Opinion ID: 856000
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Timeliness of Aly's MCAD Complaint

Text: To bring a civil action for employment discrimination pursuant to Title VII, an employee must first file a charge with either: (1) the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) within 180 days of the alleged unlawful employment practice; or (2) a parallel state agency -- in this case, MCAD -- within 300 days of said practice. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1); Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 5; Jorge v. Rumsfeld, 404 F.3d 556, 564 (1st Cir. 2005). An employee may only sue in federal court if the EEOC dismisses the administrative charge, does not bring civil suit, or does not enter into a conciliation agreement within 180 days of the filing of the administrative charge. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(1). Failure to exhaust this administrative process bars the courthouse door. Jorge, 404 F.3d at 564. MCAD regulations provide the procedural guidelines for filing administrative charges following an alleged unlawful employment practice. 804 C.M.R. § 1.01 (1998). Pursuant to those regulations, charges filed with MCAD must identify the complainant and the employer, contain the date on which the alleged conduct -14- occurred, and provide a concise statement describing the discriminatory conduct. Id. §§ 1.10(2), (4), (5). Additionally, the complaint must be signed and verified by the complainant under the pains and penalties of perjury. Id. § 1.10(4)(a). Where a filing within the statutory period is inadequate, [a] complaint . . . may be amended to cure technical defects or omissions, including failure to swear to the complaint, or to clarify and amplify allegations made therein. . . . Amendments shall relate back to the original filing date. Id. § 1.10(6)(a); see also 29 C.F.R. § 1601.12(b) (Title VII requirements for amendment of charge and relation back). This relation-back principle applies, however, only when the earlier filing can be construed to operate as a charge. Montes v. Vail Clinic, Inc., 497 F.3d 1160, 1167 (10th Cir. 2007); see also Edelman v. Lynchburg Coll. (Edelman II), 300 F.3d 400, 403-04 (4th Cir. 2002); Pijnenburg v. W. Ga. Health Sys., Inc., 255 F.3d 1304, 1306-07 (11th Cir. 2001). There has been significant debate concerning what constitutes a charge for the purposes of meeting the filing and verification requirements laid out by Title VII and the EEOC's regulations. In Edelman v. Lynchburg Coll. (Edelman I), 535 U.S. 106 (2002), the Supreme Court addressed the conflict among the courts of appeals regarding filing and verification requirements by first noting their differing purposes. The time-to-file limitation, the Court stated, was intended to encourage a -15- potential charging party to raise a discrimination claim before it gets stale, for the sake of a reliable result and a speedy end to any illegal practices that prove[] out. Id. at 112-13. The verification requirement, on the other hand, had a distinct objective, namely, to protect[] employers from the disruption and expense of responding to a claim unless a complainant is serious enough and sure enough to support it by oath subject to liability for perjury. Id. at 113. This object, the Court continued, demands an oath only by the time the employer is obliged to respond to the charge, not at the time an employee files it with the EEOC. There is accordingly nothing plain in reading 'charge' to require an oath by definition. Id. In thus requiring an oath, the Court stated, Congress presumably did not mean to affect the nature of Title VII as 'a remedial scheme in which laypersons, rather than lawyers, are expected to initiate the process.' Id. at 115 (quoting EEOC v. Commercial Office Products Co., 486 U.S. 107, 124 (1988)) (other citation omitted). In Fed. Exp. Corp. v. Holowecki, 552 U.S. 389 (2008), the Supreme Court again considered what constitutes a charge in the context of an employment discrimination filing. Specifically, the Court attempted to resolve a dispute among the lower courts regarding whether the filing of an intake questionnaire may constitute the filing of a charge for purposes of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) if all other filing -16- requirements are met.1 Id. at 395-97. The Court granted deference to the EEOC's filing requirements, concluding that, [i]n addition to the information required by the regulations, . . . if a filing is to be deemed a charge it must be reasonably construed as a request for the agency to take remedial action to protect the employee's rights or otherwise settle a dispute between the employer and the employee. Id. at 402. In applying this rule, the Court looked at the label and wording of the questionnaire at issue, noting that [d]ocuments filed by an employee with the EEOC should be construed, to