[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-10042

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

ODEIU JOY POWERS, 

BP (MINOR CHILD), 

PP (MINOR CHILD), 

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

versus

U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY, 

ACTING SECRETARY KEVIN MCALEENAN, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, 

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-10042

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 0:19-cv-62967-AHS

____________________

Before GRANT, LAGOA, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Odeiu Joy Powers, proceeding pro se, and her minor children, proceeding separately through counsel, appeal the district 

court’s orders denying their motion for default judgment and 

granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss their amended complaint alleging employment discrimination and retaliation. We 

conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to enter a default judgment after two years of litigation or 

in granting the motion to dismiss after the plaintiffs refused to respond to the motion as required by the district court’s order and 

local rules. We therefore affirm.

I.

In February 2019, Powers filed a complaint in the Northern 

District of Georgia against the Department of Homeland Security

and its Secretary alleging harassment, discrimination, and retaliation based on race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. 

The defendants filed a motion to dismiss for improper venue. The 

district court denied the motion and transferred the case to the 

Southern District of Florida. 

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22-10042 Opinion of the Court 3

In the transferee court, the defendants filed an answer to 

Powers’s complaint, denying liability and asserting various defenses. After a complicated procedural course that included Powers’s interlocutory appeal from an order denying her motion for 

injunctive relief (which we summarily affirmed) and her appeal 

from an order granting judgment on the pleadings (which we vacated and remanded), the district court granted Powers leave to file 

an amended complaint and directed her to do so within 21 days. 

Twenty-two days later, Powers filed an amended complaint against 

the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor.

The defendants responded by moving to dismiss the 

amended complaint, and Powers moved to amend her pleading a 

second time. The district court granted Powers’s motion to amend 

and instructed the defendants to respond to the second amended 

complaint within 14 days “after its filing.” 

Powers filed a second amended complaint on August 6, 

2021, and it was entered on the docket three days later. The second 

amended complaint joined Powers’s minor children, B.P. and P.P., 

as plaintiffs with respect to one claim and named the Secretary of 

the Department of Homeland Security and the Secretary of the Department of Labor as defendants. In total, the second amended 

complaint alleged 14 claims under state and federal law, all arising 

from Powers’s nine-month period of employment as an auditor for 

the Department of Homeland Security. On August 23, 2021—14 

days after the second amended complaint was docketed, and 17 

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days after it was filed—the defendants moved to dismiss the second 

amended complaint.

The same day, Powers filed a motion for default judgment 

against the defendants on the ground that their motion to dismiss 

was filed after the response deadline set by the court. The district 

court denied the motion, explaining that default judgment was not 

appropriate where the defendants had appeared and defended the 

case for more than two years, and where the motion to dismiss, 

though untimely, was filed within a few days after the deadline

with no prejudice to the plaintiffs. The district court stated its intention to decide the case on the merits and directed the plaintiffs

to respond to the motion to dismiss.

Instead of responding as directed, Powers filed a notice of 

appeal from the denial of the motion for default judgment and 

moved for a stay of the district court proceedings until the appeal

was resolved. The district court granted the motion for a stay. 

Eventually, this Court dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. 

The district court then lifted its stay and ordered the plaintiffs to 

respond to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the second amended 

complaint by December 3, 2021. Again, the plaintiffs failed to respond by the court’s deadline.

On December 7, 2021, Powers filed a document titled 

“Acknowledgement of Order,” in which she acknowledged the district court’s order instructing the plaintiffs to respond to the defendants’ motion to dismiss but declined (on behalf of herself and 

her two minor children) to comply. Powers asserted that 

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responding to the motion to dismiss “would be prejudicial against 

our case” because it would be inconsistent with the plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration of this Court’s dismissal of her appeal and 

would “establish the legitimacy of Defense’s late-filed response.”

The district court dismissed the second amended complaint 

without prejudice for two alternative reasons. First, it concluded 

that dismissal was appropriate for the plaintiffs’ willful failure to 

comply with a court order. Second, it determined that the defendants’ motion to dismiss should be granted by default under the local rules of court. Powers and her children now appeal the denial 

of the motion for default judgment and the dismissal of the second 

amended complaint.

II.

We review a district court’s orders denying a motion for default judgment for abuse of discretion. Surtain v. Hamlin Terrace 

Found., 789 F.3d 1239, 1244 (11th Cir. 2015). We also review a district court’s enforcement of its orders or its local rules for abuse of 

discretion, and we give “great deference” to the court’s interpretation of its local rules. Foudy v. Indian River Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., 845 

F.3d 1117, 1122 (11th Cir. 2017); Reesev. Herbert, 527 F.3d 1253, 1267 

n.22 (11th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted).

A.

Powers argues that the district court should have granted 

the motion for default judgment because the defendants failed to 

respond to the second amended complaint within the deadline set 

by the court, failed to request an extension of time to respond, and 

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failed to provide any excuse for missing the response deadline. She 

argues that the district court lacked the discretion to deny the motion for default judgment under these circumstances. 

We disagree. A district court may enter a default judgment 

when a party “has failed to plead or otherwise defend,” but it also 

has the discretion to deny a motion for default judgment. Mitchell 

v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 294 F.3d 1309, 1316–17 (11th 

Cir. 2002); see Fed. R. Civ. P. 55(a)–(b). “A district court abuses its 

discretion if it applies an incorrect legal standard, applies the law in 

an unreasonable or incorrect manner, follows improper procedures in making a determination, or makes findings of fact that are 

clearly erroneous.” Surtain, 789 F.3d at 1244 (citation omitted). 

