Doe v. Spahn

Background

Jane Doe filed a proposed class action claiming that the Peace Corps violated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act by failing to provide individualized consideration or an appropriate interactive process for invitees with disabilities and by using a medical-clearance process that screened out people based on disability. She alleges that the proposed class consists of Peace Corps invitees denied volunteer positions because of disability, a record of disability, or perceived disability.

The Peace Corps provisionally offered Doe a volunteer position in North Macedonia in February 2020 but denied her medical clearance. During the recruitment process, Doe lived in Berkeley, California. She met with a Peace Corps advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, completed a health-history form, discussed the Peace Corps’s medication-screening list, and received the denial while living in Berkeley. The Peace Corps’s appeal board later denied her appeal, and she filed an administrative discrimination complaint. After more than 180 days passed without a final agency decision, she filed this lawsuit.

Motions

The government moved to dismiss or transfer the case based on improper or inconvenient venue. It also moved to dismiss or strike the proposed class claims under Rules 12(b)(6) and 12(f), arguing that the class allegations were conclusory and did not satisfy the requirements for commonality and typicality. The government asked the court to defer those motions if the case were transferred.

Venue

The court held that venue was proper in the Northern District of California. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(e)(1), venue was proper if a substantial part of the events or omissions underlying the claim occurred there. The court found that the Peace Corps recruited and interviewed Doe, provisionally offered her a position, applied its medical-clearance policies to her, and sent the medical-clearance correspondence while she lived in Berkeley. The court therefore concluded that a substantial part of the alleged discrimination occurred in that district.

Transfer Analysis

The court nevertheless found transfer appropriate under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), which allows a federal court to transfer a civil case to another district where it could have been filed when doing so would serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses and the interests of justice. The parties agreed that venue was proper in the District of Columbia.

The court gave Doe’s choice of forum little weight because she no longer lived in the district when she filed the case and sought to represent a proposed nationwide or worldwide class. It found that the operative facts primarily occurred in Washington, D.C., because the Peace Corps’s medical-clearance policies were implemented there and the relevant decision-making occurred at Peace Corps headquarters. The court also found that the key witnesses and the defendant were in Washington, D.C., and that Doe’s residence was closer to Washington, D.C., than to San Francisco. Local interest favored transfer because the alleged decision-making occurred in Washington, D.C. Access to documents, court congestion, and the courts’ familiarity with federal law were neutral or had little significance.

Disposition

The court granted the defendant’s motion to transfer the case to the District of Columbia under § 1404(a). It did not decide the government’s motions to dismiss or strike the proposed class claims. Those issues were left for the transferee court. The order states that it disposes of ECF No. 47.