Beene v. Delaney , 70 F. App'x 486 ( 2003 )

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
JUN 27 2003
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
LINDA BEENE,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 02-6020
(D.C. No. 01-CV-1114-C)
LAWRENCE J. DELANEY, Acting (W.D. Okla.)
Secretary of the Air Force,
Defendant-Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before O’BRIEN and PORFILIO , Circuit Judges, and KANE , ** Senior District
Judge.
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously to grant the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral
argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore
ordered submitted without oral argument.
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
**
The Honorable John L. Kane, Senior District Judge, United States District
Court for the District of Colorado, sitting by designation.
Plaintiff-appellant Linda Beene appeals from the district court’s order
dismissing without prejudice her discrimination and retaliation claims under Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e through 2000e-17. 1 The
district court dismissed plaintiff’s claims pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1),
concluding that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the claims because
plaintiff failed to exhaust her administrative remedies by contacting an Equal
Employment Opportunity (EEO) counselor within forty-five days of the alleged
act of discrimination, as required by 29 C.F.R. § 1614.105(a)(1). However,
because compliance with the forty-five day time limit in § 1614.105(a)(1) is not a
jurisdictional requirement for filing suit under Title VII, the district court erred in
dismissing plaintiff’s claims under Rule 12(b)(1). Nonetheless, we agree with the
district court that the undisputed facts show that plaintiff failed to exhaust her
administrative remedies under § 1614.105(a)(1) in a timely manner. Thus, we
conclude that defendant was entitled to summary judgment under Rule 56, and we
affirm the dismissal of plaintiff’s Title VII claims on that basis. See MacArthur
v. San Juan County, 309 F.3d 1216, 1227 (10th Cir. 2002) (holding that, even if
district court does not conduct a proper analysis in dismissing a claim, “we are
nonetheless free to affirm the district court’s dismissal on any grounds for which
1
Although plaintiff asserted claims in addition to her Title VII claims in her
complaint, the district court only addressed plaintiff’s Title VII claims, and
plaintiff has abandoned her other claims on appeal.
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there is a record sufficient to permit conclusions of law, provided the litigants
have had a fair opportunity to develop the record”).
I.
Based on the record before this court, the following facts are either
undisputed or are as alleged by plaintiff.
In 1998, plaintiff was employed by the United States Air Force as a
GS-2005-07 Supply Technician in the Depot Supply Division at Tinker AFB. In
late summer 1998, the Air Force reorganized the Depot Supply Division. As part
of the reorganization, the Air Force advertised for promotion fifty-seven new
GS-2010–09 Inventory Management Specialist positions, and all of the positions
were to be filled by promoting present Air Force employees.
To select qualified candidates for the new positions, the Tinker AFB
Civilian Personnel Office (CPO) prepared a certificate of employees eligible for
the promotions based on employee skill codes, position series experience, and
appraisal scores. The CPO then presented the certificate of eligible employees,
which contained the names of sixty-seven present employees who were selected as
qualified for the promotions, to John C. Wilkey, the Acting Chief of the Depot
Supply Division, and the new positions were subsequently filled by selecting
fifty-seven individuals from the list of sixty-seven certified employees. However,
after four of the certified employees declined promotion, the list of certified
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employees was expanded to seventy-one employees. Because she was ranked on
the promotion certificate in the eighty-second position, plaintiff was not certified
as being eligible for one of the new positions, and she was therefore not selected
for one of the promotions.
On October 19, 1998, plaintiff met with John Wilkey to discuss whether she
had a chance of being selected for a promotion to one of the new positions. The
record before this court does not contain sufficient information to determine the
precise status of the selection process as of October 19, 1998, but plaintiff claims
the actual selections were not made until after October 19, 1998, and defendant
does not dispute plaintiff’s claim. According to plaintiff, during the meeting on
October 19, 1998, Mr. Wilkey told her “that [her] position on the profile was too
low for him to ‘reach’ [her].” Aplt. App. at 25, 38.
Plaintiff claims she was not selected for a promotion to one of the new
positions because of her sex, age, and a disability, and as retaliation for her
having filed a prior EEO complaint. Plaintiff initially contacted an EEO office to
complain about defendant’s conduct on January 6, 7, or 8, 1999, and she met with
an EEO counselor on January 12, 1999.
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II.
Defendant moved to dismiss plaintiff’s Title VII claims pursuant to
Rule 12(b)(1), arguing: (1) that plaintiff learned she was not going to be
promoted, and that she had therefore allegedly been discriminated against, during
the meeting with Mr. Wilkey on October 19, 1998; and (2) that the district court
lacked subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiff’s Title VII claims because she
failed to exhaust her administrative remedies by contacting an EEO counselor
within forty-five days of the alleged act of discrimination, as required by 29
C.F.R. § 1614.105(a)(1). In support of his motion, defendant submitted copies of
two reports from the EEO counselor, a copy of plaintiff’s administrative
complaint, and sworn declarations from Mr. Wilkey and Anthony Black, a
Personnel Staffing Specialist at Tinker AFB.
In response to defendant’s motion to dismiss, plaintiff argued that the
district court was required to treat the motion as a motion for summary judgment
under Rule 56 because defendant was challenging the facts upon which the
court’s subject matter jurisdiction was based, and because the facts underlying the
jurisdictional issue were intertwined with the merits of her substantive claims.
The district court agreed with plaintiff’s assertions in part, concluding that it
could consider the evidentiary materials submitted by defendant under Rule
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12(b)(1), but that it was not necessary to convert the motion into a motion for
summary judgment.
