Melgoza v. Rush Univ. Med. Ctr.

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NORMA MELGOZA, Plaintiff, v. RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER, Defendant.

No. 21-cv-06717

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division

September 26, 2022

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

MARY M. ROWLAND, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

In this employment discrimination case, Plaintiff Norma Melgoza claims that her former employer, Defendant Rush University Medical Center, discriminated and retaliated against her. Rush moves to dismiss the complaint with prejudice. For the reasons stated herein, Rush's Motion to Dismiss and for Sanctions [9] is granted in part and denied in part.

I. Background

The following factual allegations taken from the operative complaint (Dkt. 1 “Compl.”) are accepted as true for the purposes of the motion to dismiss. See Lax v Mayorkas, 20 F.4th 1178, 1181 (7th Cir. 2021).

Rush employed Melgoza from 2006 to July 14, 2020. (Compl. ¶ 20). On September 21, 2017, Melgoza filed a lawsuit against Rush in this Court (17-cv-6819, “Melgoza I”). Id. ¶ 21.^[1] Melgoza I alleges violations of the Equal Pay Act (EPA) and Title VII based on gender and national origin discrimination and Rush's retaliation against her for complaining about discriminatory treatment and systematic discriminatory practices. Id. ¶ 22. In November 2020, this Court granted in part and denied in part Rush's summary judgment motion. (Melgoza I, Dkt. 225). As a result of that ruling, Count I (Equal Pay Act), Counts III and IV (Title VII discrimination), and Count V (Title VII retaliation) remain pending for trial.

From the end of 2019 through the termination of her employment and after the termination, Melgoza applied to multiple open positions at Rush. Compl. ¶ 33. Melgoza alleges she was fully qualified for all of these positions, but individuals with far less relevant experience who were not of Mexican-American national origin or who had not previously alleged discrimination and/or retaliation against Rush were hired by Rush to fill open positions to which Melgoza applied. Id. ¶¶ 33-34. In May 2019, Josh Ellis (Melgoza's immediate supervisor) provided Melgoza an organizational chart of the Cancer Center that omitted Melgoza's position. Id. ¶¶ 25, 35. In 2019 and through the termination of Melgoza's employment, Rush failed to produce a job description or salary grade for Melgoza's position as Director of the Cancer Center despite her excellent work performance. Id. ¶ 38. In November 2019, Ellis informed Melgoza that the Cancer Center had not budgeted her salary. Id. ¶ 39. On January 9, 2020, Ellis informed Melgoza again that her position at Rush was not budgeted and asked her to figure out where her position fit within the organization. Id. ¶ 40. Around this same time, Ellis removed Melgoza's access to Rush's budget systems, which interfered with Melgoza's ability to perform some of her work and complete Ellis' request to figure out where her position fit within the organization. Id. ¶ 41.

In October 2019, Melgoza submitted a written complaint to executives alleging that she experienced discrimination and retaliation in connection with Melgoza I. Id. ¶ 45. In November 2019, Melgoza complained that Ellis and Struck were excluding Melgoza from key business meetings and removing her access to accounting units, constituting acts of retaliation and discrimination. Id. ¶ 46. Even though Melgoza raised these concerns, in March 2020, Ellis removed Melgoza's access to key accounting units, preventing her from ordering key patient supplies, which was part of Melgoza's job responsibilities. Id. ¶ 47. From March 2020 through her termination on July 14, 2020, Melgoza belonged to Rush's COVID-19 Pandemic Mobilization Team. Id. ¶ 53.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ellis informed Melgoza that Rush would be laying off her direct report as part of a reduction in force due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Id. ¶ 55. At a July 10, 2020 Cancer Center Town Hall meeting among certain Rush employees, including Melgoza, Mia Levy, Medical Director of the Cancer Center, stated that the reduction in force in the Cancer Center positions at Rush were minimal. Id. ¶ 61. On July 14, 2020, at a virtual meeting, Ellis informed Melgoza that Rush was eliminating her position effective July 19, 2020 due to the company's restructuring of its management positions. Id. ¶ 63. Melgoza alleges that on July 14, 2020, “with over 13,000 employees, Rush selected Melgoza, the only Mexican-American woman in a leadership position over complex and profitable cancer departments, for employment termination.” Id. ¶ 64. During the July 14 meeting, Melgoza stated she believed the elimination of her role was retaliatory and that she had been selected because she had raised concerns about discrimination, retaliation, equal pay violations and harassment at Rush, including through filing Melgoza I and making formal complaints. Id. ¶ 65. Others who were not of Mexican-American national origin and who had not complained of discriminatory or retaliatory conduct by Rush continued to hold leadership positions in the Cancer Center after July 2020 and continue to be employed at Rush. Id. ¶¶ 67-69.

