Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-04-07181/USCOURTS-caDC-04-07181-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 8, 2005 Decided November 15, 2005

No. 04-7181

ANGELA R. JONES,

APPELLANT

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, ET

AL., A/K/A DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF

CORRECTIONS,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 00cv02140)

John F. Karl, Jr. argued the cause for appellant. With him

on the briefs was Jonathan Halperin.

David A. Hyden, Assistant Attorney General, argued the

cause for appellees. With him on the brief were Robert J.

Spagnoletti, Attorney General for the District of Columbia, and

Edward E. Schwab, Deputy Attorney General.

Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge, and TATEL and BROWN,

Circuit Judges.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

BROWN, Circuit Judge: Appellant Angela R. Jones brought

this action against her employer, the District of Columbia

Department of Corrections (“Department”), and various

individuals, alleging sexual harassment, retaliation, and several

common law claims. The district court granted summary

judgment against Jones as to all causes of action and denied

Jones’s motion for leave to amend her complaint. We reverse

the judgment of the district court as to Jones’s sexual harassment

cause of action. We also reverse the order of the district court

denying Jones leave to amend her complaint.

I

In September 1997, Jones began work as a correctional

officer at the Department’s Occoquan prison facility. Sergeant

Darryl Ellison supervised one of the zones in which Jones

worked. Jones claims Ellison’s statements and conduct gave

rise to a hostile work environment and the Department retaliated

against her after she submitted harassment complaints against

Ellison. Jones’s allegations focus on three primary incidents.

First, in December 1997 or January 1998, Jones sought to

retrieve an umbrella she had left in a gymnasium at the prison

facility. Ellison allegedly went into the gym with Jones, shut the

door, and told Jones, “I want to kiss you.” He also allegedly

grabbed her, pulled her toward him, and held her face, telling

her she was “sexy” and commenting about her lips. Second, in

early 1998, Ellison allegedly called Jones into his office for a

work evaluation and told her he wanted to kiss her. He also

commented about her breasts and panty line. Third, in early

1998, Ellison allegedly approached Jones in the mess hall,

commented about Jones’s breasts and panty line, and brushed

himself up against Jones “[w]ith his whole body.” Jones also

alleges Ellison made several other inappropriate comments

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including bragging about his sexual prowess, publicizing his

desire to have sex with her, telling colleagues that she was gay,

threatening to give her a poor evaluation or to begin disciplinary

action against her, and calling her a “red bitch.” Jones further

alleges Ellison and several other male employees at the

Department had a bet as to which of them would be the first to

have sex with Jones.

Jones asserts that, after the gym incident, she reported

Ellison’s behavior to a Sergeant Armstrong, who said he would

talk to Ellison, but the harassment continued nonetheless. On

April 9, 1998, Jones filed an internal harassment complaint

against Ellison with senior-level officers at the Department.

Jones’s written complaint discussed only the gym incident in

specific detail. The warden immediately issued cease-and-desist

orders to both Jones and Ellison, instructing them to “avoid

unnecessary contact.” Department personnel then conducted an

investigation, taking recorded statements from fourteen

witnesses and issuing a thirty-one-page investigation report.

The report’s summary noted that several witnesses had denied

or contradicted Jones’s allegations and concluded there was

“insufficient evidence to support a finding of Probable Cause.”

Jones, however, alleges the investigation was perfunctory and

biased.

In support of her retaliation claim, Jones asserts that she

was transferred to the night shift “[a]lmost immediately” after

filing her internal harassment complaint. According to the

Department’s investigatory report, however, this shift change

applied to all probationary officers on Jones’s shift, and the

“shift change roster” was completed and approved seventeen

days before Jones’s harassment complaint. Also, Jones had

been informed she would have to work all three shifts during her

probationary period. In further support of her claim, Jones states

she asked, in August 1998, to return to the day shift, and though

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the Department eventually granted her request, it changed her

duty location and days off over the course of the subsequent six

weeks. Then, on October 15, 1998, the Department assigned

Jones to the “tower” and barred her from entering the main

prison institution. This new assignment came two-and-a-half

months after Jones filed a harassment complaint with the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). Jones asserts

she was initially assigned to Ellison’s zone in the tower. She

also states the tower was cold in the winter, hot in the summer,

“infested with bugs and had inadequate bathroom facilities.”

