Morales v. New York City Transit Authority

Background

Edwin Morales, a Bus Mechanic employed by the New York City Transit Authority since 1996, alleged that the Authority and its subsidiary violated his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. He claimed that, after he reported workplace harassment, supervisors brought several disciplinary charges against him. The charges included insubordination, failure to follow a direct order, being absent without authorization, responsibility for a bus air-conditioning fire and refrigerant leak, and making a false statement during a disciplinary hearing.

Morales challenged the charges through the three-step process in his union’s collective bargaining agreement. After his Step II appeals were sustained on April 24, 2017, he sought arbitration, the third and final step. The Authority scheduled arbitration three times—twice in 2017 and once in 2018—but postponed each proceeding and had not rescheduled it as of June 22, 2020. Morales alleged that the unresolved disciplinary charges prevented him from receiving a supervisory promotion after he passed a promotional test.

Motion to Dismiss

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint alleges enough facts to support a legally plausible claim. They argued that Morales had not alleged the municipal policy or custom required for liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; that the Fifth Amendment claim could not be brought against a state entity; that he had not identified a protected property interest; and that he received constitutionally adequate process.

Court’s Analysis

The court treated Morales’s constitutional claims as claims under Section 1983. It explained that the Transit Authority is a municipal agency and therefore cannot be held liable simply because its employees allegedly violated the Constitution. Under the rule commonly called Monell liability, Morales had to allege that a municipal policy or custom caused the constitutional violation.

The court found that the complaint did not allege such a policy or custom. Instead, Morales alleged that the Authority failed to follow the procedures in the collective bargaining agreement by delaying his arbitration. The court stated that alleging a municipality failed to follow its own rules is the opposite of alleging that an unconstitutional policy or custom caused the injury. The court also rejected Morales’s reliance on cases involving constitutional claims against individual municipal employees because those cases did not address municipal liability.

Because the complaint failed to allege municipal liability, the court did not address the defendants’ remaining arguments for dismissal.

Disposition

The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. The opinion states that the complaint was dismissed without prejudice, and the court granted Morales leave to amend. The court ordered him to notify it by July 10, 2020, whether he would file an amended complaint. The court also said the parties should notify it if the Authority scheduled the arbitration.