the extent consistent with permissible rules of interpretation, to protect the employee's rights and statutory remedies. Construing ambiguities against the drafter may be the more efficient rule to encourage precise expression in other contexts; here, however, the rule would undermine the remedial scheme Congress adopted. It would encourage individuals to avoid filing errors by retaining counsel, increasing both the cost and likelihood of litigation. Id. at 406. The district court denied summary judgment as to the timeliness of Aly's MCAD filing on the grounds that Aly's June 2, 2006 Interview Form, while defective in not including Aly's signature, was a valid initial filing, and his subsequent formal 1 While Holowecki considered the question of what constitutes a charge under the ADEA, the filing provisions of the ADEA and Title VII are virtually in haec verba, the former having been patterned after the latter. Montes, 497 F.3d at 1164 n.6 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Commercial Office Prods., 486 U.S. at 123-24). -17- charge filed on August 18, 2006, cured the technical verification defect and served as an amendment that related back to the original complaint. Since that initial complaint was filed on June 2, 2006, within 300 days of Aly's October 19, 2005 resignation, it met the timeliness requirement. While Mohegan Council does not dispute that Aly's Interview Form complies with the basic required content of an MCAD complaint -- stating the name and address of his employer, the person alleged to have discriminated against him, the alleged discriminatory conduct, and as well as the date of said conduct -- it makes three arguments as to why it was error for the district court to deem Aly's MCAD complaint timely. First, Mohegan Council argues that, since the Interview Form did not bear Aly's signature and did not state the particulars surrounding the alleged discriminatory acts, it did not constitute a valid filing. Since the relation-back principle could only apply to an initial valid filing, it could thus not be applied here to cure the deficiencies of the filed charge. Second, Mohegan Council contends that the district court improperly relied on case law assessing the timeliness of charges filed with the EEOC, which does not require -- as MCAD regulations do -- that a charge include a signature and verification under the pains and penalties of perjury. Finally, Mohegan Council claims that this court must defer to the MCAD -18- Investigating Commissioner's order that dismissed Aly's complaint as untimely filed. We disagree on all counts. First, Aly's Interview Form may be construed as a valid charge to which the August 18, 2006 complaint may relate back under MCAD regulations. The Interview Form conformed with said regulations in that it: (1) listed the date on which the unlawful discriminatory act occurred: October 19, 2005 (see 804 C.M.R. § 1.10(5)(a)); (2) contained a concise statement of the alleged discriminatory acts: Kennedy's harassment and refusal to either perform Aly's Career Evaluation or send him to the PD-LIII training while another employee, Chevalier, received differential treatment as to the evaluation and training (see id. § 1.10(5)(b)); and (3) identified Kennedy as the person alleged to have committed the unlawful discriminatory act (see id.). While Aly's statement was not verified by his sworn signature subject to liability for perjury as required under Rule 1.10(4)(a), the rules provide an explicit remedy for such omission in Rule 1.10(6)(a), allowing for a complaint to be amended to cure technical defects or omissions, including failure to swear to the complaint. (emphasis added). Further, EEOC regulations and Supreme Court precedent endorsing said regulations allow an intake questionnaire such as Aly's to serve as a charge for the purpose of meeting the limitations period in appropriate circumstances. See Holowecki, -19- 552 U.S. at 401-02; 29 C.F.R. §§ 1601.9, 1601.12, 1626.6, 1626.8. Those circumstances include cases where a Form may be reasonably construed as a request for the agency to take remedial action to protect [a complainant's] rights or otherwise settle a dispute between the employer and the employee. Holowecki, 552 U.S. at 402. Holowecki provided indicia to assist in a court's inquiry as to whether a complaint may be reasonably construed as a charge, and those included labels on the face of the complaint. In Holowecki, the Court deemed a complaint insufficient to constitute a charge where said complaint was not labeled a Charge of Discrimination, and its wording indicated that its purpose was to facilitate precharge filing counseling. Id. at 405. Here, on the contrary, the Interview Form referred to the filing employee as a Complainant and contained wording referring to the Form itself in the present tense as an employment complaint . . . being filed against the Respondent . . . (emphasis added). It is thus reasonable to construe that language as a request for the agency to take action to protect Aly's Title VII workplace rights. Further, so construing the Interview Form is consistent with both the purposes of the limitations requirement as articulated in Edelman and the injunction in Holowecki to construe documents filed by employees, to the extent consistent with permissible rules of interpretation, to protect the employee's rights and statutory remedies. 