Opinion ID: 8704897
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The District of Columbia’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings

Text: The Complaint advances three counts against the District: Count I, discrimination based on sex; Count III, retaliation for Ms. Konah’s opposition to sex discrimination; and Count IV, violations of her Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights due to inadequate training of correctional officers, leading to a custom or practice of sexual misconduct to which the District was deliberately indifferent. The District moves for judgment on the pleadings on all three counts; the Court grants the motion except as to Ms. Konah’s equal protection claim.
Addressing the Second Amended Complaint, the Court earlier dismissed allegations that the District violated Title VII and the DCHRA because Unity was Ms. Konah’s employer, not the District. See 815 F.Supp.2d at 70-71 (citing, inter alia, Redd v. Summers, 232 F.3d 933 (D.C.Cir.2000)). Those counts were dismissed without prejudice because the Second Amended Complaint neither alleged that Ms. Konah was a District employee nor put forth facts that might allow a court to find that the District was a joint employer. Id. In the instant Complaint, as she did before, Ms. Konah acknowledges that she worked for Unity but again states that “[h]er employment status with the District of Columbia has to be determined.” Compl. ¶¶ 5, 6. Ms. Konah has not corrected the flaws that led the Court to dismiss her Title VII and DCHRA claims against the District. The same analysis applies now. Her claims based on Title VII and the DCHRA as against the District — Count I, discrimination based on sex, and Count III, retaliation — will be dismissed, with prejudice, because the District was not her employer. 18 Further, the Court notes that Ms. Konah’s EEO charge complained only against Unity as her employer, not the District. 19
Ms. Konah’s constitutional claims against the District stem in the first instance from the same allegation underlying her claims against Sgt. Jefferson: that when she asked him to open the cell doors, he did not do so immediately. Ms. Konah alleges violations of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure and her Fifth Amendment right to due process before incarceration. Ms. Konah clarifies in her opposition to the District’s motion that “by not calling CODE Blue or using [some] other means of communication or alarms, limitations were imposed so that other[ ] [officers] who could have come to Plaintiff’s] rescue” were not summoned. Pl. Opp. Mot. J. Pleadings [Dkt. 69] (PL D.C. Opp.) at 20. Additionally, Ms. Konah alleges that she was a victim of sexual harassment in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and that this claim is actionable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She cites Kern v. City of Rochester, 93 F.3d 38, 43 (2d Cir.1996); Pontarelli v. Stone, 930 F.2d 104, 113-114 (1st Cir.1991), abrogated on other grounds by Pioneer Inv. Servs. Co. v. Brunswick Assocs. Ltd. P’ship, 507 U.S. 380, 113 S.Ct. 1489, 123 L.Ed.2d 74 (1993); Starrett v. Wadley, 876 F.2d 808, 814 (10th Cir.1989); and Poulsen v. City of North Tonawanda, N.Y., 811 F.Supp. 884, 894 (W.D.N.Y.1993), to support her constitutional claim to equal protection. Pl. D.C. Opp. at 13. Constitutional claims against municipalities like the ones advanced by Ms. Konah require a two-step analysis. See Baker v. District of Columbia, 326 F.3d 1302, 1306 (D.C.Cir.2003) (citing Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 120, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992)). “First, the court must determine whether the complaint states a claim for a predicate constitutional violation.” Id. (citation omitted). However, the mere allegation of a constitutional violation is not enough. The Court must also inquire “whether the complaint states a claim that a custom or policy of the municipality caused the violation.” Id. (citing Collins, 503 U.S. at 120, 112 S.Ct. 1061; Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018). Ms. Konah’s two lines of argument—on the one hand, Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment claims, and, on the other, an Equal Protection claim— must be addressed separately. As to the first, Ms. Konah’s alleged constitutional right was either to have the front gate opened more immediately or to have Sgt. Jefferson call a “Code” to summon help more immediately. As alleged in the Complaint, and even as expanded in her brief, Ms. Konah fails to articulate a constitutional violation for which the District might be liable. The actor against whom these allegations run is Sgt. Jefferson. As set forth above, Ms. Konah has not pursued those claims as against Sgt. Jefferson in the Third Amended Complaint; even if she had, the Court would find that he is protected by qualified immunity. Ms. Konah makes no express claim—and none is revealed by the multiple complaints or briefs or the evidentiary record—that any other person or entity had control over the gates to Southwest One on August 5, 2009. But a municipality cannot be held liable under § 1983 under a theory of respondeat superior, solely because it employed a tortfeasor. Monell, 436 U.S, at 691-92, 98 S.Ct. 2018. It can only be liable “where the municipality itself causes the constitutional violation at issue.” Simms v. District of Columbia, 587 F.Supp.2d 269, 276 (D.D.C.2008) (citing Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018). Ms. Konah makes no claim that Sgt. Jefferson failed to open the gates to the sally port more immediately because of any action or inaction by the District, much less that any “custom or policy” of the District caused the violation. See id. Moreover, as discussed above, Ms. Konah’s testimony reveals that she entered the sally port voluntarily, without waiting for an