Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

The United States Air Force required all service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19, subject to certain exemptions. In this case, thirty-six members of the Air Force, Air Force Reserve, or Air National Guard sued the Secretary of Defense and others, alleging that the government’s denial of their requests for religious exemptions violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The Airmen sought a nationwide preliminary injunction prohibiting the Air Force from taking steps to discharge any of the Airmen and from denying travel, training, or other career opportunities to them. The district court denied the motion and later dismissed much of the case, although one aspect of the complaint remains pending in the district court. The Airmen appealed the order denying the request for preliminary injunctive relief.
The Eighth Circuit, in light of intervening developments that have granted the Airmen all of the relief requested, dismissed the appeal. The court explained that none of the Airmen is subject to a COVID-19 vaccination requirement, and no adverse action may be taken against the Airmen for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. A statutory change that discontinues a challenged practice usually makes an appeal moot. View "Tanner Roth v. Lloyd Austin, III" on Justia Law

Lincare, Inc. terminated Plaintiff, concluding that she had violated Lincare’s “Corporate Health Care Law Compliance Program” and “Code of Conduct.” While Plaintiff does not dispute her conduct, she contends that Lincare discriminated against her on the basis of sex because it gave a fellow male employee, who had engaged in similar conduct, only a “final written warning.” Plaintiff filed suit alleging violations of the West Virginia Human Rights Act. The district court found Lincare liable to Plaintiff and awarded her damages. On appeal, Lincare contends that there was no evidence of discrimination on the basis of sex and that, therefore the district court’s finding that it violated the Human Rights Act was clearly erroneous. Plaintiff cross-appealed, contending that the district court erred in determining her compensatory damages award.   The Fourth Circuit reversed. The court explained that while the district court’s findings are entitled to substantial deference, the core evidence showed that Plaintiff was fired by a woman and replaced by a woman and that, during the entire process, there was no indication that gender was even remotely a factor in Lincare’s decision. The only explanation Plaintiff offered to substantiate the claim that Lincare had discriminated against her on the basis of sex was her “belief” that she and her comparator “were doing the same thing” and the fact that “he’s a man; [she’s] a woman.” The court wrote that Plaintiff failed to present evidence sufficient for a factfinder to conclude that it was the product of discrimination based on sex. View "Chandra Balderson v. Lincare Inc." on Justia Law

Petitioner, an employee of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security (“ICE” or “Agency”), petitions for review of the final judgment of the Merit Systems Protection Board (the “Board”), which rejected Petitioner’s claim that the Agency suspended him for two days in retaliation for his disclosures of misconduct.   The Fourth Circuit denied the petition. The court explained that after conducting a hearing and considering the evidence, the administrative judge denied the corrective action sought by Petitioner, concluding that Petitioner’s protected disclosures were not contributing factors to the discipline imposed and, alternatively, that the Agency proved by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the action even in the absence of the disclosures. The court denied the petition explaining that the administrative judge committed no legal error and his factual findings are supported by substantial evidence. View "Yuriy Mikhaylov v. Dept. of Homeland Security" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed sexual harassment, failure to prevent sexual harassment, wrongful constructive termination, discrimination, and retaliation actions against her former employer, Rite Aid Corporation and Thrifty Payless, Inc., dba Rite Aid. Plaintiff’s lawsuit stemmed from an offsite and after-hours text exchange she had with a Rite Aid district manager in which the latter sent lewd photographs to her. Plaintiff and the district manager knew each other and were friends from a time before Plaintiff started working at Rite Aid. The Rite Aid defendants brought a summary judgment motion. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the Rite Aid defendants as to all of Plaintiff’s claims. Plaintiff appealed.   The Fifth Appellate District affirmed the trial court’s conclusion that Plaintiff did not raise a triable issue of material fact with respect to the required showing that her manager was acting in the capacity of a supervisor in the text exchange in which he sent the inappropriate texts. Rather, as the trial court found, Plaintiff and the manager had “an extensive texting relationship,” and their January 4, 2019, late-night text exchange, which “occurred outside the workplace and outside of work hours,” was “spawned from a personal exchange that arose from a friendship between [them].” Summary judgment is, therefore, proper as to Plaintiff’s sexual harassment claims. Further, the court agreed with the trial court's conclusion that “as opposed to a constructive termination, the evidence shows that Plaintiff resigned her position.” View "Atalla v. Rite Aid Corporation" on Justia Law

