Spector v. Bd of Trust., Community-Technical Coll., Civil Action No. 3:06-cv-129(JCH).

• Citation: 463 F.Supp.2d 234
• Decision Date: 29 November 2006
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 3:06-cv-129(JCH).
• Parties: Denis E. SPECTOR, et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF COMMUNITY-TECHNICAL COLLEGES; et al., Defendants.
• Court: United States District Courts. 2nd Circuit. United States District Court (Connecticut)

463 F.Supp.2d 234

Denis E. SPECTOR, et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF COMMUNITY-TECHNICAL COLLEGES; et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 3:06-cv-129(JCH).

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

November 29, 2006.

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Dennis E. Spector, Colebrook, CT, pro se.

Rachel M. Baird, Law Office of Rachel M. Baird, Torrington, CT, for Plaintiffs.

Eleanor M. Mullen, Attorney General's Office, Hartford, CT, for Defendants.

RULING RE: DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS (DOC. NO. 27)

HALL, District Judge.

The plaintiffs, Dennis E. Spector and James A. Crowley, bring this action against the defendants, the Connecticut Board of Trustees of Community-Technical Colleges ("CTC Board of Trustees"), Naugatuck Valley Community College ("NVCC"), Richard Sanders, Patricia Bouffard, Mitchell Holmes, Arthur Dubois, Joseph Cistulli, Edward Connole, William Rimick, and Arian Gorishti, under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, and 1986; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e; Article First §§ 3 and 20 of the Connecticut Constitution, Connecticut General Statutes §§ 31-51 q, 52-571 b; and Connecticut common law. As stated in the Complaint, this action is based upon the defendants' alleged attempts to infringe upon the free exercise of religion and academic expression by Crowley.

The defendants have moved for a partial dismissal of the plaintiffs' claims pursuant to Rule 12(b)6 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For the reasons stated below, the defendants' motion is granted in part and denied in part.

I. BACKGROUND¹

A. Parties

Spector is a Connecticut resident who, at all times relevant to this action, was employed by NVCC and the CTC Board of Trustees as the Coordinator of the Marketing Department in NVCC's Business Division. Spector is also a tenured professor at NVCC. Since 1990, he has held the positions of Adjunct Instructor, Instructor, Assistant Professor, and, by appointment in 1999, Full Professor. Crowley, also a Connecticut resident, was employed by NVCC and the CTC Board of Trustees as a professor in the Marketing and Business Management Department in NVCC's Business Division. Now tenured, Crowley has taught at NVCC since 1971 as an Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and, by appointment in 2002, Full Professor. Spector is Crowley's direct supervisor in the Marketing department. As such, Spector is responsible for evaluating Crowley's job performance.

The CTC Board of Trustees, established pursuant to state statute, administers Connecticut's twelve public, community-technical colleges. NVCC is one of the twelve community-technical colleges organized by the State of Connecticut under the supervision of the CTC Board of Trustees. NVCC maintains a Public Safety Department ("Public Safety") comprised of sworn police officers having full police powers.

Sanders is the President of NVCC. Dean Bouffard has served as the NVCC Academic Dean since Summer 2001. Cistulli was the Academic Dean at NVCC from 1980 to 2001. Holmes is the Director of NVCC's Business Division, and, in this capacity, he is Spector's direct supervisor in the Business Division. DuBois is NVCC's Director of Human Resources and Labor Relations. Connole is the Director of the NVCC Public Safety Department. Rimick is a public safety officer in the NVCC Public Safety Department. Gorishti is also a public safety officer in the NVCC Public Safety Department.

B. Facts²

1. Denial of Crowley's Application for Promotion

In 1998, Professor Crowley was ordained as a Priest in the Holy Apostolic Church of the East, an Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church. Since that time, he has served as an Assistant Pastor of St. Thomas Church in New Britain, as the Catholic Chaplain at the Masonic Health Center in Wallingford, Connecticut, and as Police Chaplain for the New Britain Police Department in New Britain, Connecticut. When Spector became the Coordinator of the Marketing Department in 1998, former Academic Dean Cistulli told Spector that Crowley should have pursued an advanced business degree instead of Crowley's 1995 degree in divinity from Holy Apostle College and Seminary.

