Soto-Caro v. Velez-Lorenzo

SOTO-CARO, Plaintiff, v. VELEZ-LORENZO, et al., Defendants.

Civil No. 14-1100 (SEC)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

December 22, 2015

OPINION & ORDER

Before the Court is a motion to dismiss filed by codefendants Alberto González, Héctor Morales, and James Tuller Cintrón, to which Defendant Eusebio Vélez joined with leave from the Court. See Docket ## 60, 62. Plaintiff timely filed her opposition. Docket # 63. For the reasons that follow, this motion is GRANTED in part.

I. Background

Plaintiff Jeanette Soto Caro (Plaintiff) is a single mother and works as a police officer in the Police Department for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (PRPD). Plaintiff brings this suit alleging that she suffered discrimination and retaliation on account of her gender by her supervisors in the Police Department.

According to the Amended Complaint (the "Complaint"), Plaintiff's ordeal started on August 26, 2011, when her supervisor Lieutenant Eusebio Vélez (Vélez) allegedly began harassing Soto for "always" being late for work. See Docket # 51 at ¶ 10. Plaintiff countered that she was never late, but instead explained that on some occasions, she arrived just as her shift started because she had to drop off her two children with her mother. In response, Vélez began swearing and yelling, and told Plaintiff that "if she wanted to be a mother and had two daughters she should not have joined the Puerto Rico Police Department." Id. at ¶ 11-13. To add insult to injury, Vélez assigned Plaintiff to rotating shifts. That is, instead of a fixed schedule, Plaintiff's shifts would start at 4 a.m., 12 p.m. or 8 p.m. Id. at ¶ 12. This "gravely complicated" Plaintiff's parental responsibilities toward her two daughters.

In response, Plaintiff lodged an administrative grievance against Vélez with Captain Héctor Morales (Morales), who was the PRPD's Zone Director, and Colonel Alberto González. Id. at ¶ 14. The Complaint does not specify when this grievance was filed. In any event, sometime after Plaintiff complained to Morales and González, Vélez assigned Plaintiff to so-called "reinforce activities." From what the Court can discern, Vélez apparently assigned Plaintiff to patrol the streets of several towns during their annual events or activities. According to Plaintiff, this assignment is considered a "punishment" by police officers. Id. at ¶ 15.

More than a year after the incident with Vélez, on December 27, 2012, Plaintiff met with Morales and González to address her grievances. In that meeting, Morales allegedly admitted that what Vélez did "was wrong," but stated that "nothing could be done because he had to support his fellow officers." Id. at ¶ 16. Further, in response to Plaintiff's request to be removed from the midday work shift, Morales and González admitted that her request "was reasonable and [...] could be granted." Nevertheless, Morales and González did not act accordingly. They did not alter her rotating shifts, they did not remove her from "reinforce" duties. In addition, Morales ordered Plaintiff to relinquish her firearm. All of this was done because, once Plaintiff's complaint was referred to the Superintendent, Morales and González would have to "wait for his instructions." Id. at ¶ 18. Plaintiff's plight ended when Captain Charles Medina took over as the new District Director, and assigned Plaintiff to a fixed work schedule.

Given Defendants' stonewalling, Plaintiff filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in June 2012. Almost a year later, on May 29, 2013, the EEOC issued its ruling, finding that "there were reasons to believe that the violation charged by Plaintiff had occurred." Id. at ¶ 24. Months later, the Puerto Rico Police Department issued a document entitled "Conciliation Agreement" in which it informed that it had terminated Vélez from employment. The Police Department's decision to terminate Vélez was based, at least in part, on the result of the EEOC investigation. Id. at ¶ 25.

II. Standard of Review

Review of pleadings under Rule 12(b)(6) entails a two-step process. The court must first "isolate and ignore statements in the complaint that simply offer legal labels and conclusions or merely rehash cause-of-action elements...[,][and then] take the complaint's well-pled (i.e., non-conclusory, non-speculative) facts as true, drawing all reasonable inferences in the pleader's favor, and see if they plausibly narrate a claim for relief." Schatz v. Republican State Leadership Comm., 669 F.3d 50, 55 (1st Cir. 2012) (citing Ocasio-Hernández v. Fortuño-Burset, 640 F.3d 1, 7, 11-13 (1st Cir. 2011)). "Non-conclusory factual allegations in the complaint must then be treated as true, even if seemingly incredible." Ocasio-Hernandez v. Fortuno-Burset, 640 F.3d 1, 12 (1st Cir. 2011).