552 U.S. at 406. -20- We cannot agree with Mohegan Council's contention that the August 18, 2006 complaint may not relate back due to its failure to meet the verification requirement. Firstly, regulations allowing relation back in cases where the earlier-filed complaint failed to fulfill a verification requirement have been upheld by the Supreme Court as reasonable. See, e.g., Edelman, 535 U.S. at 116-17 (Where a statute or supplemental rule requires an oath, courts have shown a high degree of consistency in accepting later verification as reaching back to an earlier, unverified filing. . . . [and] Congress [is] presumed to have known of this settled judicial treatment of oath requirements when it enacted and later amended Title VII.) (internal citations and quotations omitted). Second, it is of no matter that the district court relied on case law assessing relation back of verified complaints filed with the EEOC rather than MCAD because, contrary to Mohegan Council's assertions, Section 706(b) of Title VII as a general matter requires all employment discrimination charges under its purview to be in writing under oath or affirmation for EEOC review, just as MCAD regulations do. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b) (2013). Thus, the district court did not err in relying on federal case law governing verification requirements under EEOC regulation 29 C.F.R. § 1601.12. Finally, contrary to Mohegan Council's assertions, MCAD's Investigating Commissioner did not directly address the issue of -21- whether or not Aly's June 2, 2006 Interview Form constituted a charge under proper MCAD and EEOC guidelines. Rather, the Commissioner just assumed that the filing date of the charge was August 18, 2006, and dismissed that complaint as untimely without considering the question of whether said complaint may or may not relate back to the prior-filed Interview Form. Therefore, there was no agency determination made as to that issue to which this court may be asked to defer. For the above-cited reasons, we hold that the district court did not err in finding Aly's MCAD complaint timely. B. Minimum Employee Requirement for Title VII Applicability Title VII defines an employer, for the purposes of its mandate, as a person engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has fifteen or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b) (2013). Courts may rely on the payroll method, or calculating the number of employees who are on the payroll for each day of a given week regardless of whether they were actually present at work each day, to determine whether an employer has reached Title VII's threshold number. Walters v. Metro. Educ. Enters., Inc., 519 U.S. 202, 207 (1997); De Jesús v. LTT Card Servs., 474 F.3d 16, 21 (1st Cir. 2007). The payroll method allows for calculating the jurisdictional 15-employee threshold merely by knowing whether a particular employee was on -22- the payroll during a particular time frame, and it allows for the counting of part-time employees within said time frame to reach the threshold. See Walters, 519 U.S. at 207. Part-time workers are counted as employees for each day they worked between arrival and departure, and those times may be added to reach the threshold number. Id.; see 2 EEOC Compl. Man. (BNA), Directives Transmittal No. 915.003, § 2-III(B)(1)(a), Employers (May 2000). The plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating by a preponderance of the evidence that the employer meets the 15-employee threshold. Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 516 (2006) (holding that the threshold number of employees for application of Title VII is an element of a plaintiff's claim for relief, not a jurisdictional issue). After hearing the testimony of Thanh Nguyen, the Council's office manager, and reviewing the Council's payroll records submitted into the record, the jury determined that Aly met his burden as to this threshold issue. The district court's opinion on Mohegan Council's motion for judgment as a matter of law found this determination to be not unreasonable, and made the following deduction: in addition to the fourteen full-time employees of Mohegan Council, it was not unreasonable to find that a fifteenth employee, Quan Nguyen, was employed for twelve weeks and at least one of the seasonal workers was employed for eight -23- weeks, or that at least one of