Dubose v. SUNY Maritime College Office of Financial Aid

Background

Malcolm DuBose, proceeding without a lawyer, filed the action on July 19, 2024. On May 23, 2025, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), and the Clerk entered judgment for the defendants and closed the case.

DuBose later sought permission to reopen the case and file an amended complaint adding claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. He initially described a proposed claim based on defendants’ alleged ethnic bias that prevented him from obtaining a Title IV loan. After the court required more detail, DuBose clarified that he wanted to assert both discrimination and retaliation claims under Section 1981. The defendants opposed the request.

Legal Standard

The court treated DuBose’s request as a motion under Rule 60(b), which permits extraordinary relief from a judgment in exceptional circumstances. Because DuBose had not previously been given an opportunity to amend, the court could deny post-judgment permission to file a first amended complaint only for a justifying reason, including undue delay, bad faith, prejudice, or futility.

An amendment is futile if the proposed pleading could not survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. To survive that motion, a complaint must include enough factual matter to make the claim plausible, rather than relying on conclusions or speculation.

Proposed Section 1981 Discrimination Claims

Section 1981 protects against purposeful racial discrimination that interferes with making or enforcing contracts. The court explained that a plaintiff generally must allege that he is a racial-minority member, that the defendant intended to discriminate because of race, and that the discrimination concerned an activity covered by the statute.

DuBose alleged that defendants knowingly misinformed him about his eligibility for federal student aid to steer him toward private loans or an agreement with the College. He suggested that defendants believed a Black male would default on student loans and thereby harm the College’s cohort default rate, a measure connected to a school’s federal student-loan eligibility.

The court found that this theory was materially similar to one DuBose had raised in the earlier round of the case. The court had previously rejected that theory because the cited national statistics did not provide specific information about the College and DuBose had not alleged other facts linking the conduct to race or gender. The court also noted that documents submitted by DuBose showed that defendants had spent time helping him apply for federal aid and that the College had awarded him a retroactive scholarship to help him pay an earlier tuition balance.

The proposed Section 1981 discrimination claims remained deficient. The court stated that statistics alone generally cannot establish discriminatory intent in an individual Section 1981 case. DuBose’s only new allegation was that one Individual Defendant made an unsolicited comment that his ineligibility for student aid was “not about [his] race.” The court found that the comment did not on its face show a racially discriminatory attitude and that, without more, a stray remark could not support a discrimination case. Because DuBose alleged no other facts supporting a plausible inference of discriminatory intent, the court found that the proposed discrimination amendment would be futile.

Proposed Section 1981 Retaliation Claims

Section 1981 also covers retaliation. To state a retaliation claim, a plaintiff must allege that he engaged in activity protected by anti-discrimination laws, the defendants knew about that activity, the defendants took adverse action because of it, and the protected activity caused the adverse action. For individual liability, the plaintiff must also connect each person personally to the alleged discriminatory or retaliatory conduct.

The court found that DuBose’s allegation that he twice told Lu-Anne Plaisance that he believed he was being denied a Title IV contract because of his ethnicity and race was enough to allege protected activity. But DuBose did not allege that the other Individual Defendants knew about his complaint, which defeated the proposed retaliation claims against them. The court also found that the allegations did not connect Plaisance to the alleged retaliation because DuBose did not allege that she participated in deciding his federal-aid eligibility.

The court separately found that the proposed retaliation claim against the College was barred by sovereign immunity. It explained that SUNY is treated as part of New York State for purposes of the Eleventh Amendment and that no legal or equitable relief is available against SUNY under Section 1983 in the circumstances described by the court. The court stated that even if it treated DuBose’s Section 1981 claim against the College as a Section 1983 claim, sovereign immunity would still prevent the claim from proceeding absent a waiver or valid congressional abrogation.

Disposition

The court concluded that all of DuBose’s proposed retaliation claims would fail to survive a motion to dismiss and that his proposed discrimination claims were also deficient. Because amendment would be futile, the court denied DuBose’s request to reopen the case and file an amended complaint. Judge Jennifer L. Rochon issued the order on September 17, 2025.