Court Opinion

ID: 9918414
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-12 21:01:02.709601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:00:23.000550
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-12139    Document: 48-1      Date Filed: 01/12/2024   Page: 1 of 10

                                                    [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 22-12139
                           Non-Argument Calendar
                           ____________________

        ROBERT MITCHELL,
                                                       Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
        versus
        CITY OF MIAMI BEACH,

                                                     Defendant-Appellee.

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Southern District of Florida
                     D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-22835-RNS
                           ____________________
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        2                     Opinion of the Court                 22-12139

        Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
                Robert Mitchell, represented by counsel, appeals the dismis-
        sal of his employment discrimination action against his employer,
        the City of Miami Beach (“the City”), under the Age Discrimina-
        tion in Employment Act of 1967 (“ADEA”), 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1);
        Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), 42 U.S.C.
        §§ 2000e-2(a); and the Florida Civil Rights Act (“FCRA”), Fla. Stat.
        § 760.10(1). After reviewing the record and parties’ arguments, we
        affirm.
            I.    FACTUAL       BACKGROUND           &    PROCEDURAL
                  HISTORY
               Mitchell, a 65-year-old white, non-Hispanic male whose na-
        tion of origin is the United States sued his employer, the City of
        Miami Beach (“the City”), in August 2021. Thereafter, the district
        court entered a scheduling order requiring any motion to amend
        the pleadings be ﬁled by January 25, 2022.
               Following certain events not relevant to the present appeal,
        Mitchell ﬁled the operative amended complaint in December 2021,
        in which he set forth eight counts of discrimination against the
        City: age-based claims under the ADEA and the FCRA; race-based
        claims under Title VII and the FCRA; national-origin-based claims
        under Title VII and the FCRA; and sex-based claims under Title VII
        and the FCRA. Mitchell alleged that he had administratively ex-
        hausted these claims, explaining that he ﬁled charges of
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        22-12139               Opinion of the Court                         3

        discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commis-
        sion (“EEOC”) and the Florida Commission on Human Relations
        (“FCHR”) on November 27, 2019, and an amended charge on May
        8, 2020, alleging race, sex, age, and national origin discrimination.
               According to the amended complaint, the City allegedly dis-
        criminated against Mitchell between January 20, 2018, and Decem-
        ber 20, 2019, when he applied for, and was denied, eighteen posi-
        tions which were given to substantially younger, non-white appli-
        cants. Speciﬁcally, he applied to one position as a background in-
        vestigator, one as an arson investigator, eight as a school resource
        oﬃcer, and eight as a hostage negotiation team member.
               On January 20, 2022, ﬁve days before the deadline for
        amending pleadings, the City moved to dismiss Mitchell’s amended
        complaint. The City ﬁrst argued that Mitchell’s claims related to
        the denials of positions other than the school resource oﬃcer posi-
        tions ﬁlled in 2019 were time-barred, as the denials occurred more
        than a year before Mitchell ﬁled his ﬁrst charge with the EEOC in
        November 2019. The City next contended that Mitchell failed to
        administratively exhaust his national origin and sex discrimination
        claims, and his claims of age, race, sex, and national origin discrim-
        ination related to the background investigator and school resource
        oﬃcer position denials, because he failed to adequately assert those
        claims in his EEOC charges. The City provided copies of Mitchell’s
        EEOC charges to demonstrate these alleged deﬁciencies. Finally,
        the City argued that Mitchell failed to allege suﬃcient facts to sup-
        port a prima facie case for age, race, sex, or national origin
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                 22-12139

        discrimination, including the argument that Mitchell failed to suf-
        ﬁciently allege that his identiﬁed comparators were similarly situ-
        ated.
                Instead of seeking consent from the City or for the court’s
        leave to ﬁle a second amended complaint after receiving the City’s
        motion to dismiss, Mitchell ﬁled a response opposing the motion
        on February 7, 2022. In his response, however, Mitchell made no
        substantive arguments. Instead, he set forth legal principles for em-
        ployment cases, such as how to establish a prima facie case of dis-
        parate treatment, and some case law discussing when a transfer
        could be considered adverse. Then, in a single sentence section en-
        titled “Applying the Law to the Facts in the Case at Bar” Mitchell
        stated:
              Applying Iqbal and Twombly to the well-pleaded facts
              in Mr. Mitchell’s amended complaint, the Court
              should determine that Mr. Mitchell has suﬃciently al-
              leged enough speciﬁcs to plead a prima facie case that
              he suﬀered age, race/national origin and sex
              discr[i]mination in being repeatedly denied the jobs
              for which he applied, and that he suﬃciently ex-
              hausted his administrative remedies before ﬁling suit.