Pro se Plaintiff filed a whistleblower claim against his former employer, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and his former supervisors in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. But before doing so, Plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (WPA) and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The district court thus dismissed the claim for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
The Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiff’s whistleblower claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. Plaintiff did not file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel or the Merit Systems Protection Board, as required by the CSRA. Instead, he went straight to federal court. The district court thus lacked “jurisdiction to entertain a whistleblower cause of action . . . in the first instance” because Plaintiff failed to follow the proper administrative process. Second, the court wrote that Plaintiff’s argument that his failure to exhaust should be excused on equitable grounds is meritless. The court noted that it has “no authority to create equitable exceptions to jurisdictional requirements.” And, in any event, Plaintiff offers no reason why he should be granted such an equitable exception. View "Chinniah v. Fed. Energy Regul. Comm'n" on Justia Law

After his employment was terminated in May 2008, plaintiff Harold Hansen brought claims against Rite Aid and other defendants alleging age discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, and gender discrimination in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD), as well as several common law claims. After three trials, a jury returned a verdict in plaintiff’s favor on his LAD sexual orientation discrimination claim and awarded him a total of $420,500 in compensatory and punitive damages. Plaintiff moved for an award of counsel fees and costs. In plaintiff’s initial submission, he asked the trial court to determine that a reasonable hourly rate for his lead counsel and the attorney who assisted in the first of the three trials was $725, and that a reasonable number of hours spent on this matter was 3,252. He requested that the trial court determine the lodestar to be $2,355,892.50, and that the court apply a one hundred percent enhancement to the lodestar. Plaintiff also sought an award of costs. In total, plaintiff requested an award of $5,035,773.50. The trial court issued a seventy-three-page decision with a fifty-four-page spreadsheet reflecting its analysis of the time entries and disbursements set forth in plaintiff’s invoice. The court ruled that a reasonable hourly rate for plaintiff’s lead counsel in this case was $375 per hour and a reasonable hourly rate for the assistant attorney was $325 per hour. The court identified several categories of legal work improperly included in plaintiff’s fee application, including work on unrelated matters. The trial court also excluded all time entries reflecting plaintiff’s counsel’s representation of plaintiff in the Appellate Division and to the Supreme Court. Noting that plaintiff was successful on only one claim and that plaintiff’s lead counsel performed tasks that should have been assigned to a junior attorney or a paralegal, the trial court reduced the lodestar by twenty percent. Ultimately, the trial court awarded $741,387.97 in fees and costs. The Appellate Division affirmed. The New Jersey Supreme Court concurred with the Appellate Division that the trial court properly exercised its discretion when it set the reasonable hourly rate for plaintiff’s counsel’s work, assessed the number of hours reasonably expended by plaintiff’s counsel in pretrial proceedings and at trial, reduced the lodestar because of plaintiff’s limited success and other factors, and determined plaintiff’s application for an award of costs. View "Hansen v. Rite Aid Corp." on Justia Law

