities, MARY MURRAY, in their individual capacities, and GERONIMO MULHOLLAND, in their individual capacities, Defendants. |
This matter comes before the Court on review of defendants' Motion to Dismiss Second Amended Complaint (Doc. #26) filed on June 1, 2015. Despite being given an extension of time (Doc. #28), plaintiff has not filed a response and the time for doing so has expired.
According to the Second Amended Complaint, in August 2008, the School Board of Collier County (the "School Board") promoted Kathleen Schweikhardt ("plaintiff"), a female over 40 years of age, to the position of Head Guidance Counselor at Golden Gate Middle School. (Doc. #23, ¶ 36.) Plaintiff alleges that Principal Mary Murray ("Murray") and Assistant Principal Geronimo Mulholland("Mulholland") thereafter harassed and discriminated against her because of her age. (Id. ¶ 37.) Specifically, plaintiff alleges that she was discriminated against due to her age in the following ways: (1) she was given more difficult duties to perform; (2) she was denied access to certain employment-related training called "SILK Training" which was offered to employees under the age of 40; (3) she was given a poor performance evaluation after she complained of discriminatory treatment; (4) she was assigned a student load significantly greater than that assigned to any other counselor; (5) she was required to serve without additional administrative support as the school's counsel for English Language Learners; (6) she had her full-time assistant taken away; and (7) she was demoted to the position of Counselor in April 2009. (Id. ¶ 38.) Plaintiff further alleges that the Head Guidance Counselor position taken from her was given to a woman who was less than 30 years old at the time. (Id.)
Either "[i]n response to being terminated" (Id. ¶ 21) or "[i]n response to being demoted" (Id. ¶ 43), plaintiff filed a timely Charge of Discrimination dated September 3, 2009 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") and the Florida Commission on Human Relations. (Id. ¶ 21.) Plaintiff received notice of her right to sue on August 26, 2013 (Id. ¶ 45) or January 27, 2014 (Id. ¶ 23), and initiated this action on April 28, 2014. (Doc. #2.)
Plaintiff's Second Amended Complaint, the operative pleading, alleges that defendants discriminated against her in violation of (1) the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA") (Count I) and (2) the Florida Civil Rights Act ("FCRA") (Count II). (Doc. #23.) While the Second Amended Complaint contains various stray references to claims of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and §1985, and common law claims (Id. ¶¶ 11, 14-16), these references are stricken because it is clear that the two actual counts allege only an ADEA claim and a FCRA claim.
Defendants now move to dismiss plaintiff's Second Amended Complaint. Defendants assert that plaintiff lacks standing to bring her claims, her claims have been mooted by her voluntary retirement, her state age discrimination claim (Count II) is untimely, and the individual defendants are not personally liable under either the state or federal age discrimination statutes.
Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1), defendants first make a factual challenge to the Court's subject matter jurisdiction. Defendants assert that plaintiff lacks standing to obtain injunctive relief under her age discrimination claims because she voluntarily retired from her former employment effective June, 2013. Thus, defendants assert that as a matter of law plaintiffcannot establish she is threatened with any future age discrimination by defendants, and therefore fails to establish the injury-in-fact required for constitutional standing and the likelihood of future injury required to obtain injunctive relief.
The Court clearly has subject matter jurisdiction over the ADEA claim, 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and has supplemental jurisdiction over the FCRA claim, 28 U.S.C. § 1367. Defendants assert plaintiff is not entitled to injunctive relief, one of the several forms of relief she requests, and therefore seeks to dismiss either that requested relief (Doc. #23, p. 11) or the claims in their entirety. (Id. at 3.)
Standing simply means that the plaintiff is entitled to "walk through the courthouse door" and raise her grievance before a federal court; it is a threshold determination that is conceptually distinct from whether the plaintiff is entitled to prevail on the merits. Wooden v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga., 247 F.3d 1262, 1280 (11th Cir. 2001). Courts must not conflate the standing inquiry with resolution of the merits. Id. Nonetheless, "a plaintiff must demonstrate standing separately for each form of relief sought." DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 352, (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The relief requested in Count I includes an order "enjoining the Defendants from discriminating against the Plaintiff on the basis of her age." (Doc. #23, p. 11.) While the Second AmendedComplaint makes no reference to plaintiff's retirement, she has not disputed this fact for Rule 12(b)(1) purposes. The Second Amended Complaint alleges no facts which would suggest any age discrimination to plaintiff as a retiree or any adverse impact from prior alleged age discrimination on plaintiff's status or benefits as a retiree. Thus, plaintiff has not alleged any plausible basis to support her requested injunctive relief. That does not, however, establish plaintiff lacks standing to pursue her ADEA claim. An inability to obtain one form of requested relief does not affect the subject matter jurisdiction of the court as to other forms of relief requested in the ADEA claim. While the request for injunctive relief is due to be stricken, the Court continues to have subject matter jurisdiction over the substantive claims.
Similarly, defendants claim the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the claims because plaintiff's claims for damages and injunctive relief are moot. Defendants assert plaintiff suffered no monetary damages and is no longer employed by the School District, rendering the claims moot and the court without subject matter jurisdiction.
Knox v. Serv. Emps. Intern. Union, Local 1000, 132 S. Ct. 2277, 2287 (2012) (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Second Amended Complaint at least implies the existence of money damages in Count I (paragraph 26 alleges plaintiff "endured damages" as result of the age discrimination). As stated above, an inability to obtain some of the relief requested does not defeat the court's subject matter jurisdiction over the claims.
While the Court has subject matter jurisdiction over the claims, plaintiff must still comply with the federal pleading standards. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a Complaint must contain a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). This obligation "requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)(citation omitted). To survive dismissal, the factual allegations must be "plausible" and "must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Id. at 555. See also Edwards v. Prime Inc., 602 F.3d 1276, 1291 (11th Cir. 2010). This requires "more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)(citations omitted).
In deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court must accept all factual allegations in a complaint as true and take them in the light most favorable to plaintiff, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89 (2007), but "[l]egal conclusions without adequate factual support are entitled to no assumption of truth." Mamani v. Berzain, 654 F.3d 1148, 1153 (11th Cir. 2011)(citations omitted). "Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. "Factual allegations that are merely consistent with a defendant's liability fall short of being facially plausible." Chaparro v. Carnival Corp., 693 F.3d 1333, 1337 (11th Cir. 2012)(internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Thus, the Court engages in a two-step approach: "When there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679.
Defendants assert that even if subject matter jurisdiction is present, plaintiff has failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because plaintiff has failed to allege any adverse employment action was taken against her. The ADEA makes it unlawful for an employer "to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,because of such individual's age." 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1). In order state a prima facie claim for discrimination under the ADEA, plaintiff must plausibly allege that: (1) she is a member of a protected class; (2) she was subjected to an adverse employment action; (3) she was replaced by or otherwise lost a position to a younger individual; and (4) she was qualified to do the job. Chapman v. AI Transp., 229 F.3d 1012, 1023 (11th Cir. 2000).1 In Gross v. FBL Fin....
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