        Mitchell provided no other argument or discussion concerning the
        administrative exhaustion arguments the City raised in its motion
        to dismiss, nor did he address his alleged failure in suﬃciently iden-
        tifying similarly situated comparators. Mitchell also made no indi-
        cations that he intended to seek leave to ﬁle a second amended
        complaint.
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        22-12139                  Opinion of the Court                              5

                 In reply, the City argued that Mitchell failed to address its
        arguments concerning the exhaustion of administrative remedies
        or the arguments concerning the insuﬃciency of his allegations,
        with the possible exception of its material adversity arguments, and
        reiterated that dismissal was proper on those grounds. The City
        also argued that, to the extent Mitchell’s citation to legal cases
        could be interpreted as directly addressing the City’s arguments,
        those cases did not support Mitchell’s position and, thus, his claims
        still failed.
               Ultimately, the district court granted the City’s motion to
        dismiss. First, the district court determined that Mitchell failed to
        challenge the City’s arguments related to his failure to exhaust his
        administrative remedies. The court then found that all the job ap-
        plication denials Mitchell challenged were time-barred, 1 with the
        exception of the two school-resource oﬃcer positions from 2019.
        As to Mitchell’s claims of discrimination based on his sex and na-
        tional origin related to the school resource oﬃcer positions, the dis-
        trict court found that Mitchell also failed to administratively ex-
        haust those claims because his EEOC charges did not allege suﬃ-
        cient facts to support a charge of discrimination. Thus, the only
        substantive claims Mitchell properly exhausted were his age and
        race discrimination claims based on the two 2019 school resource
        oﬃcer positions.

        1 On appeal, Mitchell does not contest the district court’s dismissal of these

        claims based on the timeliness analysis. As such, this issue is not before the
        Court.
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        6                          Opinion of the Court                 22-12139

               Notwithstanding Mitchell’s failure to exhaust his administra-
        tive remedies, the district court conducted a substantive review of
        each of Mitchell’s claims and ruled that he failed to state a claim
        upon which relief could be granted. Speciﬁcally, the court rea-
        soned that Mitchell failed to allege facts suﬃcient to satisfy the
        McDonnel Douglas 2 or “convincing mosaic” frameworks. The court
        noted that Mitchell “himself appear[ed] to concede” his amended
        complaint insuﬃciently alleged his discrimination claims by “fail-
        ing to adduce any real opposition to the vast majority of the City’s
        arguments.”
               As such, the district court dismissed Mitchell’s case without
        prejudice as to those claims for which he failed to exhaust his ad-
        ministrative remedies, and with prejudice as to the remaining
        claims. The district court dismissed the entire case without leave
        to amend, noting that he had not requested leave to amend, nor
        had he indicated an inclination to do so. Now, Mitchell appeals.
            II.     ANALYSIS
                    A. Mitchell Has Abandoned Each of the Arguments He
                       Now Raises on Appeal.
               On appeal, Mitchell now, for the first time, argues that he
        exhausted his administrative remedies with respect to his national
        origin discrimination claims. Also, for the first time, he contends
        that he sufficiently alleged his claims of age, race, and national

        2 McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973).
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        22-12139                Opinion of the Court                          7

        origin discrimination, specifically challenging the district court’s
        similarly situated comparator finding.
               We normally review the dismissal of a complaint for failure
        to state a claim de novo, accepting the factual allegations in the com-
        plaint as true and construing them in the light most favorable to
        the plaintiffs. Tolar v. Bradley Arant Boult Commings, LLP, 997 F.3d
        1280, 1299 (11th Cir. 2021). However, an issue that was not raised
        in the district court but is raised for the first time on appeal is con-
        sidered forfeited, and we will not address it absent extraordinary
        circumstances. Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324,
        1331-32 (11th Cir. 2004). Cursory, conclusory statements do not
        adequately preserve a more developed argument that could have
        been presented to the district court but was not. See Ruckh v. Salus
        Rehab., LLC, 963 F.3d 1089, 1111 (11th Cir. 2020) (holding that an
        unadorned statement in a new-trial motion asserting that a dam-
        ages award was “excessive and against the weight of the evidence
        in light of all the deficiencies in Relator’s proof discussed above”
        amounted to mere “superficial assertions” which “were insufficient
        to permit reasoned consideration by the district court”). Similarly,
        issues not plainly and prominently raised in a party’s initial brief are
        deemed abandoned and will not be addressed absent extraordinary
        circumstances. Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678,
        680-83 (11th Cir. 2014).
               Here, Mitchell failed to preserve his challenges to the district
        court’s dismissal of his claims because he failed to raise them before
        the district court in the first instance. In his response to the City’s
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        8                       Opinion of the Court                  22-12139

