Ma v. San Francisco Estuary Institute

Background

Shufen Ma, proceeding without a lawyer, sued David Senn and the San Francisco Estuary Institute over alleged failures to hire her for positions connected with the Institute’s Nutrients Project. She alleged discrimination based on age, sex, race, and national origin. The five claims concerned hiring decisions or related conduct from 2015 through 2021, including the rejection of her offer to work as a volunteer.

Ma filed a discrimination charge with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, now called the Civil Rights Department, on September 2, 2022. The charge was also sent to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The charge identified age and race discrimination and stated that Ma was Chinese and that younger, non-Asian candidates were hired.

Court’s analysis

The court took judicial notice of Ma’s administrative charge and the notice showing that it was sent to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It did not consider the materials Ma separately submitted for judicial notice because they did not affect the issues before the court.

The court held that all of Ma’s Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment Act claims, as currently pleaded, were untimely. Those laws generally require a discrimination charge to be filed within 300 days of the alleged employment practice when, as here, the claimant first files with a state agency. The court concluded that each alleged failure to hire occurred, or should have been known to Ma, too long before her September 2, 2022 charge. The court rejected Ma’s reliance on the continuing-violation doctrine because failures to hire are separate, identifiable acts that do not become timely merely because they are related to earlier acts.

The court also held that Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act do not impose individual liability for damages on supervisors or other individual employees. Therefore, Ma’s claims against Senn under those statutes were not valid.

The court concluded that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over the sex-discrimination portions of Claims One and Five because Ma’s administrative charge identified age and race discrimination but did not identify sex discrimination or facts that would reasonably have led to an investigation of sex discrimination. By contrast, the court held that Ma had adequately raised national-origin discrimination for administrative-exhaustion purposes. Although the charge listed race rather than national origin, its reference to Ma being Chinese could reasonably have led to an investigation of national-origin discrimination.

Disposition

The court granted the motion in part and denied it in part. It dismissed all Equal Pay Act claims with prejudice and without leave to amend. It dismissed all Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment Act claims against Senn with prejudice and ordered that Senn be terminated as a defendant. It dismissed with prejudice the sex-discrimination portions of Claims One and Five and did not permit amendment of those portions.

The court stated that the age-, race-, and national-origin portions of the claims could not be cured by amendment where the complaint established that they accrued outside the applicable limitations period. For Claims Four and Five, however, the court found it less clear when Ma knew or should have known that she had not been hired, so it permitted amendment to allege facts supporting timeliness. The court also permitted Ma to add the later alleged acts described in her opposition, provided she did not assert Title VII or Age Discrimination in Employment Act sex-discrimination claims and had a good-faith basis for believing administrative-exhaustion requirements were satisfied. The amended complaint was due February 16, 2024. The court declined to decide the defendants’ other challenges under Rule 12(b)(6), which is the rule for testing whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim.