Ogbonna-Mcgruder v. Austin Peay State Univ.

91 F.4th 833

Chinyere OGBONNA-MCGRUDER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY;Tucker Brown and Marsha Lyle-Gonga,in their individual capacities, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 23-5557

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit

Decided and Filed: January 30, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville. No. 3:21-cv-00506—Eli J. Richardson, District Judge.

ON BRIEF: James W. Edwards, CORLEY HENARD LYLE LEVY & LANGFORD, PLC, Hendersonville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Toni-Ann M. Dolan, Valerie M. Stoneback, E. Ashley Carter, OFFICE OF THE TENNESSEE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellees.

Before: GRIFFIN, BUSH, and READLER, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

JOHN K. BUSH, Circuit Judge.

Chinyere Ogbonna-McGruder sued her employer, Austin Peay State University (APSU), and two of her supervisors, alleging that they engaged in racial discrimination, created a hostile work environment, and retaliated against her when she opposed their unlawful conduct. She also claimed that her supervisors violated her constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court granted defendants' motions to dismiss all counts for failure to state a claim. For reasons that follow, we AFFIRM.

I.

Because this appeal arises from a motion to dismiss, we draw the facts from the allegations in the operative pleading, the First Amended Complaint. In 2003, APSU hired plaintiff Ogbonna-McGruder, who is African American, to teach classes in criminal justice and public management. Her problems with the university began in 2017, when it underwent a series of organizational changes. In the spring of that year, she learned that the public management and criminal justice department would be split: the criminal justice side would operate independently as a single department, and the public management side would merge with the political science department. Following the switch, she could either (1) select a single department to join, which did not require faculty approval; or (2) seek a joint appointment to both departments, which required faculty review of her qualifications.

Ogbonna-McGruder claims that she was unlawfully denied the opportunity to select her department after then-Dean David Denton rejected her request for joint appointment. She filed a complaint with APSU's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, alleging that Denton engaged in racial discrimination when he denied her request. According to Ogbonna-McGruder, APSU's internal investigation found that Denton's actions "were wrong," but the university took no action. First Amended Complaint (FAC), R. 53, PageID 455. Having found no remedy with the university, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in September 2019.

She claims that from summer 2019 through summer 2022, defendants "perpetuate[d] a hostile work environment" based on her race and in response to her filing the 2019 EEOC charge. Id., PageID 456. She alleges that the following incidents contributed to a hostile work environment:

• In September 2019, defendant Dr. Tucker Brown, Dean of the College of Behavioral and Health Sciences, instructed her "to move from [her] office to a basement office." Id.

• In October 2019, she was denied the opportunity to draft a grant proposal for a juvenile detention center in Tennessee. Brown had previously "assured [her] in writing" that she could participate, and a County Commissioner specifically requested that she join the drafting process. Id., PageID 456-57.

• On October 9, 2019, Brown yelled at her in front of a white faculty member.

• In March 2020, defendant Dr. Marsha Lyle-Gonga, Chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Management, refused to complete Ogbonna-McGruder's faculty evaluation for the 2019-2020 academic year. She appealed the failure to receive an evaluation, and Brown scheduled a Zoom call to address the issue. During the call, Brown "denigrated [her] teaching and research done with minority students" and "indicated that [her] teaching pedagogy was questionable," ignoring the high ratings she had received from her students. Id., PageID 457-59.

• She received a 4.45 out of 6.0 in her evaluation for the 2020-2021 academic year, but Lyle-Gonga lowered the evaluation score to 4.25. Lyle-Gonga reinstated the original score after Ogbonna-McGruder complained. Additionally, she received a low evaluation for the 2021-2022 year after Lyle-Gonga "purposefully misrepresented the criteria used" for evaluations. Id., PageID 462.

• Professors in the Department of Political Science and Public Management voted in favor of her proposal to create a master's program in January 2020, but Brown and Lyle-Gonga "deliberately refused to confer with [her] about [the] matter." Id., PageID 458.