the seasonal workers worked year-round. On appeal, Mohegan Council again challenges the sufficiency of Aly's evidence in showing that it employed the threshold number of employees during the period relevant for this action. Specifically, it contends that the evidence presented at trial could only allow a reasonable jury to speculate as to whether it had the requisite employees, and the jury could not reasonably conclude that, above and beyond its fourteen employees, an additional employee or employees of the 61 seasonal and part-time employees worked for more than twenty weeks because no particular evidence was provided as to who worked which weeks. We review the district court's decision awarding a judgment as a matter of law de novo, but a jury's verdict must be upheld unless the facts and inferences, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, point so strongly and overwhelmingly in favor of the movant that a reasonable jury could not have [returned the verdict]. Astro-Med, Inc. v. Nihon Kohden Am., Inc., 591 F.3d 1, 13 (1st Cir. 2009) (quotations and citations omitted). The Court must affirm unless the evidence, together with all reasonable inferences in favor of the verdict, could lead a reasonable person to only one conclusion, namely, that the moving party was entitled to judgment. Id. (quotation marks, quotations and citations omitted). We find that, viewed in the light most -24- favorable to the verdict, Mohegan Council met the threshold number of employees to constitute an employer for Title VII purposes. It is undisputed that Mohegan Council employed fourteen employees full-time for a period of at least twenty weeks during the relevant period, and that another employee, Quan Nguyen, was employed for twelve weeks. Therefore, Aly only needed to show that, amongst the hours that 61 seasonal and part-time employees worked for Mohegan Council, eight remaining weeks of work could be compiled by a single employee or a combination thereof. The evidence of payroll and time cards submitted into the record show that most of the 61 part-time or seasonal workers were employed during the seven-week summer camp. A reasonable jury could find, based on this evidence, that any one or combination of the sixtyone employees filled the eight-week gap between Quan's employment and the requisite twenty-week threshold. Therefore, the district court did not err in denying Mohegan Council's motion for judgment as a matter of law as to whether it met the threshold number of employees. C. Evidence of Discrimination To successfully bring a Title VII claim, a plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of discrimination by a preponderance of the evidence. Goncalves v. Plymouth Cnty. Sheriff's Dep't, 659 F.3d 101, 105 (1st Cir. 2011). To set out a prima facie case, a plaintiff bears the burden of showing that (1) -25- he or she is a member of a protected class; (2) possessed the necessary qualifications and adequately performed his or her job; (3) was nevertheless dismissed or otherwise suffered an adverse employment action at the hand of his or her employer; and (4) his or her employer sought someone of roughly equivalent qualifications to perform substantially the same work. Rodríguez-Torres v. Caribbean Forms Mfr., Inc., 399 F.3d 52, 58 (1st Cir. 2005) (citation omitted). Under the well-known McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework, McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), once a plaintiff has proven his prima facie case by a preponderance, the burden shifts to the defendant to rebut the presumption of discrimination by providing legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for their action. St. Mary's Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 507 (1993) (quoting Tex. Dep't of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254 (1981)). If the defendant proffers legitimate reasons for the adverse action, the plaintiff must then prove by a preponderance that the proffered reasons by the defendant are a pretext for unlawful discrimination. Id. at 507-8. To meet his or her burden, a plaintiff must demonstrate either that the adverse employment action was (1) more likely motivated by discrimination than by the explanation proffered by the defendant; or (2) the proffered explanation [was] unworthy of credence where the suspect action, coupled with evidence to the -26- contrary, suggests a discriminatory motivation. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 256. Disparate treatment may be competent proof that the explanation given for the challenged employment action was pretextual, provided the plaintiff-employee can make a preliminary showing that others similarly situated . . . in all relevant respects were treated [more advantageously] by the employer. Straughn v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 250 F.3d 23, 43-44 (1st Cir. 2001) (quotation marks, quotations and internal citation omitted). Although the burdens shift between the plaintiff and the defendant during the course of an employment discrimination claim, the ultimate burden of persuading the trier of fact lies with the plaintiff. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 253. Once an employment action has been submitted to a jury and tried on its merits, the burdenshifting framework is confined to the ultimate question of discrimination. Sánchez v. P.R. Oil Co., 37 F.3d 712, 720 (1st Cir. 1994) ([t]o focus on the existence of a prima facie case after a discrimination case has been fully tried on the merits is to 'unnecessarily evade the ultimate question of discrimination vel non.') (internal citations omitted). This is because, at that stage, McDonnell Douglas has served its purpose, and the evaluation of a post-trial motion assesses whether the plaintiff met his overall burden of establishing discrimination. Id. A defendant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law if the record conclusively revealed some other, nondiscriminatory reason for the -27- employer's decision, or if the plaintiff created only a weak issue of fact as to whether the employer's reason was untrue and there was abundant and uncontroverted independent evidence that no discrimination occurred. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., 530 U.S. 133, 148 (2000). Further, as stated above, the jury's verdict is given high deference unless the evidence in the record, taken in the light most favorable to the non-movant, is so overwhelmingly inconsistent with the verdict that no reasonable jury could come to the same conclusion. Muñiz-Olivari, 496 F.3d at 35; see also Zimmerman v. Direct Fed. Credit Union, 262 F.3d 70, 75 (1st Cir. 2001) (holding that verdict must stand unless evidence points unerringly to the opposite conclusion). Mohegan Council makes three main arguments on appeal. First, it claims that Aly failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination. Specifically, the Council argues that Aly failed to provide sufficient evidence either that his performance was up to its legitimate expectations or that it took an adverse employment action against him since he was not entitled to the PDLIII training and voluntarily resigned. Further, the Council contends that Aly failed to show discriminatory intent, particularly because their Separation Notice with Aly indicated their willingness to take him back. Second, and assuming this court finds that Aly established a prima facie case, Mohegan Council argues that a -28- reasonable juror could not find discrimination because of the unrebutted evidence it presented establishing that it had multiple, legitimate non-discriminatory reasons for promoting and training Chevalier rather than Aly. Mohegan Council insists that Aly's evaluations in his first two years were outstanding, demonstrating that his religion and national origin were not factors in his assessments, and that when his performance declined, Aly did not dispute that his performance reviews were weaker, signing the relevant portions thereof without objection. Further, they point to evidence cited infra regarding negative performance, the difficult timing of the PD-LIII training due to Fall recruitment efforts, and Aly's indecisiveness about his long-term prospects with the Council. Finally, Mohegan Council argues that Aly failed to rebut its evidence by sufficiently showing pretext. It claims that Aly's evidence that he felt he was being treated differently by other staff members and volunteers is insufficient to show that its proffered non-discriminatory reasons are untrue.2 2 Mohegan Council also argues in its opening brief that the district court erred in its memorandum and order denying judgment as a matter of law when it examined evidence without regard to the burden-shifting framework presented in McDonnell Douglas. However, Mohegan Council misstates the law in this Circuit when it claims that the strict, step-by-step McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework applies when reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence following a jury verdict. As stated supra, once an employment discrimination action has been submitted to a jury, the burdenshifting framework has fulfilled its function since backtracking serves no useful purpose. Sánchez, 37 F.3d at 720. As we noted -29- While it is a close case, we agree with the district court that Mohegan Council did not meet its burden in showing that the evidence in the record, taken in the light most favorable to Aly, is so overwhelmingly inconsistent with the verdict that no reasonable jury could come to the same conclusion. As to the Council's argument regarding Aly's prima facie case, while it is true that Aly's performance evaluations declined in his last two years of employment, the lowest