Marie McCray v. Maryland Dep't of Transportation

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 14-2117
MARIE M. MCCRAY,
Plaintiff – Appellant,
v.
MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Maryland Transit
Administration,
Defendant – Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Ellen L. Hollander, District Judge.
(1:11-cv-03732-ELH)
Argued: September 20, 2016 Decided: November 2, 2016
Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and KING and AGEE, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: John Henry Morris, Jr., Baltimore, Maryland, for
Appellant. Jennifer L. Katz, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF
MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Brian E.
Frosh, Attorney General of Maryland, Eric S. Hartwig, Assistant
Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MARYLAND,
Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
On remand from this Court for further proceedings with
respect to Marie M. McCray’s Title VII claim, see McCray v. Md.
Dep’t of Transp., 741 F.3d 480 (4th Cir. 2014), the district
court dismissed that claim as both unexhausted and time-barred,
see McCray v. Md. Dep’t of Transp., No. 1:11-cv-03732 (D. Md.
Sept. 16, 2014), ECF Nos. 50-51. Additionally, the district
court dismissed as untimely separate claims that McCray had
newly alleged under the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act
(the “MFEPA”). McCray now appeals from those dismissals of her
Title VII and MFEPA claims. As explained below, although we
reject the district court’s ruling that the Title VII claim is
unexhausted, we affirm its dismissals of the Title VII and MFEPA
claims because they are time-barred.
I.
McCray’s factual allegations are more fully recounted in
our prior decision. See McCray, 741 F.3d at 481-82. In sum,
McCray worked for the Maryland Transit Administration (the
“MTA”), a subsidiary of the Maryland Department of
Transportation (the “MDOT”), for nearly four decades before her
position was terminated in October 2008 by the Governor and
Board of Public Works as part of a series of state budget cuts.
2
McCray, an African-American woman, was sixty-four years old and
diabetic when she lost her job with the MTA.
In December 2011, after receiving a right-to-sue letter
from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the “EEOC”),
McCray initiated this action against the MTA and MDOT in the
District of Maryland. McCray’s original Complaint alleged her
Title VII claim, premised on race and gender discrimination, as
well as claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act
(the “ADEA”) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (the
“ADA”). Before any meaningful discovery was conducted, the
defendants invoked legislative immunity, and the district court
awarded summary judgment to the defendants on that basis. See
McCray v. Md. Dep’t of Transp., No. 1:11-cv-03732 (D. Md. Jan.
16, 2013), ECF Nos. 18-19.
McCray appealed, and by our prior decision, we affirmed the
award of summary judgment to the defendants on the ADEA and ADA
claims. See McCray, 741 F.3d at 483 (“[W]e affirm the district
court’s rulings on McCray’s ADEA and ADA claims, albeit based on
sovereign immunity, not legislative immunity.”). With respect
to the Title VII claim, we recognized that the defendants are
entitled to legislative immunity “insofar as it shields the MTA
and MDOT from lawsuit based on the counsel they gave executive
officials in Maryland who carried out the budget cuts.” Id. at
485. We further concluded, however, that vacatur and remand
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were appropriate as to the Title VII claim, because the
Complaint alleged “discriminatory actions that took place before
the legislative activity began.” Id. Our conclusion in that
regard relied on allegations that, “driven by discriminatory
animus,” McCray’s supervisor at the MTA had “stripped her of
responsibilities in the years leading up to budget cuts,”
rendering “her position vulnerable to the budget cuts that
eventually came.” Id. at 486.
After our remand, in March 2014, McCray filed an Amended
Complaint that re-alleges her Title VII claim and adds the MFEPA
claims. The district court granted the defendants’ subsequent
motion to dismiss those claims pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) and (6)
of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, precipitating this
appeal. Because the dismissals were with prejudice and the
district court is finished with the case, we possess
jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. See GO Comput., Inc.
v. Microsoft Corp., 508 F.3d 170, 176 (4th Cir. 2007). 1
1
The Amended Complaint also includes claims under the ADEA,
the ADA, and the Rehabilitation Act — all of which were
dismissed with prejudice by the district court. McCray has
abandoned any contention that those dismissals were erroneous,
because she raised no such contention in her opening appellate
brief. See A Helping Hand, LLC v. Balt. Cty., Md., 515 F.3d
356, 369 (4th Cir. 2008).
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II.
Where a district court dismisses a Title VII claim as
unexhausted under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), we
review the court’s ruling de novo. See Balas v. Huntington
Ingalls Indus., Inc., 711 F.3d 401, 406 (4th Cir. 2013). We
also review de novo a district court’s Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal
of a claim as being time-barred. See Pressley v. Tupperware
Long Term Disability Plan, 553 F.3d 334, 336 (4th Cir. 2009).