Colleagues told Jones she was being “punished.” She worked

in the tower for ten months, at which point the Occoquan prison

facility was closed. She concedes, however, that the tower

assignment was one of the three normal assignments for an

officer in Jones’s position and that she worked the day shift in

the tower, as she had requested. Jones further states that, on

December 19, 1998, when she asked to take time off after the

murder of her cousin, the Department sought verification of her

claim that her cousin had been murdered. As a result, she

became so emotionally upset that she did not attend the funeral.

Jones received a notice of right to sue on June 8, 2000, and

brought this action in the district court on September 6, 2000.

Her amended complaint alleges causes of action under Title VII

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.; the

District of Columbia Human Rights Act, D.C.CODE § 2-1401 et

seq. (2001); and the common law. After close of discovery, the

Department and the individual defendants moved for summary

judgment on all causes of action. Jones opposed the motion, in

part, and also moved to amend her complaint to include claims

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. On September 30, 2004, the trial court

denied leave to amend and granted summary judgment. Among

other things, the trial court found the Department had satisfied

the requirements of the Faragher-Ellerth defense to Jones’s

Title VII sexual harassment claim and Jones had failed to make

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a sufficient showing to defeat summary judgment on her

retaliation claim. Jones now appeals the trial court’s summary

judgment order with regard to her Title VII sexual harassment

and retaliation claims against the Department, along with the

trial court’s denial of her motion for leave to amend her

complaint.

II

In Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998), and

Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742 (1998), the

Supreme Court delineated the circumstances in which an

employer may be held vicariously liable for a supervisor’s

harassment of a subordinate. If the harassment takes the form

of a tangible employment action—that is, a “significant change

in employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote,

reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a

decision causing a significant change in benefits,” Ellerth, 524

U.S. at 761—then the supervisor has unquestionably exercised

authority on behalf of the employing enterprise in furtherance of

the harassment, and the employer is therefore liable. See id. at

760-62; Faragher, 524 U.S. at 790-91. Vicarious liability is less

certain, however, where the harassment does not result in a

change in status amounting to a tangible employment action. In

such cases, “a defending employer may raise an affirmative

defense to liability or damages, subject to proof by a

preponderance of the evidence. The defense comprises two

necessary elements: (a) that the employer exercised reasonable

care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing

behavior, and (b) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed

to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities

provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise.” Ellerth,

524 U.S. at 765; Faragher, 524 U.S. at 807 (citation omitted).

Here, Jones has not demonstrated a tangible employment

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action. Because the tangible employment action establishes the

requisite link between a supervisor’s injurious conduct in the

workplace and the employing enterprise, it must be an action

done by the supervisor whose conduct has generated the

employee’s claim. Ellerth, 524 U.S. at 760-63. Jones cites the

changes in her work schedule, her assignment to the tower, and

the Department’s efforts to verify the murder of her cousin, but

even assuming such actions constituted a “significant change in

[her] employment status,” id. at 761, Jones has presented no

evidence that Ellison was responsible for any of these actions.

Accordingly, we conclude that the Faragher-Ellerth defense is

available to the Department.

However, the Faragher-Ellerth defense is explicitly an

“affirmative defense” as to which the employer has the burden

of proof. Ellerth, 524 U.S. at 765; Faragher, 524 U.S. at 807.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(c) states: “In pleading to a

preceding pleading, a party shall set forth affirmatively . . . any

. . . matter constituting an . . . affirmative defense.” In Harris v.

Secretary, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, 126

F.3d 339 (D.C. Cir. 1997), we construed Rule 8(c) strictly:

In order to preserve the notice purpose of Rule 8(c) and the

discretionary structure of Rule 15(a), we hold that Rule 8(c)

means what it says: a party must first raise its affirmative

defenses in a responsive pleading before it can raise them

in a dispositive motion. . . .

There is no reason to fear that procedural formalism

will displace substantive justice here, because a party may

request, and the District Court shall freely give, leave to

amend the pleadings under Rule 15(a) when justice

requires.

Id. at 345.

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Here, the Department concedes that it failed to raise the

Faragher-Ellerth defense in its answer to the amended

complaint, and it presents this court with no argument as to why

our holding in Harris should not apply, arguing instead that

Jones suffered no prejudice from its failure to plead the defense.