officer to escort her, and Sgt. Jefferson was unable to open the gate until an officer secured the inmates so that the interior gate could be shut. The incidental delay Ms. Konah suffered was not an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment or a violation of due process in contravention of the Fifth Amendment. See Butera v. District of Columbia, 235 F.3d 637, 651 (D.C.Cir.2001) (“To assert a substantive due process violation, however, the plaintiff must also show that the District of Columbia’s conduct was ‘so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience.’” (quoting Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847 n. 8, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998))). Analysis of Ms. Konah’s claim of sexual harassment proceeds differently. The Court first evaluates whether Ms. Konah has alleged a constitutional violation. “[T]he Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids the Federal Government to deny equal protection of the laws.” Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 234, 99 S.Ct. 2264, 60 L.Ed.2d 846 (1979) (citations omitted). 20 “To withstand scrutiny under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,” gender classifications must meet so-called “intermediate scrutiny,” meaning that they “must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.” Id. at 235, 99 S.Ct. 2264; see also United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533, 116 S.Ct. 2264, 135 L.Ed.2d 735 (1996) (applying same test to Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claim of gender discrimination). “The equal protection component of the Due Process Clause thus confers ... a federal constitutional right to be free from gender discrimination which cannot meet these requirements.” Passman, 442 U.S. at 235, 99 S.Ct. 2264. Passman involved an inquiry into “what ‘important governmental objectives,’ if any, are served by the gender-based employment of congressional staff.” Id. at 236 n. 9, 99 S.Ct. 2264. In that context, Passman held: [W]e presume that justiciable constitutional rights are to be enforced through the courts. And, unless such rights are to become merely precatory, the class of those litigants who allege that their own constitutional rights have been violated, and who at the same time have no effective means other than the judiciary to enforce these rights, must be able to invoke the existing jurisdiction of the courts for the protection of their justiciable constitutional rights. Id. at 242, 99 S.Ct. 2264. The District of Columbia was not Ms. Konah’s employer, which means that she cannot sue the District for gender discrimination under the DCHRA or Title VII. E.g., 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 (prohibiting “unlawful employment practiee[s]” by an “employer”). With no other avenue to address her claim of a violation of equal protection, she has a cause of action under the Fifth Amendment pursuant to this Court’s general federal-question jurisdiction. See Passman, 442 U.S. at 243-44, 99 S.Ct. 2264. The Court thus turns to the second step of the Monell analysis to determine whether Ms. Konah has “stated a claim that a policy or custom of the District of Columbia caused the constitutional violation alleged.” Baker, 326 F.3d at 1306. A plaintiff can make this showing in several ways; what it is important is that she allege an “affirmative link such that a municipal policy was the moving force behind the constitutional violation.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388-89, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989). For example, a plaintiff can show a “custom or policy” by demonstrating “the failure of the government to respond to a need (for example, training of employees) in such a manner as to show ‘deliberate indifference’ to the risk that not addressing the need will result in constitutional violations.” Baker, 326 F.3d at 1306-07 (citing Harris, 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197 & Daskalea v. District of Columbia, 227 F.3d 433, 441 (D.C.Cir.2000)). According to the Complaint, the alleged hostile work environment and discriminatory acts were provoked by inmates and allowed without effective limitation by District employees or agents despite it being obvious that something needed to be done. Compl. ¶¶ 18, 26, 30, 31; see id. ¶ 26 (“Plaintiffs supervisors and other management staff at the Central Detention Facility were aware that abusive actions by inmates toward Plaintiff are a pattern and practice.... ”). Ms. Konah’s complaint is that the District did not sufficiently train its employees in the Department of Corrections to ensure that Unity nurses were not subjected to constant gender-based lewd and nasty catcalls or acts by the inmates. Importantly, she has alleged sufficient facts to state a claim that District officials knew of the problem and that their failure to address it was deliberately indifferent. Id. ¶ 26 (“Plaintiff, along with more than 10 nurses filed complaints of abuse by inmates and sexual harassment with the Warden .... ”); id. ¶ 36 (“The same supervisors witnessed abusive and assaultive behaviors by inmates toward Plaintiff and other female staff”). At this point, the District of Columbia seeks judgment on the pleadings. The Court cannot oblige. Whether Ms. Konah can prove a violation of her constitutional right to equal protection is not the current question. The District’s motion attacks only the sufficiency of the allegations in the Third Amended Complaint, which the Court finds are sufficiently clear and detailed to make out a cause of action. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679, 129 S.Ct. 1937. 21 The Court will thus grant the District’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in all respects except in regards to Ms. Konah’s claim of municipal liability for an equal protection violation.