In October and November 2000, Spector evaluated Crowley's job performance, both as part of Crowley's triennial evaluation and his application for promotion from Associate Professor to Professor for the 2000-2001 academic year. One portion of the evaluation involved Spector observing Crowley's performance in a Business Organization class on October 31, 2000. Director Holmes joined Spector in observing Crowley's Business Organization class. Holmes, who had been recently appointed the Director of the Business Division, said that he wished to accompany Spector in order to become more familiar with the department's faculty. Holmes also stated that he did not intend to conduct his own evaluation of Crowley. After observing the class, Spector, in accordance with his normal practice, drafted a classroom evaluation.

In a series of meetings following the October 31, 2000 evaluation, Holmes told Spector that Spector's positive evaluation of Crowley's classroom instruction was incorrect, although Holmes did not identify anything about Spector's evaluation that was inaccurate. Holmes did, however, indicate to Spector that Holmes had received unfavorable comments about Crowley from unidentified individuals. Holmes subsequently pressured Spector to change the evaluation.

Spector provided Holmes with an ."Overall Performance Review" dated November 15, 2000, which evaluated Spector's performance during the Fall 2000 semester. Spector's review recommended a rating of "excellent" for Crowley. At some point, presumably upon receiving Spector's recommendation, Holmes remarked to Spector that he was uncomfortable referring to Crowley as "Father," and that Crowley's clerical clothing "overwhelmed" the students in the classroom.³ The student evaluations of Crowley from four classes he taught during the Spring 2000 semester rated Crowley in the top five percent of NVCC faculty members.

In further accordance with the evaluation process, Holmes, Spector, and Crowley met together on November 15, 2000. At this meeting, Holmes pulled his chair within inches of Crowley and aggressively attacked Crowley's dominating "presence" in class. Holmes focused especially on Crowley's wearing of clerical clothing and use of "Catholic" examples in his business ethics class. After twenty minutes, Spector asked to terminate the meeting because of Holmes' abusiveness.

At Crowley's request, Holmes agreed he would not forward his recommendation letter addressing Crowley's promotion application for final decision until Crowley and Holmes met regarding the promotion application. Despite Holmes' assurances to the contrary, Holmes forwarded Crowley's recommendation on or about November 28, 2000, without attempting to schedule a meeting with Crowley. Holmes' recommendation was comparatively more negative than Spector's review. The plaintiffs alleged that Holmes met with the other three Business Division candidates for promotion prior to forwarding their recommendation letters for final decision.

On numerous occasions, Spector requested recommendations from Holmes to improve the aspects of Crowley's performance that resulted in Holmes' negative recommendation for Crowley's promotion. However, Holmes never provided such recommendations. Holmes instead told Spector that he would no longer discuss Crowley's performance with Spector unless Crowley was present. Holmes did not prohibit discussion between him and any of the other seven department coordinators of the Business Division about the job performance of a faculty member under their supervision.

Crowley met with President Sanders en a number of occasions prior and subsequent to the university's promotion announcements and complained about the comments and treatment by Holmes and former Dean Cistulli. All of these meetings occurred after March 21, 2001. During one of these meetings, Crowley, with Spector, Personnel Director DuBois and Crowley's Union representative present, specifically told Sanders that he had been discriminated against, in part, based on his status as a Catholic priest. Prior to this meeting, Cistulli had confronted Crowley in the hall outside Sanders' office and told Crowley that he would never be promoted. In April 2001, Sanders denied Crowley's promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

2. Adjustment of Crowley's Class Schedule

Around July or August 2001, Holmes adjusted Crowley's class schedule in advance of the normal period for class schedule adjustment. Holmes' adjustment resulted in an onerous class schedule for Crowley, who had been absent on medical leave for most of the Spring 2001 semester. Crowley's schedule had been consistent with other faculty members' class schedules before the adjustment. In addition to giving Crowley a more difficult class schedule to manage, Holmes also dropped Crowley from teaching two classes traditionally filled by student enrollment and required for graduation in the Horticulture and Human Services Program.

Once Spector learned of Crowley's altered class schedule, he forwarded a three page memorandum to Holmes, dated September 16, 2001, requesting an investigation of the discrimination against Crowley. The letter indicated, inter alit, that the premature adjustment of Crowley's schedule appeared to be a continuation of the discriminatory actions that had commenced against Crowley in the Fall 2000 semester. In addition to Spector's letter, Crowley verbally complained to Holmes about the burden placed on him by the new class schedule.

3. Crowley's Promotion and Agreement with the Board of Trustees

On November 15, 2001, Crowley filed an Affidavit of Illegal Discriminatory Employment ("CHRO Complaint") with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ("CHRO") against the CTC Board of ...