However, in Harris, we were very clear that lack of prejudice is

not determinative: “On its face and on its logic, Rule 8(c)

requires that a party actually plead its affirmative defenses, not

that it plead them only in those cases where failure to plead

would result in prejudice to the opposing party.” Id. At oral

argument, counsel for the Department asserted Jones had

forfeited any objection to the Department’s failure to plead the

Faragher-Ellerth defense by not having raised this objection in

the district court, but the Department was equally dilatory for

waiting until oral argument to raise the forfeiture argument. If

the Department had raised the forfeiture argument in its brief on

appeal, Jones might have been able to show that her Rule 8(c)

objection was in fact raised in the district court, perhaps during

oral proceedings. Accordingly, we cannot credit the

Department’s belated argument that Jones forfeited this

objection. We conclude the district court erred in granting

summary judgment based on the Faragher-Ellerth defense in a

case in which the defense had not been raised in the pleadings.

As described in Harris, the Department may move to amend its

answer on remand. If the trial court permits the amendment,

then the Department may renew its motion for summary

judgment or attempt to prove the elements of its FaragherEllerth defense at trial.

III

The district court also granted summary judgment in favor

of the Department on Jones’s retaliation claim. In support of her

retaliation claim, Jones asserts that, after she complained of

sexual harassment, Ellison verbally harassed her and the

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Department changed her work shift, transferred her to the

assignment in the tower, and refused to allow her time off to

attend her cousin’s funeral. Having engaged in virtually no

discovery, however, Jones relies only on her own affidavit to

support these allegations.

Jones is not specific about the verbal harassment she

suffered after complaining of sexual harassment. She may be

referring to Ellison’s alleged reference to her as a “red bitch.”

The evidence on this point is conflicting. The Department’s

investigation report relates Jones’s statement that Ellison made

this comment shortly after Jones submitted her internal sexual

harassment complaint. However, Jones’s sworn response to

interrogatories places this incident in March 1998, a month

before she submitted her harassment complaint, and in her

deposition, Jones described hearing the comment immediately

before she submitted her harassment complaint. This conflict in

the evidence does not affect our conclusion, however. Even if

the comment came after Jones submitted her complaint, it was

an isolated insult that does not constitute the sort of adverse

action that can support a retaliation claim. See Faragher, 524

U.S. at 787-88; Cones v. Shalala, 199 F.3d 512, 521 (D.C. Cir.

2000); see also Washington v. Ill. Dep’t of Revenue, 420 F.3d

658, 661 (7th Cir. 2005) (stating that the adverse employment

action supporting a retaliation claim must be material).

Jones also claims retaliation based on the changes in her

work shift. She focuses in particular on her transfer from the

second shift to the third shift shortly after she submitted her

harassment complaint. However, the Department’s investigation

report indicates this transfer applied to all probationary officers

on the second shift, and the shift change roster was completed

and approved seventeen days before Jones submitted her

harassment complaint. Moreover, Jones had earlier been

informed she would have to work all three shifts during her

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probationary period. Jones does not contradict these assertions,

arguing only that the Department has not produced the shift

change roster. We find the Department’s showing on this point

sufficient to require Jones to present some evidence that she was

singled out for adverse treatment. As for other alleged shift

changes, Jones’s claim is not specific. Jones admitted in her

declaration that one of these shift changes was at her request;

she sought to return to the day shift in August 1998, and the

Department granted her request. Jones, however, complains the

Department changed her duty locations and days off over the

subsequent six weeks. Jones claims these unspecified changes

caused her some temporary inconvenience, but she gives us no

basis for concluding that these changes were retaliatory, rather

than merely a consequence of the Department’s effort to

accommodate her request to return to the day shift. Her

allegations in this regard are simply too vague to support her

retaliation claim.

Jones next argues her transfer to the tower was retaliatory,

coming as it did just two-and-a-half months after she filed her

complaint with the EEOC. A lateral transfer, without more,

does not constitute an adverse employment action sufficient to

establish a prima facie case of retaliation. As we have

previously explained:

The clear trend of authority . . . is to hold that a purely

lateral transfer, that is, a transfer that does not involve a

demotion in form or substance, cannot rise to the level of a

materially adverse employment action. A survey of the

relevant case law shows that the authority requiring a clear

showing of adversity in employee transfer decisions is both

wide and deep.

