Bradley v. Arwood et al

Filing 22

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION [#16]. Signed by District Judge Gershwin A. Drain. (Bankston, T)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
SONYA BRADLEY,
Plaintiff,

v.

Case No. 14-cv-12303
Honorable Gershwin A. Drain

STEVE ARWOOD, et al.,
Defendants.
/
ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION
FOR RECONSIDERATION [#16]
I. INTRODUCTION
Plaintiff commenced this action on June 12, 2014, alleging that Defendants violated the
Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. § 1983; Title VII of the Civil rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C.
§§ 2000e et seq.;1 the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, U.S. CONST. amend.
I; the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, U.S. CONST. amend. XIV; the
Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA) of 1976, MCL 37.2101 et seq.; and the Equal
Pay Act of 1963, 28 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq.
On October 20, 2014 this Court dismissed all but two of Plaintiff’s claims: Counts VI and
XI of Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint alleging the creation of a hostile work environment by
Defendants Susan Przekop-Shaw (“Przekop-Shaw”) and Peter Kotula (“Kotula”). See Bradley v.
Arwood, No. 14-cv-12303, 2014 WL 5350833 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 20, 2014). Presently before the
Court is Defendants’ Motion for Reconsideration with respect to the two remaining Counts. See

1

Though Plaintiff stated she was bringing claims pursuant to Title VII, none of Plaintiffs Counts in the amended
complaint allege that Defendants violated Title VII. See generally Dkt. No. 8.

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Dkt. No. 16. Plaintiff filed a Response to the Motion for Reconsideration on December 10, 2014.
See Dkt. No. 20. The Court has had an opportunity to thoroughly examine this matter. For the
following reasons, the Court will DENY Defendants’ Motion for Reconsideration.
II. BACKGROUND
In this Court’s October 20, 2014 Opinion and Order, the Court dismissed Plaintiffs
Section 1983 Discrimination and Retaliation claims finding that Plaintiff failed to demonstrate
that the actions by Defendants were racially premised. See Bradley, 2014 WL 5350833, at *8.
However, with respect to Plaintiff’s claims for a hostile work environment, the Court found that
“given the totality of the circumstances,” the “facts presented by Plaintiff show more than
‘belittling statements,’ and appear to be extensive and pervasive enough to survive Defendant’s
Motion to Dismiss.” Id. at *16.
The Court emphasized that it must take Plaintiff’s factual allegations in the Complaint as
true. The Court found that, standing alone, the alleged actions of the Defendant would not
constitute an adverse employment action. However, given the totality of the circumstances the
Court found that it was “presented with a series of events [that] . . . could make up a work
environment [] ‘permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is
sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an
abusive working environment.’” Id. at *17 (quoting Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17,
21, 114 S.Ct. 367, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993)).

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III. LAW & ANALYSIS
A. Standard of Review
Motions for Reconsideration are governed by Local Rule 7.1(g)(3) of the Local Rules of
the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, which provides:
[M]otions for rehearing or reconsideration which merely present the same issues
ruled upon by the court, either expressly or by reasonable implication, shall not be
granted. The movant shall not only demonstrate a palpable defect by which the
court and the parties have been misled but also show that a different disposition of
the case must result from a correction thereof.
E.D. Mich. L.R. 7.1(g)(3). “A ‘palpable defect’ is ‘a defect that is obvious, clear, unmistakable,
manifest, or plain.’” United States v. Lockett, 328 F. Supp. 2d 682, 684 (E.D. Mich. 2004)
(quoting United States v. Cican, 156 F. Supp. 2d 661, 668 (E.D. Mich. 2001)).
B. Legal Analysis
Defendants contend that this Court “made a fundamental error of law in failing to dismiss
[Plaintiff’s] claims because they amounted to no more than conclusory allegations—none of
which were based on race or gender.” Dkt. No. 16 at 2. Specifically, Defendants argue that this
Court did not properly evaluate the third requirement for establishing a prima facie case for
establishing a hostile work environment. The Court disagrees.
Defendants correctly note that to establish a claim for a hostile work environment, the
third factor requires that the plaintiff demonstrate the alleged harassment be based on the
plaintiff’s status as a member of a protected class. See Dkt. No. 16 at 8 (citing Fenton v. HiSAN,
Inc., 174 F.3d 827, 823-830 (6th Cir. 1999)). However, Defendants assertion is incomplete
because they only contend that “this element requires that Plaintiff plead facts showing the
Defendants’ intended and were motivated to harass the Plaintiff on the basis of her race or
gender.” Id.

