Perkins v. City of Minneapolis

Background

Byron L. Perkins, proceeding without a lawyer, sued the City of Minneapolis under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He alleged failure to promote, retaliation, and race-based harassment. Perkins alleged that the City suspended him without pay for two weeks in 2018 and barred him from applying for other City positions for three years. After the ban expired in June 2021, he applied for eleven City positions but was not selected. He also alleged that management harassed, verbally assaulted, and threatened him, and that he reported those events to the City’s Human Resources Department.

Perkins filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2022 and later received a right-to-sue letter. In the charge, he alleged failure to promote and retaliation, but he did not identify harassment or a hostile work environment. The City moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). The court applied the same standard used for a motion to dismiss for failure to state a legally sufficient claim, accepting pleaded facts as true and drawing reasonable inferences for Perkins, while disregarding unsupported legal conclusions.

Harassment claim

The court held that Perkins failed to exhaust his administrative remedies for harassment. It reviewed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge and found that it alleged only failure to promote and retaliation. The charge did not use the words “harassment” or “hostile work environment,” describe harassment incidents, or allege facts from which harassment could reasonably be inferred.

The court also concluded that Perkins could not file a new charge concerning the events in his complaint because the filing deadline had passed. The court therefore dismissed the Title VII harassment claim with prejudice.

Failure-to-promote claim

The court concluded that Perkins plausibly alleged that he belonged to a protected group, applied for positions for which he was qualified, and was rejected. But he did not identify the race or ethnicity of the people selected instead of him or allege facts showing that those people were similarly situated but outside his protected group. The court held that these allegations did not raise his racial-discrimination claim above the speculative level.

The court dismissed the failure-to-promote claim without prejudice and granted leave to amend within thirty days.

Retaliation claim

The court held that Perkins did not plausibly allege a causal connection between protected activity and the City’s decisions not to hire or promote him. Perkins alleged that he complained to Human Resources and later filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge about harassment, but he did not allege facts connecting those complaints to race-based discrimination. The court also found that he did not provide dates showing that his complaints were sufficiently close in time to the adverse employment decisions, and he did not otherwise connect the complaints to those decisions.

The court therefore dismissed the retaliation claim without prejudice and granted leave to amend within thirty days.

Disposition

The court granted the City’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. It dismissed the harassment claim with prejudice and dismissed the failure-to-promote and retaliation claims without prejudice. The order states that Perkins could file an amended complaint regarding his failure-to-promote and harassment claims within thirty days, but this conflicts with the court’s separate ruling that the harassment claim was dismissed with prejudice. The order also states that judgment dismissing the case would be entered if Perkins did not amend within thirty days. The court noted that the permission to amend did not express a view on the merits of the failure-to-promote or retaliation claims.