Brown v. Brody, 199 F.3d 446, 455-56 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (internal

quotation marks and citations omitted). Accordingly, we have

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held:

[A] plaintiff who is made to undertake . . . a lateral

transfer—that is, one in which she suffers no diminution in

pay or benefits—does not suffer an actionable injury unless

there are some other materially adverse consequences

affecting the terms, conditions, or privileges of her

employment or her future employment opportunities such

that a reasonable trier of fact could conclude that the

plaintiff has suffered objectively tangible harm. Mere

idiosyncracies of personal preference are not sufficient to

state an injury.

Id. at 457 (emphases added). In short, there are few

circumstances in which a mere lateral transfer can rise to the

level of an adverse employment action, and we have expressly

rejected a subjective test in this context. See, e.g., Stewart v.

Ashcroft, 352 F.3d 422 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (employee was passed

over for position as section chief); Freedman v. MCI

Telecomms. Corp., 255 F.3d 840 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (employee

was transferred from day shift to night shift, interfering with his

education).

Jones’s evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to her,

establishes several reasons the tower assignment was

undesirable. Though other assignments at the Occoquan facility

may have had their own idiosyncratic disadvantages, a jury

could reasonably infer from Jones’s evidence that the tower

assignment was generally less favorable than other assignments.

But that fact, if true, does not make the assignment an adverse

employment action. Jones readily concedes the tower was one

of the three possible assignments that might arise in the ordinary

course of her employment, and therefore there was no “material”

change in “the terms, conditions, or privileges of her

employment” when she was assigned to the tower. Brown, 199

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F.3d at 457. Neither a routine shift change nor a routine

reassignment that was part of a probationary employee’s

ordinary training can be deemed an adverse employment action.

Although it is conceivable that an employee might allege

specific facts demonstrating that a seemingly routine

reassignment was in fact retaliatory, Jones does not allege such

facts in the present case, and therefore we need not consider the

issue.

Jones argues the retaliatory nature of the tower assignment

is evident from the permanency of that assignment, which lasted

ten months and ended only after the District of Columbia closed

the prison facility. But we have no way of determining the

relevance of the duration of her tower assignment without

information about the typical duration of assignments for

probationary officers. Jones offers no evidence on this matter

nor even alleges she spent an unusually long time on tower duty

as compared to other officers, and as such, her retaliation claim

must fail. Moreover, even if the eventual duration of her tower

duty significantly exceeded the norm, it could only be

considered retaliatory at that point, if ever, because Jones does

not allege that the duration of the assignment was fixed at the

outset. Therefore, she cannot rely on the temporal proximity

between the initial assignment and the filing of her EEOC

complaint to establish a prima facie case of retaliatory motive.

See, e.g., Cones, 199 F.3d at 521; Mitchell v. Baldrige, 759 F.2d

80, 86 (D.C. Cir. 1985).

Finally, Jones argues the Department retaliated against her

when it made efforts to verify her claim that her cousin had been

murdered. However, Jones does not allege this procedure was

contrary to standard Department practice under the

circumstances, and in any case, we do not think it rises to the

level of an adverse employment action that can support a claim

of retaliation. Jones’s evidence does not indicate that the

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Department actually refused to give her time off, but only that

it sought verification. An effort to verify an employee’s

statements, without more, is not an adverse employment action.

Jones alleges she became so “stressed” as a result of the

Department’s actions that she was unable to attend her cousin’s

funeral, but her subjective response is not relevant. See Brown,

199 F.3d at 457; see also Fairbrother v. Morrison, 412 F.3d 39,

56 (2d Cir. 2005).

In conclusion, we are not persuaded the district court erred

in granting summary judgment on Jones’s retaliation claim.

IV

The district court denied Jones’s motion for leave to amend

her complaint. Doing so without stating reasons was an abuse

of discretion. See Firestone v. Firestone, 76 F.3d 1205, 1209

(D.C. Cir. 1996). Accordingly, the district court should

reconsider the motion on remand.

V

We affirm the judgment of the district court except as to

Jones’s cause of action against the Department for sexual

harassment in violation of Title VII. As to that cause of action,

we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the

case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. We

also reverse the district court’s order denying Jones’s motion for

leave to amend her complaint.

So ordered.

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