Plaintiff also claimed that the timeliness of her contact with the EEO
counselor was a disputed question of fact, and that it would be inappropriate for
the district court to resolve the disputed factual question without permitting her to
conduct discovery. In particular, plaintiff claimed that discovery could reveal
that the number of eligible employees for the new positions was increased after
October 1998. Plaintiff further claimed that discovery could reveal that the
effective date of the promotions of the employees selected for the new positions
occurred after October 1998. Assuming that discovery would reveal this
information, plaintiff claimed that her position on the promotion certificate in
October 1998 did not automatically foreclose her from being selected for one of
the promotions, and that, as a result, her discrimination claim did not accrue at
that time. Alternatively, plaintiff claimed that, under § 1614.105(a)(1), the forty-
five day time period did not begin to run until the effective date of the
promotions. Plaintiff’s counsel also submitted an affidavit to the district court
under Rule 56(f), listing the matters he claimed needed to be pursued in
discovery.
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III.
Under § 1614.105(a)(1), an aggrieved federal employee “must initiate
contact with a [EEO] Counselor within 45 days of the date of the matter alleged
to be discriminatory or, in the case of personnel action, within 45 days of the
effective date of the action.” 29 C.F.R. § 1614.105(a)(1). In its order of
dismissal, the district court found that, “[b]ased on the evidentiary materials
submitted by the parties, Plaintiff was aware in October of 1998 that she was not
eligible for promotion.” Aplee. Supp. App. at 4. The court based this finding on
plaintiff’s admission that Mr. Wilkey told her at the meeting in October 1998
“that [her] position on the profile was too low for him to ‘reach’ [her].” Id.(quotation omitted). Thus, the district court found that both the alleged
discriminatory act and the effective date of the personnel action accrued in
October 1998, and that plaintiff was therefore required to contact an EEO
counselor no later than December 15, 1998, which she failed to do. The district
court also rejected plaintiff’s request for discovery because “the evidentiary
materials submitted by Defendant make clear that a single certificate was issued
and that Plaintiff did not appear on that certificate, rendering her ineligible for
promotion.” Id. at 5.
Although we agree with most of the district court’s analysis, we recently
confirmed that compliance with the forty-five day time limit in § 1614.105(a)(1)
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is not a jurisdictional requirement for filing suit under Title VII. See Sizova v.
Nat’l Inst. of Standards & Tech., 282 F.3d 1320, 1324-26 (10th Cir. 2002) (citing
Jones v. Runyon, 91 F.3d 1398, 1399 n.1 (10th Cir. 1996)). As a result, the
district court should have analyzed defendant’s motion to dismiss under Rule
12(b)(6), instead of under Rule 12(b)(1). And, because evidentiary matters
outside of plaintiff’s complaint were presented to the district court, the court
should have treated defendant’s motion as a motion for summary judgment under
Rule 56. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b).
Nonetheless, we agree with the district court that, based on the undisputed
evidence in the record, the forty-five day time period in § 1614.105(a)(1) began to
run in October 1998 when Mr. Wilkey told plaintiff she was not eligible for one
of the promotions. And since plaintiff does not dispute that she then waited until
January 1999 to contact an EEO counselor, we also agree with the district court
that plaintiff’s contact with the EEO counselor occurred after the expiration of the
forty-five day time period, and that plaintiff thereby failed to exhaust her
administrative remedies in a timely manner. 2
Accordingly, we hold that defendant
was entitled to summary judgment under Rule 56.
2
While the forty-five day time period may be tolled under § 1614.105(a)(2)
in certain circumstances, see Sizova, 282 F.3d at 1325, plaintiff has not put forth
any specific grounds for tolling in her district court or appellate briefs. Thus, we
reject her conclusory argument that the district court should have permitted a
factual record to be developed on what she refers to as the “waiver” issue.
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We also agree with the district court that plaintiff was not entitled to
engage in discovery to see if she could find additional material facts regarding the
promotion selection process. Although plaintiff’s counsel’s Rule 56(f) affidavit
listed a number of matters to pursue in discovery, the affidavit was insufficient to
establish a need for discovery. First, none of the issues raised by plaintiff’s
counsel could alter the undisputed fact that plaintiff was told in October 1998 that
she was not eligible for one of the promotions. Second, there is no evidence in
the record to support plaintiff’s allegation that she may have become eligible for
one of the promotions at some point after October 1998. Instead, the undisputed
evidence submitted by defendant establishes that the list of qualified employees
was never expanded to reach the rank held by plaintiff on the promotion
certificate. As a result, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying
plaintiff’s request for discovery.
Finally, plaintiff contends that the discovery issue in this case is controlled
by our decision in Sizova. In Sizova, we held that, under Rule 12(b)(1), a district
court’s “refusal to grant discovery is an abuse of discretion if the denial results in
prejudice to a litigant.” Sizova, 282 F.3d at 1326. We also held that “[p]rejudice
is present where pertinent facts bearing on the question of jurisdiction are
controverted . . . or where a more satisfactory showing of the facts is necessary.”
Id. (quotation omitted). Even if the discovery issue in this case is analyzed under
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Sizova, the district court acted properly in refusing to grant discovery since the
pertinent facts bearing on the application of § 1614.105(a)(1) are not controverted
and there is no need for further factual development.
Moreover, the situation in Sizova is distinguishable from the situation here.
In Sizova, there were disputed issues of fact concerning: (1) whether the plaintiff
had actual notice of the forty-five day time period in § 1614.105(a)(1); and
(2) whether the EEO counselor had properly advised the plaintiff of her rights and
responsibilities with respect to her discrimination claim. See Sizova, 282 F.3d at
1327-28. Here, by contrast, plaintiff has not raised any factual issues regarding
actual notice of the forty-five day time period or her contact with the EEO
counselor.
We AFFIRM the dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint.
Entered for the Court
Terrence L. O’Brien
Circuit Judge
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