Bruce v. New York City Department of Education
- Gregory Woods
- 1:25-cv-01986
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Nicole Bruce v. New York City Department of Education, Judge Moses treated Bruce’s filing as a proposed amendment and set deadlines without deciding dismissal.
Nicole Bruce, her counsel, and the defendants were affected by the court’s treatment of the filing as a proposed amended complaint and by the deadlines governing the defendants’ response or reply.
What happened
Nicole Bruce v. New York City Department of Education is an employment-discrimination case that Bruce originally filed without a lawyer. After her attorney appeared, the defendants asked the court to dismiss the complaint, and Bruce missed several deadlines to oppose that request or amend her complaint as a matter of course.
Bruce later filed a document called a “First Amended Complaint,” but it did not meet several filing requirements, including being signed by her attorney when first submitted. She refiled it with counsel’s signature, but still did not file the required legal memorandum, formal request to amend, or redlined proposed complaint. The court treated the filing as a proposed amended complaint rather than accepting it as an amendment.
Judge Barbara Moses gave the defendants until September 18, 2025, to say whether they would accept the proposed amendment while preserving their right to seek dismissal. If they accepted it, their next filing would be due September 25; otherwise, their reply on the existing dismissal motion would be due September 18, and no further motion papers would be accepted. The order did not decide the pending motion to dismiss.
The detailed version
- Bruce v. New York City Department of Education · No. 1:25-cv-01986
- Gregory Woods
- Sept. 11, 2025
Background
Nicole Bruce filed this employment-discrimination action without a lawyer on March 8, 2025. Attorney Charles R. Mackenzie later appeared for her on April 23, but he did not seek to amend the complaint at that time. On July 14, the defendants moved to dismiss the complaint in its entirety.
Bruce missed the July 28 deadline to oppose the dismissal motion and the August 4 deadline to amend the complaint as a matter of course. The court later extended both deadlines to August 13, but Bruce missed that deadline as well. The court then granted her request for an additional extension to oppose the dismissal motion until September 10.
Filing Deficiencies
Bruce filed declarations opposing dismissal and a short letter asking for permission to amend. The court noted that the papers did not include a legal memorandum, a formal motion for permission to amend, or a clean or redlined copy of the proposed amended complaint. The court gave her until September 10 to correct those problems.
On September 10, Bruce filed a document labeled “First Amended Complaint” that was signed only by her. The Clerk rejected it as deficient because it was not signed by her attorney, as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(a). On September 11, she filed the same document again with counsel’s signature. The court noted that the document appeared to add a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and remove claims under state and local law.
Ruling and Next Steps
Because Bruce had repeatedly missed the deadline to amend as a matter of course, the court construed the September 11 filing as a proposed First Amended Complaint rather than an accepted amended complaint. The court did not grant permission to amend and did not rule on the defendants’ pending motion to dismiss.
The defendants were ordered to advise the court by September 18 whether they would accept the proposed amendment, without giving up their right to challenge it under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12. If they accepted it, their motion or answer concerning the amended complaint would be due September 25. If they chose to rely on their pending motion to dismiss, their reply would be due September 18, and the court would not accept additional motion papers.
Judge Barbara Moses also warned Bruce and her counsel that represented parties are not entitled to the extra flexibility sometimes given to people without lawyers, and criticized counsel’s repeated failure to follow court orders and federal and local procedural rules.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.