• In spring 2020, she received word that a white adjunct professor was replacing her to teach a class during the fall 2020 semester. Although she repeatedly asked Lyle-Gonga and Brown for a replacement class, Brown did not notify her of a replacement until summer 2020.

• Lyle-Gonga denied Ogbonna-McGruder's request to teach political science classes in 2021 and 2022 and assigned her to teach public management courses instead. Lyle-Gonga reasoned that Ogbonna-McGruder "was not qualified to teach political science classes due to not having a political science or law degree," although she had taught political science courses at APSU for 18 years. Id., PageID 460-62.

• She was denied the opportunity to teach summer semester classes in 2019 and 2021.

• Her work was omitted from APSU's College of Behavioral & Health Sciences' year-end report of presentations and research completed by faculty members.

In September 2020, Ogbonna-McGruder filed her second EEOC complaint, asserting that APSU, Brown, and Lyle-Gonga discriminated against her because of her race. Her third EEOC complaint followed on June 17, 2021, alleging that APSU retaliated in response to her prior EEOC claims. Soon after she received right-to-sue letters for her second and third EEOC complaints, she filed this action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She thereafter amended her Complaint.

The First Amended Complaint does not specify which claims are brought under Title VII. But the district court discerned (and Ogbonna-McGruder does not dispute) that she alleges the following claims against the university under Title VII: that it (1) created a hostile work environment based on her race; (2) discriminated against her on the basis of her race; (3) unlawfully retaliated against her for opposing APSU's discriminatory practices; and (4) created a hostile work environment in retaliation for her opposing the discrimination. She also asserts claims against Brown and Lyle-Gonga in their individual capacities under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that they "engaged in conspiratorial behavior that has caused [her] to be deprived of rights to which she is entitled under laws of the United States, including but not limited to retaliation for having reported the violations of her rights." Id., PageID 463.

The district court granted Brown and Lyle-Gonga's motion to dismiss, explaining that Ogbonna-McGruder did not properly plead any claim under § 1983 because she made "absolutely no reference to any constitutional violation, or for that matter any violation of federal law other than Title VII." Order Granting Individual Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss, R. 84, PageID 875-90. The district court later granted APSU's motion to dismiss all remaining claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Ogbonna-McGruder timely appealed.

II.

We review the district court's dismissal of the First Amended Complaint de novo. West v. Ky. Horse Racing Comm'n, 972 F.3d 881, 886 (6th Cir. 2020). To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint "must contain sufficient factual matter . . . to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.' " Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007)). In determining whether a plaintiff has stated a plausible claim for relief, the court must accept any factual allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor. Fisher v. Perron, 30 F.4th 289, 294 (6th Cir. 2022). However, "the presumption of truth is inapplicable to legal conclusions." Id.

III.

A. Race-Based Hostile Work Environment Claim

Ogbonna-McGruder appeals the district court's dismissal of her claim that APSU created a hostile work environment on account of her race. Notably, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, a plaintiff is not required to plead facts establishing a prima facie case as is required under McDonnell Douglas v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). See Keys v. Humana, Inc., 684 F.3d 605, 608-09 (6th Cir. 2012) (explaining that "application of the McDonnell Douglas prima facie case at the pleading stage 'was contrary to the Federal Rules' structure of liberal pleading requirements' " (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955)). Instead, a plaintiff asserting a hostile work environment claim must allege that her "workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe and pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment." Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 116, 122 S.Ct. 2061, 153 L.Ed.2d 106 (2002) (cleaned up). Additionally, the plaintiff must allege that she is a member of a protected class and that "the harassment was based on race." Phillips v. UAW Int'l, 854 F.3d 323, 327 (6th Cir. 2017).

Here, the district court dismissed Ogbonna-McGruder's race-based hostile work environment claim because she did not allege that any harassment she experienced was "specifically due to [her] race." Dist. Ct. Op., R. 100, PageID 1278. Addition...