Schultz v. The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation

Background

Brendan Schultz proceeded without a lawyer and had previously been allowed to proceed without paying the filing fee. He sued the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation; Terry Babcock-Lumish, the Foundation’s current Executive Secretary; Andrew Rich, its former Executive Secretary; Tara Yglesias, its Deputy Executive Secretary; Westbrook Murphy, its General Counsel; Brooks Allen, Secretary of the 2019 Truman Scholarship San Francisco Regional Review Panel; and Kevin Higgins, Chair of that panel.

Schultz alleged that he was a finalist for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and interviewed with the Foundation’s San Francisco regional panel on March 18, 2019. He alleged that panel members asked inappropriate and hostile questions about the historical persecution of Jewish people and his identity as a Jewish American. He also alleged that another Jewish finalist was asked to compare oppression of Jews in America with the experiences of Black Americans, and that no other finalist was asked to defend the traumatic communal experiences of an ethnic group. Schultz did not receive the scholarship.

After the interview, Schultz contacted Foundation officials and others about alleged discrimination and the Foundation’s investigation and grievance process. The complaint asserted claims under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fifth Amendment. Schultz sought damages and injunctions requiring changes to the Foundation’s grievance process, bias training for future interview panelists, and restrictions on Higgins and Allen’s future participation in scholarship selection.

Legal standard

Because Schultz was proceeding without paying the filing fee, the court screened his complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. That statute requires dismissal before service if such a complaint is frivolous, fails to state a claim, or shows a complete defense on its face. The court also applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, which requires a short and plain statement giving defendants fair notice of the claims and the grounds for them. The court explained that a complaint must allege facts plausibly establishing each defendant’s liability.

Court’s analysis

The court found that the complaint did not comply with Rule 8. Schultz’s Title VI claim quoted the Foundation’s equal-opportunity statement and the statute, but did not identify which specific acts by which defendants violated Title VI. The complaint also did not specify which defendants were liable under that claim. The court concluded that legal arguments and references to antisemitic discrimination, without specific factual allegations connecting each defendant to the alleged violation, were insufficient. The court therefore stated that the Title VI claim could not proceed as pleaded.

The court likewise found that Schultz’s Fifth Amendment claim was improperly pleaded. The claim broadly asserted that discrimination by a federal agency in selecting participants for one of its programs violated the Fifth Amendment, but it did not identify the specific conduct of each defendant or clarify which entity was the alleged federal agency. The court stated that this claim failed under Rule 12(b)(6), the rule allowing dismissal for failure to state a legally sufficient claim.

Disposition

The court concluded that the complaint did not comply with Rule 8 and gave Schultz 30 days to file an amended complaint. The court directed him to use separate numbered paragraphs for the allegations and each claim, identify each defendant and the specific action or inaction allegedly violating his statutory or constitutional rights, and identify the injury resulting from each claim. The opinion ends with the statement, “IT IS SO RECOMMENDED.”