Sichani v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth.
| Docket Number | 22-cv-1584 (CRC) |
| Decision Date | 03 November 2023 |
| Parties | ATOUSA VALI SICHANI, Plaintiff, v. WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
Plaintiff Atousa Vali[1] sued her former employer, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (“WMATA”) following her termination in the summer of 2021. After her original complaint was dismissed and her motion to file an amended complaint denied without prejudice, Dr. Vali moved to amend her complaint a second time. She now alleges, under District of Columbia law, that WMATA wrongfully terminated her in violation of public policy. WMATA opposes her proposed new complaint on the grounds that sovereign immunity shields it from suit and the complaint fails to state a claim. Finding that WMATA has waived its immunity with respect to the alleged conduct but that the amended complaint fails to allege a violation of D.C. law, the Court will deny Vali's motion to amend with prejudice and dismiss the case.
The Court draws the following background from Dr. Vali's proposed Second Amended Complaint. WMATA no doubt contests some of the alleged facts.
Vali headed WMATA's Automatic Train Control (“ATC”) engineering department until her termination in July 2021. Second Am. Compl. (“SAC”) ¶ 13 [ECF 17-2].[2] Vali claims that in late May 2021 her supervisor, Nicholas Gardner, repeatedly asked her to certify that the ATC system at WMATA's Alexandria, Virginia railyard was operational. Id. ¶ 45. Specifically, Gardner allegedly asked her to execute a Temporary Use Notice (“TUN”)-a document that signified that all required documentation had been received and the railyard was safe for operation. Id. ¶¶ 45-46. Vali alleges that she, along with members of her department, refused to execute the TUN because they were missing certain documentation, including “specification, design, and test documents from WMATA's suppliers” and “project team.” Id. ¶¶ 51, 53-55. Vali and her team also identified purported safety concerns with the railyard, including a software program that was missing features designed to prevent train derailment. Id. ¶ 53.
In meetings, phone calls, and a memorandum she issued on May 22, Vali continued to refuse to sign the TUN. Id. ¶¶ 47, 54-55, 58, 61. On May 23, however, Gardner changed the TUN's signature line from Vali's name to his own and executed the TUN himself. Id. ¶ 65. Later that week, Vali contacted WMATA's Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) and the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission (“WMSC”), the agency with direct safety oversight of WMATA, to raise her “safety concerns” about Gardner's certification of the TUN. Id. ¶¶ 18, 65, 67.[3]
In June, Vali also discovered that an “auto[matic] door open” function on the Red Line Metrorail was potentially unsafe and could lead to doors opening between stations. Id. ¶¶ 87, 89. Vali prepared a memorandum for Gardner, which included information indicating that WMATA had been aware of the door hazard since 2019. Id. ¶ 89. Gardner, however, allegedly edited the memorandum to omit some of this information and directed Vali to submit the “censored” memorandum to WMSC. Id. ¶¶ 91, 93. WMATA's Chief Safety Officer later contacted Vali to discuss the automatic door issue. Id. ¶ 95.
The following month, Vali contacted Gardner's supervisor to discuss her concerns about the safety of ongoing projects. Id. ¶¶ 98-99. Soon after her outreach, Gardner scheduled a meeting to discuss Vali's job performance and fired her. Id. ¶¶ 101-02. At the meeting, Vali asked Gardner whether he was firing her in “retaliation for the [Alexandria] railyard,” but he allegedly gave “[n]o reason” for her termination. Id. ¶ 101. This suit followed.
After the Court granted WMATA's motion to dismiss Vali's original complaint and denied without prejudice her first motion to amend the complaint, Op. [ECF 15], Vali filed a second motion to amend, Mot. Leave to File Second Am. Compl. [ECF 17-1]. Her new one-count complaint alleges that WMATA wrongfully terminated her in violation of public policy. SAC ¶¶ 105-123. Specifically, she alleges that “[t]he sole or predominant reason” for her termination “was her protected disclosures to WMATA managers, the WMSC[,] and WMATA's OIG regarding WMATA's violations of law, rule or regulations[,] and or its abuse of authority.” Id. ¶ 116.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a)(2) allows a plaintiff to file an amended complaint more than twenty-one days after an answer has been served only with the opposing party's consent or with leave of court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). Leave to amend is to be “freely given when justice so requires” but may be denied due to “futility of amendment.” Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)). The defendant bears the burden of showing that leave to amend should be denied. See, e.g., Howard v. George Washington Univ., No. 22-cv-02902 (JMC), 2023 WL 3231447, at *2 (cleaned up).