The district court made none of those errors here. We have 

previously explained that a district court acts within its discretion 

in denying a motion for default judgment where the defendant 

made an appearance in the case before the motion was filed and 

filed a motion to dismiss “a short time after the deadline” for filing 

the responsive pleading, with no prejudice to the plaintiffs. Mitchell, 294 F.3d at 1317. The defendants here filed their motion to dismiss within three days—one business day—after the deadline, and 

the plaintiffs have not shown that they were prejudiced in any way 

by the short delay. And before Powers filed the motion for default 

judgment, the defendants had diligently responded to Powers’s 

prior complaints, motions, and appeals spanning more than two 

years of litigation. Under the circumstances, the district court did 

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not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for default judgment. 

B.

All three plaintiffs challenge the district court’s dismissal of 

the second amended complaint. Primarily, the plaintiffs argue that 

the motion to dismiss was invalid because it was untimely, and that 

the district court lacked the discretion to accept the untimely filing 

absent a motion by the defendants and a showing of excusable neglect. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b). The minor children add that in light 

of Powers’s pro se status, the district court should have construed 

the “acknowledgement” she filed as a response to the motion to 

dismiss.

Again, we disagree. We have already explained that the district court acted within its discretion in denying the motion for default judgment. The discretion to deny a motion for default judgment necessarily carries with it the discretion to accept the untimely responsive pleading. Cf. Mitchell, 294 F.3d at 1316–17; Wahl 

v. McIver, 773 F.2d 1169, 1174 (11th Cir. 1985). Moreover, contrary 

to plaintiffs’ arguments, the defendants’ motion was untimely only 

under the deadline set by the district court—the motion was filed 

within the time provided by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.1 

1 Though her pleading did not include the required certificate of service, Powers claimed to have served the defendants with the second amended complaint 

by mail on August 4, 2021. Under Rules 15(a)(3) and 6(d), the response deadline would have been August 21, 2021 (14 days from service plus 3 days’ mail 

time). But because that day was a Saturday, the deadline would have been

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Because the district court’s acceptance of the late-filed motion to 

dismiss was a natural corollary to its denial of the motion for default and was not prohibited by any statute or rule, the decision was 

within the court’s inherent authority to manage its docket. See 

Dietz v. Bouldin, 579 U.S. 40, 45–46 (2016) (district courts possess 

inherent authority to “manage their own affairs so as to achieve the 

orderly and expeditious disposition of cases,” so long as the exercise 

of that authority is a “reasonable response” to the issue before the 

court and is not “contrary to any express grant of or limitation on 

the district court’s power contained in a rule or statute” (citations 

omitted)). Indeed, the district court exercised that authority in 

Powers’s favor when it accepted her late-filed first amended complaint, and the court implied that it would have considered accepting a late-filed response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss.

But the plaintiffs’ “acknowledgement” of the court’s order 

to respond to the motion to dismiss was not simply a late-filed response—and the court could not have construed it as one in the 

name of reading pro se filings liberally. The leniency traditionally 

accorded to pro se litigants “does not give a court license to serve 

as de facto counsel for a party, or to rewrite an otherwise deficient 

pleading in order to sustain an action.” Campbell v. Air Jamaica Ltd., 

760 F.3d 1165, 1168–69 (11th Cir. 2014) (citation omitted). To construe the plaintiffs’ “acknowledgement” as a response to the motion to dismiss, the district court would have had to ignore their 

extended to Monday, August 23, 2021—the day the defendants filed their motion—under Rule 6(a)(1)(C). 

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clear and explicit statements refusing to respond to the motion to 

dismiss or to address its merits.

Instead, the plaintiffs chose to rest on their assertion that the 

district court should not have accepted the motion to dismiss because of its late filing. Thus, the district court had before it a motion to dismiss, which it had accepted and ordered the plaintiffs to 

answer, and a filing in which the plaintiffs expressly stated that they 

would not respond to the motion to dismiss. The district court’s 

local rules warn that the failure to respond in opposition to another 

party’s motion “may be deemed sufficient cause for granting the 

motion by default.” S.D. Fla. L. R. 7.1(c)(1). The district court instructed Powers early in the litigation that she must comply with 

the local rules or face sanctions, and Local Rule 7.1 expressly 

warned her that the failure to respond to a motion could result in 

the court granting the motion. We cannot say that the district 

court abused its discretion in enforcing this rule against the plaintiffs in the face of their outright refusal to comply with the court’s 

order to respond to the motion to dismiss.

III.

The district court’s denial of the plaintiffs’ motion for default 

judgment is consistent with the strong preference in this Circuit for 

deciding cases on their merits rather than by default, and its decision was not an abuse of discretion. See Surtain, 789 F.3d at 1244–

45. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs refused to proceed with the litigation by responding to the defendants’ motion to dismiss, even after 

the district court ordered them to do so. Faced with the plaintiffs’ 

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explicit refusal to respond to the motion to dismiss, the district 

court did not abuse its discretion in granting the motion, as provided in the court’s local rules. We therefore affirm.

AFFIRMED.

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