Ogbonna-McGruder v. Austin Peay State Univ.

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CHINYERE OGBONNA-MCGRUDER, Plaintiff, v. AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY et al., Defendants.

No. 3:21-cv-00506

United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, Nashville Division

May 19, 2023

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ELI RICHARDSON UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Pending before the Court is “Defendant Austin Peay's Motion to Dismiss” (Doc. No. 56, “Motion”), filed by Defendant Austin Peay State University (“APSU” or “Defendant”). Via the Motion, APSU requests pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure the dismissal of all claims asserted against it in Plaintiff's First Amended Complaint (Doc. No. 53), the currently operative complaint in this case. APSU filed a brief in support of the Motion (Doc. No. 56-1, “Brief in Support”), and Plaintiff filed a brief in opposition to the motion (Doc. No. 59, “Opposition”) whereafter APSU filed a reply in support of the Motion (Doc No. 61, “Reply”).

FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

In its Brief in Support, APSU provides a summary of the factual allegations from the First Amended Complaint that are relevant to this instant action as a whole.^[1] Comparing that summary to the First Amended Complaint, the Court is satisfied (and Plaintiff does not seem to dispute) that the summary is accurate in both in its overall tenor and in its individual components. Thus, the Court adopts and sets forth that summary below, although the Court has taken the liberty to tweak the summary in particular ways as noted in the accompanying footnote,^[2] primarily to clarify what allegations the Court is (and what the Court is not) accepting as true for purposes of the instant 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.

Plaintiff has been employed by APSU since 2003. (Doc. No. 53 ¶ 29.) Plaintiff was hired as a college professor, to teach classes in criminal justice and public management. (Id.) In Spring 2017, APSU faculty were advised by former Dean Denton that the-then Public Management/Criminal Justice Department would be split into two departments. (Id. at ¶ 31.) According to Plaintiff, faculty could request joint appointment, based on chair approval with the two newly created departments - Criminal Justice and Public Management/Political Science. (Id. at ¶ 32.) Faculty from the original Public Management/Criminal Justice Department were told that they could self-select which department they wanted to join. (Id. at ¶ 33.) The self-selection did not include a review of faculty qualifications. (Id.) Dean Denton rejected Plaintiff's request and chair approval for joint appointment and denied her the opportunity to self-select her department. (Id. at ¶ 34.) Dean Denton made the selection for Plaintiff. (Id. at ¶ 36.) Plaintiff claims that, as an African American, she was denied the opportunity to self-select her department. (Id. at ¶ 35.)

Plaintiff filed a formal complaint with APSU's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action in 2017, alleging that Dean Denton engaged in race discrimination. (Id. at ¶¶ 37, 40.) APSU responded to the complaint in Summer 2019. (Id. at ¶ 37.) Plaintiff claims that the individual actions of Brown from Summer 2019 through the present, and the individual actions of Lyle-Gonga from 2020, “began to perpetuate a hostile work environment resulting in retaliatory treatment of Plaintiff.” (Id. at ¶ 43.) Brown was Dean of the College of Behavioral and Health Sciences at APSU from 2019 through December 2021. (Id. at ¶ 4.) Lyle-Gonga, beginning January 1, 2020, was at all times relevant to the Complaint, Chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Management. (Id. at ¶ 5.)

In September 2019, Plaintiff filed a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) (See EEOC Charge No.: 494-2019-02950 Doc. No. 53-1) (Id. at ¶ 41.) Plaintiff's September 2019 EEOC Charge was closed to allow the parties to negotiate but reopened after the parties failed to reach an agreement. (Id. at ¶ 42.) On September 29, 2020, Plaintiff filed another charge of discrimination with the EEOC, which was assigned the same EEOC Charge number as the September 2019 Charge. (Id. at ¶ 9.) Plaintiff claimed that she was discriminated against based on her race and sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (See EEOC Charge No.: 494-2019-02950, Doc. No. 53-1.) Plaintiff filed a second charge of discrimination with the EEOC on or about June 17, 2021, alleging retaliation. (See EEOC Charge No.: 494-2021-01993, Doc. No. 53-2.)

As can be gleaned from the Complaint, Plaintiff's claims of race discrimination and the subsequent alleged retaliation and hostile work environment she suffered arise from the 2017 split in departments. (See generally, Doc. No. 53, ¶¶ 19, 31, 35-44.) Specifically, Plaintiff alleges:

Defendants' discriminatory practices include, but are not limited to: (1) creating or permitting a hostile work environment heavily charged with discrimination; (2) maintaining wages, job assignments and other conditions of employment that unlawfully operate to deny equal opportunity to Plaintiff because of her race; (3) creating a hostile, racially charged work environment such that no reasonable person would be expected to endure, and (4) retaliating against Plaintiff for opposing discriminatory conduct.