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In order to satisfy the third requirement for a prima facie case of a hostile work
environment prima, the Sixth Circuit has stated that a “plaintiff must show that the harassment
was overtly racial or sexual in nature, or must establish that ‘but for the fact of her sex [or race],
she would not have been the object of the harassment.’” Pusey v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 393
F. App'x 366, 369 (6th Cir. 2010) (quoting Gallagher v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., 567
F.3d 263, 271 (6th Cir.2009)) (brackets in original and internal citations omitted).
Thus, while Plaintiff may establish a prima facie case by showing Defendants intended
and were motivated to harass Plaintiff on the basis of her race or gender, Plaintiff may also argue
that but for the fact of her sex or race, she would not have been the object of the harassment.
According to the Sixth Circuit, the latter approach can be accomplished by providing “evidence
that similarly situated individuals of a different race or sex were not subject to harassment.”
Pusey, 393 F. App'x at 369 (citing Clay v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 501 F.3d 695, 706 (6th Cir.
2007)).
The fact that this Court found Defendants’ conduct was not explicitly race based does not
automatically foreclose Plaintiff’s claim for a hostile work environment. See Clay, 501 F.3d at
706 (“Conduct that is not explicitly race-based may be illegally race-based and properly
considered in a hostile-work-environment analysis when it can be shown that but for the
employee's race, she would not have been the object of harassment.”); see also Paasewe v.
Action Grp., Inc., 530 F. App'x 412, 416 (6th Cir. 2013) (noting at the summary judgment stage
that “[b]ased on the totality of the[] alleged incidents, a reasonable jury could draw the inference
that discriminatory animus extended to upper management. Although there is evidence that
points to a different conclusion, it is the jury's role, not ours, to weigh conflicting evidence.”).

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In fact, the Sixth Circuit reversed a district court that granted summary judgment in a
case where the Plaintiff put forth evidence showing she “was criticized for conduct for which her
white co-workers were not,” and “set forth specific conduct for which [she] was berated and for
which her white co-workers were not[.]” Clay, 501 F.3d at 706; see also id. (noting that the
Plaintiffs claim in the case was “based on the theory that the facially neutral conduct of her
supervisor towards her was, in fact, based on her race.”).
Though not pleaded in the most artful manner, Plaintiff has put forth claims that she was
treated differently than her white counterparts. See, e.g., Dkt. No. 8 at ¶ 52 (alleging that Plaintiff
was “assigned to an additional attorney while [her] Caucasian colleague had flexibility[.]”); id. at
¶¶ 97, 98 (alleging that the new office intern was instructed not to take instruction from Plaintiff
and not to take a break with Plaintiff); see also, e.g., id. at ¶¶ 35, 39(c), 39(d), 44, 47, 100.
Additionally, Plaintiff set forth a claim where she was singled out in front of Defendants
and told to put on her “big girl panties” as a result of her complaints. See Dkt. No. 8 at ¶ 88(e).
Cf. Paasewe, 530 F. App'x at 416 (“Plaintiff also alleged that the human resource director
singled him out for a false sexual harassment claim and questioned him about his true
identity[.]”). Following her complaints, Plaintiff asserts that she was subjected to repeated
admonishment, formal counseling, threats, berating, and belittling, false claims of being absent
from her work area, unjustified low performance evaluations, and other actions.
In Clay, the Sixth Circuit emphasized that “[g]iven that [the plaintiff] was the only black
employee in her work area and that she alleges that [the defendant] disciplined her for things for
which he did not discipline her co-workers, [the plaintiff] created an inference, sufficient to
survive summary judgment, that race was the motivating reason behind [the defendant’s]
behavior.” 501 F.3d at 707.

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Here, Plaintiff is also purportedly the only black legal supervisor secretary, and alleges
that she was unfairly singled out and subject to treatment that her white counterparts did not
endure. This Court is not at the summary judgment stage. Instead, the Court is only considering
Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. In so doing, the court must construe the complaint in favor of
the Plaintiff, accept the allegations of the complaint as true, and determine whether plaintiff’s
factual allegations present plausible claims. For the reasons discussed, the Court reiterates its
conclusion that Plaintiff has presented adequate material facts to sufficiently allege that she was
subjected to a hostile work environment.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons discussed herein, the Court will DENY Defendants’ Motion for
Reconsideration.
SO ORDERED.
Dated: December 24, 2014
/s/Gershwin A Drain
Hon. Gershwin A. Drain
United States District Court Judge

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