PHILADELPHIA – A federal court has denied a motion to reconsider the dismissal of retaliation claims from litigation filed by a former Philadelphia police officer, who alleged she was disciplined for repeatedly requesting adequate lactation space.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Michael M. Baylson ruled to deny plaintiff Janelle Newsome’s motion for reconsideration on Aug. 20.
Newsome was, until recently, a police officer employed by the City of Philadelphia. In the instant lawsuit, she alleged that the City failed to provide her with adequate lactation space and retaliated against her for her ongoing requests for one.
As of her second amended complaint, Newsome said she had been placed on “no duty” status without pay, which led her to exhaust her accrued paid personal time. As a result, she argued that the City discriminated and/or retaliated against her based on her sex and pregnancy.
Examining the second amended complaint, the Court granted-in-part and denied-in-part the City’s third motion to dismiss Newsome’s lawsuit.
The City did not challenge her discrimination claims under Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act or the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, and the Court rejected the City’s jurisdictional challenge to plaintiff’s discrimination claim under the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance.
Newsome’s discrimination claims all survived the motion to dismiss stage – however, her retaliation claims, Baylson said, were dismissed with prejudice.
Baylson added the Court had previously dismissed those claims without prejudice and with leave to amend, requiring Newsome to assert additional allegations to ‘crystallize a causal connection’ between her activity and the City’s alleged adverse action.’ Upon amending, however, Baylson said that Newsome did not add any new factual allegations, so the Court dismissed her retaliation claims with prejudice.
“Plaintiff makes two arguments why the July 2021 opinion must be amended. First, she contends that there is new evidence: she was terminated in March 2021, between the close of briefing on the motion to dismiss in January 2021 and the Court’s July 2021 opinion,” Baylson said.
“Second, plaintiff contends that the Court, in incorporating its prior reasoning in the November 2020 opinion, improperly and indirectly relied on allegations that she had since removed from her operative complaint. Plaintiff argues that the Court must act on this second issue to correct a clear error of law or prevent manifest injustice.”
Baylson explained that Newsome now informed the Court that she was formally terminated in March 2021, and in the four months between her termination and the July 2021 opinion, she did not attempt to inform the Court of this new information.
However, Baylson said the new development did not change the final result and denied her motion for reconsideration.
“Even if considered, however, plaintiff’s progression from suspension without pay to termination does not alter the Court’s reasoning. The Court already recognized that, based on her allegations in the second amended complaint, plaintiff had suffered an adverse action under the law. While the severity of the adverse action has escalated through plaintiff’s termination, it does not merit a different legal conclusion as to plaintiff’s retaliation claims, as the Court acknowledged all along that she had alleged an adverse action,” Baylson said.
“Nor does plaintiff’s termination create additional evidence of a causal connection between her protected activity and the adverse actions. Indeed, plaintiff has alleged her termination in a vacuum, without identifying any action by the City that would connect her termination to a retaliatory motive — her most recent preceding allegation regarding the City was from over a year before her termination. plaintiff’s termination does not provide a basis for modifying the July 2021 opinion.”
In Newsome’s second amended complaint, she removed all allegations regarding a complicating event — her self-report to the City that she had accidentally ingested THC. The City had previously argued was its legitimate, non-retaliatory justification for suspending (and later terminating) plaintiff.
Though Newsome argued the Court relied on the THC allegations to come to that conclusion, the Court found that was not the case.
Baylson pointed out that as the Court explained in its November 2020 hearing, Newsome’s non-THC allegations were not sufficient, and that the Court informed her that her reliance on temporal proximity between her protected activities and the adverse actions was not a causal connection on its own, and that Newsome needed to “plead more information to clarify that connection.”
“Simply removing other allegations was not enough to do so, as the Court explained in the July 2021 opinion – plaintiff’s second amended complaint ‘did not include any factual allegations or descriptions of events that the Court did not already previously consider’ in the November 2020 opinion. In adding no new factual allegations to her second amended complaint, plaintiff did not follow ‘the Court’s direction that Newsome needed to allege something more to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.’ As a result, the Court dismissed plaintiff’s retaliation claims,” Baylson said.
“Plaintiff’s present argument for reconsideration merely echoes its prior argument that the Court rejected – that allegations of temporal proximity were enough to show a causal connection. They were not. Plaintiff’s removal of her THC-related allegations does not change that outcome, and the Court will not amend the July 2021 opinion on those grounds.”
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:19-cv-05590
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com