According to Melgoza, Rush used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to eliminate her position, when in fact Rush terminated her: (1) because of her national origin; (2) in retaliation against her for filing Melgoza I and/or failing to settle that lawsuit; and (3) in retaliation for raising complaints to Rush about its unlawful conduct. Id. ¶¶ 71-73. In November 2021, Melgoza applied for the position of Associate Vice President and Chief of Cancer at Rush. Id. ¶ 79. Rush has not contacted Melgoza about her application, though Melgoza says she is qualified for this position. Id. ¶¶ 79-80.

In this lawsuit (“Melgoza II”), Melgoza brings claims for: (1) national origin discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Count I); (2) violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Count II); (3) violation of the EPA (Count III); (4) national origin discrimination in violation of the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA) (Count IV); and (5) retaliation in violation of the IHRA (Count V).

II. Standard

“To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the complaint must provide enough factual information to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face and raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Haywood v. Massage Envy Franchising, LLC, 887 F.3d 329, 333 (7th Cir. 2018) (quoting Camasta v. Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc., 761 F.3d 732, 736 (7th Cir. 2014)); see also Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2) (requiring a complaint to contain a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief”). A court deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion “construe[s] the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, accept[s] all well-pleaded facts as true, and draw[s] all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor.” Lax, 20 F.4th at 1181. However, the court need not accept as true “statements of law or unsupported conclusory factual allegations.” Id. (quoting Bilek v. Fed. Ins. Co., 8 F.4th 581, 586 (7th Cir. 2021)). “While detailed factual allegations are not necessary to survive a motion to dismiss, [the standard] does require ‘more than mere labels and conclusions or a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action to be considered adequate.'” Sevugan v. Direct Energy Servs., LLC, 931 F.3d 610, 614 (7th Cir. 2019) (quoting Bell v. City of Chicago, 835 F.3d 736, 738 (7th Cir. 2016)). Dismissal for failure to state a claim is proper “when the allegations in a complaint, however true, could not raise a claim of entitlement to relief.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 558 (2007).

III. Analysis

A. Claim Splitting

The doctrine of claim splitting “prohibits a plaintiff from bringing a new case raising issues arising out of the same transaction or occurrence as an earlier case, when those issues could have been raised in the first litigation.” Rexing Quality Eggs v. Rembrandt Enters., Inc., 953 F.3d 998, 1002 (7th Cir. 2020). “Plaintiffs generally must bring all claims arising out of a common set of facts in a single lawsuit, and federal district courts have discretion to enforce that requirement as necessary ‘to avoid duplicative litigation.'” Elgin v. Dep't of Treasury, 567 U.S. 1, 34 (2012) (Alito, J., dissenting) (citation omitted)). “A suit is duplicative if the claims, parties, and available relief do not significantly differ between the two actions.” McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 694 F.3d 873, 889 (7th Cir. 2012) (cleaned up). “A dismissal on th[e] ground [of claim splitting] has been viewed as a matter of docket management, reviewed for abuse of discretion.” 18 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 4406 (3d ed.). See also CIVIX-DDI, LLC v. Expedia, Inc., 2005 WL 1126906, at *4 (N.D. Ill. May 2, 2005) (“Courts prohibit a litigant from splitting its claims into multiple actions when the litigant should have brought the claims in a single action.”). To determine whether to dismiss a suit based on claim splitting (a concept similar to the doctrine of claim preclusion), courts evaluate whether in the two suits there is (1) an identity of the parties and (2) an identity of the causes of action. See Scholz v. United States, 18 F.4th 941, 952 (7th Cir. 2021).

Because Melgoza does not dispute that her two lawsuits have identical parties,^[2]the dispute centers around whether there is an identity of the causes of action. Melgoza contends that “[t]he new claims in Melgoza II arise under a separate set of circumstances and involve different theories and additional Defendant executives.” (Dkt. 15 at 2).

Rush argues, and Melgoza does not dispute, that: (1) Melgoza I and II both assert claims under...