A.H. v. West Contra Costa Unified School District
- Martinez-Olguin
- 3:22-cv-03233
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In A.H. v. West Contra Costa Unified School District, Judge Martinez-Olguin granted defendants’ motion to strike and dismiss disability claims.
A.H.’s disability-discrimination claims were dismissed with prejudice, and specified allegations concerning the District were struck from the fourth claim. The remaining claims were allowed to proceed to the answer stage.
What happened
In A.H. v. West Contra Costa Unified School District, Summer Sigler and the District challenged parts of A.H.’s third amended complaint. They argued that some allegations repeated claims and allegations the court had already dismissed.
The court struck specified paragraphs from the fourth claim because they repeated allegations previously dismissed and still referred to misconduct by the District, which was no longer a defendant on that claim. The court also concluded that A.H.’s disability-discrimination claims remained inadequately pleaded after earlier opportunities to correct them.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted the motion to strike and granted the motion to dismiss the disability-discrimination claims—the seventh, eighth, and tenth causes of action. Those claims were dismissed with prejudice, leave to amend was denied, and defendants were ordered to answer the remaining claims within 30 days.
The detailed version
- A.H. v. West Contra Costa Unified School District · No. 3:22-cv-03233
- Martinez-Olguin
- Apr. 22, 2024
Background
Defendants Summer Sigler and West Contra Costa Unified School District moved to strike and dismiss portions of A.H.’s third amended complaint. The court decided the motion without oral argument and vacated the scheduled hearing.
Motion to Strike
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) allows a court to remove redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous material from a pleading. The defendants asked the court to strike paragraphs 113, 116–118, 122, 123, and 125–132 because the allegations had already been dismissed with prejudice.
The court agreed. It found that the allegations in the fourth claim remained the same, word for word, as allegations in the previous complaint that had been dismissed with prejudice. Although A.H. removed the District from the heading of the fourth cause of action, the allegations still included references to the District, including requests for punitive damages and attorney fees against it. Because the District was no longer a defendant on that claim, the court granted the motion to strike the specified paragraphs and ordered that references to alleged misconduct by the District be removed.
Motion to Dismiss
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a court must dismiss a complaint that does not state a legally sufficient claim for relief. The court explained that a complaint must include enough facts to make the claimed right to relief plausible.
Sigler and the District moved to dismiss A.H.’s disability-discrimination claims. The court had previously dismissed those claims and had explained that alleging disability and abuse alone was not enough to show discrimination because of the disability. The court found that the third amended complaint did not cure the previously identified problems: it added no meaningful facts and did not substantively change the earlier allegations. The claims therefore remained insufficiently pleaded.
Disposition
The court granted the motion to dismiss the disability-discrimination claims in the seventh, eighth, and tenth causes of action. The court dismissed those causes of action with prejudice and denied A.H.’s request for another opportunity to amend because the earlier amendments had not corrected the deficiencies. Defendants were ordered to answer the remaining claims within 30 days of the order.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.