This writ proceeding involves a statutory challenge for cause filed against a trial court judge presiding over a wrongful termination lawsuit. The parties are Plaintiff and his former employer, Defendant Bassett Unified School District. Following a multimillion-dollar jury verdict in favor of Plaintiff, the trial judge in this action, Honorable Stephanie Bowick, received a text message from another judge on the court, Honorable Rupert Byrdsong. According to Judge Bowick, Judge Byrdsong had previously informed Judge Bowick that attorneys from his former firm were trying the case. Pointing to Judge Byrdsong’s apparent support for Plaintiff and the resulting verdict in Plaintiff’s favor, the school district sought Judge Bowick’s disqualification, asserting that a person aware of the facts might reasonably entertain a doubt that the judge would be able to be impartial. The disqualification motion was assigned to Orange County Superior Court Judge Maria D. Hernandez. The assigned judge denied the disqualification motion. Defendant sought review by petition for writ of mandate   The Second Appellate District denied the petition. The court held that the disqualification motion was properly denied. The court reasoned that there is no adverse inference arising from Judge Bowick’s final ruling on the evidentiary issue. Further, the court found that the facts Judge Bowick disclosed do not require disqualification. Moreover, the court wrote, the timing of Judge Bowick’s disclosure does not suggest an appearance of bias. View "Bassett Unified School Dist. v. Super. Ct." on Justia Law

Smucker’s is a federal contractor that supplies food items to the federal government. In 2021, by Executive Order, President Biden directed all federal contractors to “ensure that all [their] employees [were] fully vaccinated for COVID-19,” unless such employees were “legally entitled” to health or religious accommodations. The order made contractors “responsible for considering, and dispositioning, such requests for accommodations.” In September 2021, Smucker’s notified its U.S. employees that it would “ask and expect” them to “be fully vaccinated.” A month later, in the face of “deadlines in the federal order,” Smucker’s announced a formal vaccine mandate with exemptions based on “sincerely held religious beliefs.”The plaintiffs unsuccessfully sought religious exemptions, then sued Smucker's under the First Amendment's free-exercise guarantee. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the suit. When Smucker’s denied the exemption requests, it was not a state actor. Smucker’s does not perform a traditional, exclusive public function; it has not acted jointly with the government or entwined itself with it; and the government did not compel it to deny anyone an exemption. That Smucker’s acted in compliance with federal law and that Smucker’s served as a federal contractor, do not by themselves make the company a government actor. View "Ciraci v. J.M. Smucker Co." on Justia Law

Philander Smith College fired Plaintiff after she referred to a student as “retarded” for using a cell phone during class. She sued for sex discrimination, retaliation, and breach of contract. After granting summary judgment to the college on the first two claims, the district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the third.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court held that Plaintiff has not put forward sufficient evidence of pretext. So summary judgment marks the end of the road for her sex-discrimination claim. Further, the court reasoned that even if the conditions were intolerable, in other words, Plainitff’s own role in provoking these incidents undermines the claim that the college created a workplace full of discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult. Moreover, the court explained once Plaintiff’s federal claims were gone, the district court had no obligation to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s Arkansas breach-of-contract claim. View "Patricia Walker-Swinton v. Philander Smith College" on Justia Law

Based on nominations, UC awarded “triumph cords” to graduating students who had overcome adversity. UC did not vet the nominees and unintentionally awarded a cord to a convicted sex offender. Goldblum, UC’s Title IX coordinator, told her supervisor, Marshall, that she would investigate how UC evaluated admissions applications from convicted sex offenders and address the controversy in the student newspaper. Goldblum forwarded a letter to Marshall, who ordered Goldblum not to submit anything until Marshall coordinated with other University officials. The administration had authorized Dean Petren to address the controversy. Marshall told Goldblum that Petren would issue UC’s response. Marshall also identified problems with the letter’s content. Goldblum texted Marshall that she intended to submit the letter and accept “any repercussions.” Marshall texted: “Please do not send.” Goldblum sent the letter, which was never published. Marshall reported Goldblum’s insubordination. During an investigation, UC discovered additional infractions: Goldblum repeatedly ignored Title IX complaints, criticized her colleagues in front of her staff, and missed reporting deadlines. UC allowed Goldblum to resign in lieu of termination.Goldblum sued UC for unlawful termination under Title VII and Title IX. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the claims. UC had legitimate nonretaliatory reasons to fire Goldblum, who has not produced “sufficient evidence from which a jury could reasonably reject” UC’s proffered reasons. Her letter was not “protected activity.” No reasonable juror could conclude that UC’s work-performance rationale was not based in fact. View "Goldblum v. University of Cincinnati" on Justia Law