Opinion ID: 2982507
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Title VI Retaliation

Text: The district court reasoned it was implausible that Appellants’ filing Title VI complaints was causally related to BBF’s struggling to secure contracts given that BBF’s difficulties preceded its complaints by several years, and as such, the district court dismissed Appellants’ Title VI retaliation claims. Appellants argue that we may infer that any action after the date of the complaints to the FHWA was retaliatory. Appellants, however, fail to offer any allegations in the original complaint to support a retaliation claim. Instead, they recite the law without any application to the facts and then demand reversal. We are well within our rights to determine that Appellants forfeited appellate review of their retaliation claims by only giving this issue a cursory acknowledgment. E.g., Williamson v. Recovery Ltd. P’ship, 731 F.3d 608, 621 (6th Cir. 2013) (“Issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, without some effort to develop an argument, are deemed forfeited”).3