        motion to dismiss, Mitchell provided a single conclusory sentence
        of analysis in which he asserted that he had alleged sufficient facts
        to plead a prima facie case of discrimination and that he had suffi-
        ciently exhausted his administrative remedies. This single, superfi-
        cial and conclusory assertion, without further analysis or support,
        was insufficient to preserve either of his arguments on appeal.
        Ruckh, LLC, 963 F.3d at 1111. Similarly, neither the inclusion of
        facts relevant to his current arguments within the fact section of his
        response, nor the inclusion of generally applicable employment
        law within his “Governing Legal Principles” section clearly pre-
        sented his current arguments to the district court. Id. Accordingly,
        because he failed to preserve his arguments before the district
        court, and as he fails to argue on appeal that extraordinary circum-
        stances warrant our review, he has abandoned the arguments, and
        we affirm the district court’s dismissal of his amended complaint.
                  B. The District Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion in Dis-
                     missing Mitchell’s Amended Complaint Without Leave
                     to Amend.
               On appeal, Mitchell makes another argument for the first
        time—that the district court should have granted him leave to
        amend his already amended complaint before dismissing with prej-
        udice.
                 When appropriate, we will review the denial of leave to
        amend a complaint for abuse of discretion. Covenant Christian Min-
        istries, Inc. v. City of Marietta, 654 F.3d 1231, 1239 (11th Cir. 2011).
        District courts have the discretion to choose between a range of
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        22-12139                Opinion of the Court                           9

        choices, and we will not disturb the court’s decision so long as it
        falls within that range of choices and is not influenced by a mistake
        of law. Zocaras v. Castro, 465 F.3d 479, 483 (11th Cir. 2006).
                Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) states that “[a] party
        may amend its pleading once as a matter of course within . . . 21
        days after service of a” motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b). Fed. R.
        Civ. P. 15(a)(1)(B). Thereafter, unless otherwise specified, a party
        may amend its pleading “only with the opposing party’s written
        consent or the court’s leave,” but “[t]he court should freely give
        leave when justice so requires.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). While
        district courts should sua sponte provide a pro se plaintiff at least one
        chance to amend his complaint before the district court dismisses
        his action with prejudice, absent futility, Woldeab v. Dekalb Cnty. Bd.
        of Educ., 885 F.3d 1289, 1292 (11th Cir. 2018), such rule does not
        apply where, as here, a litigant is counseled and counsel does not
        file a motion to amend or otherwise request leave to amend, Wag-
        ner v. Daewoo Heavy Indus. Am. Corp., 314 F.3d 541, 542 (11th Cir.
        2002) (en banc).
                Here, Mitchell’s argument fails for multiple reasons. First,
        because he never raised it below, he generally cannot do so for the
        first time on appeal. Access Now, 385 F.3d at 1331-32. Second, even
        considering his argument, the district court did not abuse its discre-
        tion in declining to sua sponte grant Mitchell, who was counseled,
        leave to file a second amended complaint. First, Mitchell had al-
        ready amended his complaint, and the district court gave Mitchell
        an opportunity to make further amendments by January 25, 2022,
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        10                    Opinion of the Court                 22-12139

        in its scheduling order. Second, after being served with the City’s
        motion to dismiss, Mitchell had the opportunity to obtain the
        City’s consent or the court’s leave to file another amended com-
        plaint. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). However, he made no efforts to do
        so. Finally, he made no indication to the court or otherwise that
        he wanted to further amend the complaint, and the district court
        had no obligation to sua sponte grant him another opportunity to
        amend. Wagner, 314 F.3d at 542. Accordingly, the district court did
        not abuse its discretion in dismissing Mitchell’s case without leave
        to amend.
             III.   CONCLUSION
               For the reasons set forth herein, we AFFIRM the district
        court’s dismissal of Mitchell’s amended complaint.