III.
A.
We first reject the district court’s ruling that McCray’s
Title VII claim is unexhausted. As we have explained, “[b]efore
filing suit under Title VII, a plaintiff must exhaust her
administrative remedies by bringing a charge with the EEOC.”
See Smith v. First Union Nat’l Bank, 202 F.3d 234, 247 (4th Cir.
2000). The EEOC charge must be “sufficiently precise to
identify the parties, and to describe generally the action or
practices complained of.” See 29 C.F.R. § 1601.12(b). The
plaintiff may then advance any Title VII claims in her
subsequent civil suit that “are reasonably related to her EEOC
charge and can be expected to follow from a reasonable
administrative investigation.” See Smith, 202 F.3d at 247.
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The crux of McCray’s Title VII claim, as we heretofore
explained, “is not the financial storm that rocked the state and
forced Maryland’s government to scale back its budget,” but
“that the MTA and MDOT gave her a lightning rod to hold and sent
her to the roof.” See McCray, 741 F.3d at 486. McCray
exhausted that claim by alleging in her EEOC charge that, more
than a year before her termination in October 2008, her
supervisor “tried to get rid of [her]” and then “harassed [her]
daily . . . about [her] ability to work.” See J.A. 51. 2 That
is, the Amended Complaint makes clear that the harassment
alleged in the EEOC charge included the elimination of McCray’s
job responsibilities. Accordingly, McCray’s Title VII
“lightning rod” claim (that she was left vulnerable to
termination by being stripped of her responsibilities) is
reasonably related to the allegations in her EEOC charge (that
her supervisor had harassed and sought to discharge her).
Moreover, the “lightning rod” claim can be expected to follow
from a reasonable administrative investigation. In these
circumstances, the district court erred in deeming that claim to
be unexhausted.
2
Citations herein to “J.A. __” refer to the contents of the
Joint Appendix filed by the parties in this appeal.
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B.
Nonetheless, we affirm the district court’s dismissals of
McCray’s Title VII and MFEPA claims because they are all time-
barred. In the circumstances of this matter, Title VII provides
that an EEOC charge must be filed “within three hundred days
after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.” See
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1). Under the pertinent regulations,
[a] charge may be amended to cure technical defects or
omissions, . . . or to clarify and amplify allegations
made therein. Such amendments and amendments alleging
additional acts which constitute unlawful employment
practices related to or growing out of the subject
matter of the original charge will relate back to the
date the charge was first received.
See 29 C.F.R. § 1601.12(b). We have recognized, however, that
an amendment alleging a new theory of recovery generally will
not relate back to the original filing date. See Evans v.
Techs. Applications & Serv. Co., 80 F.3d 954, 963 (4th Cir.
1996). That is because — using the example of an EEOC charge
that initially asserted sex discrimination and then is amended
to allege age discrimination — “age discrimination does not
necessarily flow from sex discrimination and vice versa.” Id.
Additionally, “Title VII and ADEA claims arise from completely
distinct statutory schemes.” Id.
When McCray filed her EEOC charge in June 2009, she alleged
only age discrimination, in contravention of the ADEA. See J.A.
50. It was not until September 2010 — nearly two years after
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her termination from the MTA — that McCray amended the EEOC
charge to allege race and gender discrimination, in violation of
Title VII. Id. at 51. Because that amendment does not, under
our Evans decision, relate back to the original filing date, the
district court properly dismissed the Title VII claim as being
time-barred.
Meanwhile, the MFEPA provides that a complainant may bring
a civil action alleging an unlawful employment practice if three
requirements are satisfied:
(1) the complainant initially filed a timely
administrative charge or a complaint under
federal, State, or local law . . . ;
(2) at least 180 days have elapsed since the filing
of the administrative charge or complaint; and
(3) the civil action is filed within 2 years after
the alleged unlawful employment practice
occurred.
See Md. Code, State Gov’t § 20-1013(a)(1)-(3). By using the
conjunctive word “and,” the MFEPA is unambiguous — all three of
those requirements must be met.
Here, neither the original Complaint nor the Amended
Complaint adding McCray’s MFEPA claims was filed within two
years of her termination from the MTA. As a result, the
district court properly dismissed those claims as untimely, and
the court’s ruling must be sustained.
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IV.
Pursuant to the foregoing, we affirm the judgment of the
district court.
AFFIRMED
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