Gray v. Rooms to go Furniture Corp. of Ga.

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BRENDA GRAY, Plaintiff, v. ROOMS TO GO FURNITURE CORPORATION OF GEORGIA, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 5:24-cv-00227-TES

United States District Court, M.D. Georgia, Macon Division

November 22, 2024

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS

TILMAN E. SELF, III, JUDGE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), Defendant RTG Furniture Corp. of Georgia moves to dismiss pro se Plaintiff Brenda Gray's Complaint [Doc. 1]. [Doc. 8]. Defendant RTG Furniture Corp. of Georgia, better known as “Rooms To Go,” filed its Motion to Dismiss [Doc. 8] on September 23, 2024. [Doc. 8, p. 19]. After the time for Plaintiff to respond to Rooms To Go's Motion passed without any response, the Court gave Plaintiff additional time to respond and warned her “of what may happen to her case if she fails to file a response brief.” [Doc. 10, p. 1]; LR 7.2, MDGa.

By all accounts, it appears that Plaintiff no longer wants to prosecute this case as she never filed a response brief or exercised her right to amend her Complaint in light of Rooms To Go's dismissal efforts. See Fed.R.Civ.P 15(a)(1). However, “even if a plaintiff fails to respond to individual arguments in a defendant's motion to dismiss that failure does not amount to a waiver of her position that her complaint stated a plausible claim, provided that the district court ‘considered the merits' of those arguments and ‘relied on them in granting the motion to dismiss.'” Jacob v. Mentor Worldwide, LLC 40 F.4th 1329, 1337 (11th Cir. 2022) (quoting Hi-Tech Pharms., Inc. v. HBS Int'l Corp., 910 F.3d 1186 1194 (11th Cir. 2018)). Accordingly, Rooms To Go's arguments must still be considered in determining whether Plaintiff's Complaint states a claim for relief upon which relief may be granted.^[1]

BACKGROUND

According to Plaintiff's Complaint,^[2] she claims that for just over six years Rooms To Go violated her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967^[3](“ADEA”). [Doc. 1, pp. 3-4, 5 (Plaintiff's recollection that the alleged discriminatory acts occurred “[f]rom June 2017 to August 2023”)]. Plaintiff provides only the following facts for her case:

Wrongful termination based on age, race, religion, and sex. Continued bullying and harassment by Tony Sherron. Complaints ignored by Hr (sic) Rep Ana Yazbeck and Sharon Tyler. Passed over for promotion for a job that I was already doing. Position given to white female that I trained. I was intimidated by white male upper management every time that Tony would bully me if I refused to do his work under his employee password. Their last attempt to force me out was when my work schedule was changed so that I was unable to attend my religious activities. I was replaced with younger associates after 17 years of service.

[Id. at p. 5]. Based on these allegations, Plaintiff initiated proceedings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) on February 21, 2023. [Doc. 8-1, p. 2].

In her charge of discrimination^[4] to the EEOC, Plaintiff wrote:

I was terminated from a job after 17 years of service. I was continually harassed and retailiated (sic) against by James Powell, Tony Sherron, Robert Manns, Zaid Hakim, and Ron Smith because I am a black female who is actively involved in church activities yet still dedicated to my job responsibilities.

[Id.]. On April 9, 2024, the EEOC issued Plaintiff her Notice of Right to Sue [Doc. 1-1], and she commenced this lawsuit on July 10, 2024. See [Doc. 1].

DISCUSSION

A. Legal Standard

When ruling on a motion under Rule 12(b)(6), it is a cardinal rule that district courts must accept the factual allegations set forth in a complaint as true. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 572 (2007). In accepting the factual allegations as true, courts are to construe the reasonable inferences from them in the light most favorable to a plaintiff. Hawthorne v. Mac Adjustment, Inc., 140 F.3d 1367, 1370 (11th Cir. 1998).