III. Analysis

As a threshold matter, the Court notes that Plaintiff has either waived or consented to dismiss the following claims: 1) all § 1983 claims based on the 4^th and 5^th Amendments to the Constitution; 2) the 14^th Amendment Due Process Claim; 3) her Title VII claims against the defendants in their individual capacity; 4) all state-law claims against the Commonwealth due to Eleventh Amendment immunity; 5) all claims brought under Article 1802 of the Puerto Rico Civil Code. Docket # 63. They shall be dismissed accordingly.

Pending adjudication are Plaintiff's Title VII claims for discrimination and retaliation against defendants in their official capacity as officers of the PRPD, and her cause of action under the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. For the reasons that follow, the Court finds that while Plaintiff's Title VII claims survive, her Equal Protection claim fails as a matter of law.

A. Title VII

Plaintiff's Title VII claim against Defendants in their official capacities may be broken down as follows. The first is based on Vélez's comments relating to Plaintiff's status as a mother and police officer, and regarding his subsequent change to Plaintiff's work schedule. In addition, Plaintiff pleads that González and Morales also discriminated against her because, while they acknowledged that what Vélez had done was "wrong," they did nothing to fix or correct the problem. In other words, that they explicitly sanctioned Vélez's conduct. In turn, the second prong of Plaintiff's Title VII claim is based on retaliation. Plaintiff claims that Vélez retaliated against her by sending her to "reinforce activities," which is allegedly seen by PRPD officers "as a punishment." Likewise, Plaintiff claims Morales and González retaliated against her by siding with Velez and by removing her firearm.

Because official-capacity claims are merely "another way of pleading an action against an entity of which an officer is an agent," Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 690, n. 55 (1978), the claims outlined above are actually claims against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, in their motion to dismiss, Defendants only move to dismiss Plaintiff's retaliation claims against Morales and González. In doing so, they leave untouched Plaintiff's claims for direct discrimination against all Defendants in their official capacities, as well as Plaintiff's retaliation claim against Vélez. Because each of these instances may serve as an independent basis of liability against the Commonwealth, these unaddressed claims survive the pleading stage.

Defendants argue that Plaintiff's retaliation claim against Morales and González should be dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. In support of this argument, Defendants point to the original Charge of Discrimination submitted by Plaintiff to the EEOC on June 29, 2012. See Docket No. 39-1. One of the information boxes in the Charge instructed Plaintiff to specify the "Employer ... or Government Agency" that she believed had discriminated against her. In that box, Plaintiff named the PRPD. Another section asked Plaintiff to check off boxes based on the type of discrimination she believed she had suffered. While Plaintiff placed a checkmark on the box labeled "sex," she left the "retaliation" box blank. Further down in the comments section, Plaintiff explained that she filed the discrimination charge because the PRPD had failed to address the internal complaint for gender discrimination she had filed against Vélez.

Against this background, Defendants argue that Plaintiff is precluded from bringing any claim for retaliation, as she failed to exhaust her administrative remedies pertaining to any such claim. This argument is a nonstarter.

In order to sustain a claim for Title VII retaliation, a plaintiff must adequately plead that (1) she engaged in protected conduct under Title VII; (2) she suffered an adverse employment action; and (3) the adverse action was causally connected to the protected activity. Dressler v. Daniel, 315 F.3d 75, 78 (1st Cir. 2003). According to the First Circuit, "retaliation claims are preserved so long as the retaliation is reasonably related to and grows out of the discrimination complained of to the agency." Clockedile v. New Hampshire Dept. of Corrections, 245 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2001). This makes sense, as a claim for retaliation necessarily accrues after the person seeks administrative relief. And that is precisely what happened here. Plaintiff filed her EEOC charge in June 2012. Half a year later, Plaintiff met with Morales and Gonzales, where they ratified Vélez's conduct and refused to provide Plaintiff with relief - which was exactly the basis of Plaintiff's Charge before the EEOC. As a result, Plaintiff need not have exhausted her retaliation claim prior to bringing it before this Court.

As mentioned before, however, Plaintiff also claimed that Morales had retaliated against her by removing her firearm, and that Velez had done the same by assigning her to the "reinforce" duties. But the complaint does not specify when either of these events occurred. With...