Conway et al v. Chicago Housing Authority et al

Filing 6

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 10/17/2011:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
TIFFANY CONWAY, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY,
et al.,
Defendants.

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No.

11 C 7257

MEMORANDUM ORDER
Tiffany Conway (“Conway”), Joshua Bardney (“Bardney”) and
Paris Miller (“Miller”) have joined in a self-prepared Complaint
against Chicago Housing Authority (“CHA”) and a number of
contractors in the building trades, charging employment
discrimination under Title VII (each plaintiff is AfricanAmerican), 42 U.S.C. §1981 (“Section 1981”) and the Housing and
Urban Development Act’s §3 (“Section 3,” 12 U.S.C. §1701u).
According to the Complaint, each of the three suffered
discriminatory adverse employment actions when working for a
different subcontractor of codefendant Walsh Construction Company
(“Walsh”).
There is some question whether the three plaintiffs qualify
for permissive joinder under Fed. R. Civ. P. (“Rule”) 20(a)(1),
but for the present it will be assumed arguendo that they may.
This sua sponte memorandum order is triggered instead by some
other threshold questions.
For one thing, there has been no payment of the $350 filing

fee, even though Conway alone has submitted an In Forma Pauperis
Application (“Application”).

Although Conway’s Application would

suffice for in forma pauperis treatment if this were solely her
lawsuit, in the present posture of affairs the action cannot go
forward now.1
Next, Bardney’s Title VII claim appears to come too late,
for Complaint ¶12 shows that he most likely received his rightto-sue letter more than 90 days before the lawsuit was tendered.
And as for Miller, the Complaint is totally silent as to his
invocation of Title VII’s administrative procedures, so that he
may not claim under that law at all.
There may well be other problems that might be raised by one
or more of the named defendants if the action were to proceed,
but this Court has sought only to address some obvious threshold
issues.

Accordingly no action will be taken at this time.

But

if the filing fee problem is not cured on or before October 27,
2011, this Court would be constrained to dismiss both the
Complaint and this action.
________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

October 17, 2011

1

This memorandum order will not dismiss the Complaint and
this action at this time, because even though such dismissal
would nominally be without prejudice, the need to file a new
lawsuit would render Conway’s Title VII untimely because more
than 90 days will have elapsed since Conway’s receipt of EEOC’s
right-to-sue letter (see Complaint ¶11).
2