However, through Rule 12(b)(6), a defendant may “test the facial sufficiency” of a complaint by way of a motion to dismiss. Ghee v. Comcast Cable Commc'ns, LLC, No. 2212867, 2023 WL 3813503, at *2 (11th Cir. June 5, 2023) (quoting Brooks v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield, 116 F.3d 1364, 1368 (11th Cir. 1997)). Such a “motion is an ‘assertion by a defendant that, even if the facts alleged by a plaintiff are true, the complaint still fails as a matter of law to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.'” Barreth v. Reyes 1, Inc., No. 5:19-cv-00320-TES, 2020 WL 4370137, at *2 (M.D. Ga. July 29, 2020) (citation omitted). However, a complaint will survive a Rule 12(b)(6)-based motion if it alleges sufficient factual matter (accepted as true) that states a claim for relief that is plausible on its face. McCullough v. Finley, 907 F.3d 1324, 1333 (11th Cir. 2018) (citing Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678-79 (2009) (emphasis added).

Now, whether a complaint states a claim for relief is measured by reference to the pleading standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8-a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2); Barreth, 2020 WL 4370137, at *2 (citation omitted). Rule 8 doesn't require detailed factual allegations, but it does require “more than unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusations.” McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333 (citation omitted) (alterations adopted). Its sole purpose is to provide a defendant “with ‘fair notice' of the claims and the ‘grounds' for entitlement to relief.” Barreth, 2020 WL 4370137, at *2 (citation omitted); Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555-56.

To decide whether a complaint survives a motion to dismiss, courts use a two-step framework. McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333 (citation omitted). The first step is to identify the allegations that are “no more than conclusions.” Id. (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679). “Conclusory allegations are not entitled to the assumption of truth.” Id. After disregarding the conclusory allegations, the second step is to “assume any remaining factual allegations are true and determine whether those factual allegations ‘plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.'” Id. “A court decides whether [Rule 8's pleading standard] is met by separating the legal conclusions from the factual allegations, assuming the truth of only the factual allegations, and then determining whether those allegations allow [it] to reasonably infer that [a] plaintiff [may be] entitled to the legal remedy sought.” Barreth, 2020 WL 4370137, at *2 (citation omitted).

When drafting a complaint, “[a] plaintiff must plead more than labels and conclusions or a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action.” McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). A plaintiff may use legal conclusions to structure a complaint, but they “must be supported by factual allegations.” McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679). While courts, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, must take all factual allegations in a complaint as true, they are not bound to accept a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. Courts must “identify conclusory allegations and then discard them-not ‘on the ground that they are unrealistic or nonsensical' but because their conclusory nature ‘disentitles them to the presumption of truth.'” McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 681).

The issue to be decided when considering a motion to dismiss “is necessarily a limited one.” Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974) overruled on other grounds by Davis v. Scheuer, 468 U.S. 183 (1984). The issue is not whether the claimant will ultimately prevail, but “whether the claimant is entitled to offer evidence to support the claims.” Id. The factual allegations in a complaint “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level” and cannot “merely create[ ] a suspicion of a legally cognizable right of action.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555. Finally, and in this case, critically, a complaint that tenders “‘naked assertions' devoid of ‘further factual enhancement'” will not survive against a motion to dismiss. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557) (cleaned up). To survive, a complaint must allege enough facts “to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence” supporting a claim. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556.

B. Plaintiff's Title VII and ADEA Claims

Before suing under either Title VII or the ADEA, an aggrieved employee must first exhaust the required federal administrative remedies by filing a charge of discrimination with the EEOC.^[5] Wilkerson v. Grinnell Corp., 270 F.3d 1314, 1317 (11th Cir. 2001). “Exhaustion serves one primary purpose: to allow the EEOC to ‘have the first opportunity to investigate the alleged discriminatory practices [so that it can] perform its role in obtaining voluntary compliance and promoting conciliation efforts.'” Collins v. Navicent Health, Inc., 499 F.Supp.3d 1307, 1327 (M.D. Ga. 2020) (quoting Chesnut v. CC Servs., Inc., No. 5:18-CV-404 (MTT), 2020 WL 1433876, at *4 (M.D. Ga. Mar. 24, 2020)). Considering the purpose of the EEOC exhaustion requirement, the Eleventh Circuit has held that a “plaintiff's judicial complaint is limited by the scope of the EEOC investigation which can reasonably be expected to grow out of the charge of discrimination.” Gregory v. Ga. Dep't of Hum. Res., 355 F.3d 1277, 1280 (11th Cir. 2004). With this in mind, the Court notes that “new acts of discrimination [lodged in a judicial complaint] are inappropriate.”^[6] Batson v. Salvation Army, 897 F.3d 1320, 1327 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Gregory, 355 F.3d at 1280).

In...