evaluation mark his supervisor ever gave him was within his employer's work expectations. Further, it is reasonable to believe that Aly was performing to those legitimate expectations if his worst evaluation both recommended him for the PD-LIII training and suggested that he was successful in every component of the job. In fact, Aly's most negative evaluations were issued during the period when he held recruitment meetings in mosques to expand recruitment into the Muslim community. Thus, the jury could reasonably infer that there in Sánchez, [t]o focus on the existence of a prima facie case after a discrimination case has been fully tried on the merits is to 'unnecessarily evade[] the ultimate question of discrimination vel non.' Id. (quoting U.S. Postal Serv. Bd. of Govs. v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 713-14 (1983)). Thus, the district court did not err when it considered the evidence presented as a whole rather than piecemeal, in a step-by-step review. In any case, the district court did, in fact, consider the evidence presented by Aly in determining whether the non-discriminatory reasons proffered by the Council constituted pretext. Specifically, it found that the Council's proffered evidence was not so one-sided that no jury could reasonably find that discrimination occurred, noting that much of Aly's evidence to counter the Council's non-discriminatory reasons depended on credibility determinations that the jury made in Aly's favor. -30- was a correlation between said recruitment and his negative evaluations, an inference that goes directly to Aly's discrimination claim. As to the Council's adverse employment actions, Aly presented sufficient evidence that the delay in being evaluated for recommendation to the PD-LIII training program and the Council's refusal to send him to the PD-LIII training once recommended, resulting in his ineligibility for a promotion, were adverse. See Rathbun v. Autozone, Inc., 361 F.3d 62, 71 (1st Cir. 2004) (stating the elements of a failure-to-promote claim). The record also indicates that Garee, Aly's supervisor at the time, was unable to identify a single person in his thirteen-year history of affiliation with the Boy Scouts who had passed the same benchmarks as Aly but was not sent to the PD-LIII training. Finally, Aly sufficiently showed that the Council sought someone of roughly equivalent qualifications -- namely, Chevalier -- to send to the PD-LIII training and perform the work of a Senior Executive Director following a promotion for which the training made him eligible. Chevalier was a non-Muslim of Hispanic and Lebanese descent who started working at the Council six months after Aly began. Even though Chevalier had received exceptional marks on his evaluations prior to being sent to the PD-LIII training program, he was similarly situated to Aly in all relevant respects. His performance reviews were almost equivalent to those -31- of Aly, and while he received higher performance scores than Aly in certain categories and overall, he received lower performance scores than him in certain categories in 2003 and 2004. While Mohegan Council offered a number of reasons it did not send Aly to the PD-LIII training -- his declining work performance, his wavering future commitment to the organization, a lack of financial resources to either send him or raise his salary following any promotion, and the timing of the training -- this evidence was not so overwhelmingly inconsistent with the jury's verdict as to require reversal. While Aly's proffered evidence of discrimination was not extensive, it could reasonably lead to an inference of discriminatory intent and a showing of pretext, particularly since it: (1) provided a direct challenge to the alleged non-discriminatory reasons as to job performance; (2) revealed consistent Performance Reviews noting Aly's commitment to the Council, with the only statements indicating otherwise occurring after Aly notified Kennedy about his concerns about discrimination; (3) indicated the Council's failure to follow Guidelines in dealing with negative Performance Reviews, if said reviews did in fact indicate performance so unsatisfactory as to warrant a failure to commit to a precondition for promotion; (4) revealed that Garee had relied at least in part in his decision not to send Aly to the training on volunteers, persons that Aly had complained were discriminating against him on the basis of -32- religion; and (5) demonstrated that the Council was willing to forego its budgetary concerns regarding the PD-LIII training when it came to Chevalier, but not when it came to Aly. Therefore, a reasonable jury could conclude that Mohegan Council's proffered nondiscriminatory reasons are not worthy of credence, and taken together with the other circumstances, suggest that discrimination was more likely the motivation behind the adverse action.