(Id. at ¶ 28.) As to Plaintiff's race discrimination claims, she states [that she,] “as a tenured African American was denied the opportunity to self-select her department of out the two newly created departments[.]” (Id. at ¶ 35.) She also claims that “in Spring 2020, [she] was scheduled to teach a particular class in the [F]all 2020 but a white adjunct professor replaced her.” (Id. at ¶ 71.) The Complaint further states that in October 2019, “Brown yelled at plaintiff in front of a white faculty member” (Id. at ¶ 89) and “[s]aid harassment and inappropriate verbal scolding in the presence of a white faculty member was offensive and caused Plaintiff great shame and embarrassment[.]” (Id. at ¶ 90.)

With respect to Plaintiff's hostile work environment allegations, she generally claims that APSU “failed to exercise reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any harassing, and/or offending behavior. The frequency of the discriminatory conduct, its severity, and pervasiveness are threatening and humiliating to Plaintiff and unreasonably interfered with Plaintiff's work performance. These actions adversely affected her emotional and/or psychological well-being. Such facts constitute a ‘hostile and/or abusive' work environment.” (Id. at ¶¶ 111-12.) Plaintiff further claims that since she is “an experienced and tenured African American professor, Defendants must find ‘cause' to terminate her employment.” (Id. at ¶ 24.) And in the absence of allegedly being able to find “cause”, [allegedly] “Defendants have intentionally created a hostile work environment in hopes it would cause her to resign[.]” (Id. at ¶¶ 25, 27, 62, 66, 74, 77, 90, 93, 104.)

Specifically, the actions by Dean Brown and/or Department Chair Lyle-Gonga which allegedly perpetuated a hostile work environment include requesting that she move her office (Id. at ¶¶ 45-46), exclusion from a grant proposal (Id. at ¶¶ 47-53), refusing to confer with Plaintiff about the creation of a master's program (Id. at ¶¶ 58-60, 99), refusal to act on Plaintiff's appeal based on the lack of a faculty appraisal (Id. at ¶¶ 61-63), denigrating Plaintiff's teaching and research done with minority students (Id. at ¶¶ 64-68), failure to timely receive clarification about a replacement class she would be teaching (Id. at ¶¶ 71-77), denied the ability to teach summer classes (Id. at ¶ 88), harassment and verbal scolding in the presence of a white faculty member (Id. at ¶¶ 89-90), failure to recognize Plaintiff's accomplishments in the conduct of her annual evaluations, and evaluations and appeals generally (Id. at ¶¶ 55, 78-80, 91-95), not assigning courses Plaintiff selected to teach (Id. at ¶¶ 81-87, 96-98), and criticism of her speech accent and thereby her natural origin. (Id. at ¶ 109).

Lastly, Plaintiff claims that, since the filing of her complaint with APSU in 2017, she has experienced retaliation by Defendants. (Id. at ¶ 23.) Plaintiff then states that by and through the actions of the Department Chair and Dean, APSU has engaged in retaliatory treatment of Plaintiff from Summer of 2019 through the present. (Id. at ¶ 43.) Such [alleged] retaliatory conduct . . . includes the following:

• In September 2019, Plaintiff was instructed by Brown to move from her office to a basement office as a form of retaliation after reporting and opposing previous racially charged discriminatory conduct. This was the second attempt in 2019 to transfer her to a basement office. (Id. at ¶¶ 45-46) (emphasis added) (hereinafter “the request to change offices”.)

• In October 2019, Plaintiff requested that she be included in a grant proposal for a new juvenile detention center in Tennessee. Plaintiff claims she was purposefully excluded from participation as evidenced in the final brochure. (Id. at ¶¶ 47-54) (hereinafter “the grant proposal”.)

• In March 2020, Plaintiff did not receive an annual evaluation per university policy for her performance in the 2019-2020 academic year under the pretext of Plaintiff not submitting all of the necessary documents. (Id. at ¶¶ 55-57) (hereinafter “the 2019-2020 evaluation”.)

• In January 2020, the professors within the political science and public management department voted unanimously for Plaintiff to move into phase two of the creation of the master's program. Plaintiff had previously submitted the initial phase one request on “curriculog” and it was approved. Brown and Department Chair [Lyle-] Gonga have deliberately refused to confer with Plaintiff about this matter. (Id. at ¶¶ 58-60) (hereinafter

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