Because an amended complaint is futile if it would not survive a motion to dismiss, courts assess proposed amendments under the standards of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b). Moldea v. N.Y. Times Co., 22 F.3d 310, 319 (D.C. Cir. 1994). WMATA asserts two Rule 12(b) grounds for why the amendment is futile. First, under Rule 12(b)(1), WMATA contends that its sovereign immunity deprives this Court of subject matter jurisdiction. Opp'n at 4 [ECF 18]. Second, under Rule 12(b)(6), WMATA asserts that the second amended complaint fails to state a claim. Id.
As “[f]ederal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction,” Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994), a court must ensure it has subject matter jurisdiction over a claim before proceeding to the merits, Moms Against Mercury v. FDA, 483 F.3d 824, 826 (D.C. Cir. 2007). The Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over any claim barred by sovereign immunity. See Burkhart v. WMATA, 112 F.3d 1207, 1216 (D.C. Cir. 1997). On a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing jurisdiction. Knapp Med. Ctr. v. Hargan, 875 F.3d 1125, 1128 (D.C. Cir. 2017). The Court must “accept all well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences from those allegations in the plaintiff's favor,” but need not “assume the truth of legal conclusions” in the complaint. Williams v. Lew, 819 F.3d 466, 472 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (cleaned up). The Court also “may consider materials outside the pleadings in deciding whether to grant a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.” Jerome Stevens Pharms., Inc. v. FDA, 402 F.3d 1249, 1253 (D.C. Cir. 2005).
Under Rule 12(b)(6), “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). A claim is plausible on its face if it “pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. The court “assumes the truth of all well-pleaded factual allegations in the complaint and construes reasonable inferences from those allegations in the plaintiff's favor but is not required to accept the plaintiff's legal conclusions as correct.” Sissel v. U.S. Dep't of Health & Hum. Servs., 760 F.3d 1, 4 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (cleaned up).
At the outset, the Court must decide whether it is obligated to address WMATA's claim of sovereign immunity before it considers its 12(b)(6) argument. Ordinarily, federal courts are required to address jurisdictional questions before ruling on the merits of parties' claims. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env't, 523 U.S. 83, 93-94 (1998). But, as the D.C. Circuit has acknowledged, “there is considerable uncertainty about sequencing in the Eleventh Amendment context.” Greater New Orleans Fair Hous. Action Ctr. v. U.S. Dep't of Hous. & Urb. Dev., 639 F.3d 1078, 1084 (D.C. Cir. 2011).
The Supreme Court has recognized factors that permit consideration of certain non-jurisdictional issues before state sovereign immunity. But those factors are absent here. In Vermont Agency of Natural Resource v. United States ex rel. Stevens, the Supreme Court decided whether the False Claims Act (“FCA”) provided for suits against states before determining whether the Eleventh Amendment permitted such a suit. 529 U.S. 765, 778 (2000). In that case, however, “logical priority and [the] virtual coincidence of scope” between the two inquiries-namely, whether states could be sued under the FCA (the statutory question) and whether unconsenting states could be sued under the FCA (the sovereign immunity question)-made “it possible, and indeed, appropriate, to decide the statutory issue first.” Id. at 779-80. The same logical priority and coincidence of scope do not exist here, so the Court will decide the sovereign immunity issue before the merits. See also Mowrer v. United States Dep't of Transp., 14 F.4th 723, 735 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (Katsas, J., concurring) ().
WMATA was created via a compact signed by Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia and consented to by Congress. Pub L. No.89-774, 80 Stat. 1324 (1966) (). In signing the compact,...
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