Cummings v. The City of New York

Background

Patricia Cummings, a probationary teacher at William W. Niles School—Middle School 118, alleged that she was removed from teaching and later terminated after complaints about a lesson on the Middle Passage and slavery. The allegations concerned a classroom demonstration in which students were directed to sit or lie on the floor to illustrate cramped conditions on a slave ship. The Office of Special Investigations concluded that Cummings had not engaged in corporal punishment but found that the lesson showed poor judgment.

The New York Daily News reported on the allegations and the investigation. Cummings alleged that the reports and statements by other defendants were false and harmed her. Her amended pleading asserted constitutional due-process and discrimination claims against the City Defendants, state-law fraud, negligence, and emotional-distress claims against those defendants, and defamation and false-light claims against media defendants, Senator Kevin S. Parker, and other individuals and entities.

Operative pleading

The court had previously dismissed Cummings’s original complaint but allowed amendment. It later granted permission to re-file the amended complaint only to correct the name of one defendant. Cummings filed a later version containing additional allegations without obtaining permission to make those further amendments. The court therefore treated the March 16, 2020 amended complaint as the operative pleading and did not consider allegations added in the later filing.

Rule 12(b)(6) standard and law of the case

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint alleges enough factual matter to state a plausible claim for relief. The court accepted well-pleaded facts as true for this motion but did not accept legal conclusions presented as facts.

The court also applied the law-of-the-case doctrine, which generally requires a court to follow its earlier rulings in the same case unless there is a compelling reason to change them. The court found no intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, clear error, or manifest injustice. It held that claims based on facts already found inadequate remained dismissed, and that the newly alleged facts did not make any claim viable.

Claims against the City Defendants

The court dismissed the procedural due-process claim with prejudice. It had previously ruled that, as a probationary teacher, Cummings did not have a protected property interest in continued employment. The new allegations about investigative procedures did not create a right to have the investigation conducted in a particular way.

The court also rejected Cummings’s claim that reputational harm combined with government action deprived her of a protected liberty interest. It found that an adequate state-law proceeding was available, and that Cummings did not pursue it. In addition, the newly identified statement by DOE spokesperson Doug Cohen occurred more than seven months before Cummings’s termination and expressed an opinion that the allegations were disturbing; it did not accuse her of wrongdoing or satisfy the required connection to the termination.

The court dismissed with prejudice Cummings’s equal-protection and race-discrimination claims. She alleged that two Black individuals received an unspecified benefit that she did not receive, but neither was similarly situated to her as a probationary teacher. She did not allege that a non-Caucasian teacher who taught a controversial lesson was treated more favorably. The court also found that any claim against the City under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lacked allegations supporting municipal liability, such as an underlying constitutional violation or a factual pattern or practice of discrimination. The court treated Cummings’s reference to 42 U.S.C. § 1985 as a concession that she had not stated a conspiracy claim because she did not address it in opposition to dismissal.

The court dismissed with prejudice the state-law claims against the City Defendants. It held that the intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress allegations did not describe conduct sufficiently extreme or outrageous and that such a claim could not be used to avoid the consequences of Cummings’s probationary, terminable-at-will employment. The negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress and negligence claims failed because Cummings did not plead the required special duty. The fraud claim failed because the alleged schedule for the upcoming school year did not plausibly show an intent to deceive, justifiable reliance, or a resulting financial loss.

False-light claim

The court dismissed with prejudice the newly asserted false-light claim against the Daily News Defendants, Media Defendants, Senator Parker, Philip Scott, Advise Media Network, Natasha Capers, Angel Martinez, and the Coalition of Educational Justice. Applying New York law, the court held that New York does not recognize a tort for presenting someone in a false light.

Defamation claims

The defamation claims against the Media Defendants and Senator Parker were dismissed with prejudice because the amended pleading identified no new factual statements by them. The court had previously determined that the challenged statements were opinions rather than provably false factual assertions, and Cummings’s new allegations merely reargued that earlier ruling.

The court dismissed with prejudice the defamation claims against the Daily News Defendants. It reaffirmed that New York Civil Rights Law § 74 protects fair and true reports of official proceedings. The court concluded that the February 1 article reported an ongoing investigation and that the timing alleged by Cummings did not remove the article from the statute’s protection. It also held that the articles were substantially accurate reports of student allegations. The October 20 article’s reference to “walked on students,” read together with the article’s body, did not reasonably mean that Cummings literally walked on students, and the statement that she was removed from her post accurately reflected that she did not teach her regular class during the specified period.

Defendants who had not appeared

The court noted that Capers, Martinez, the Coalition of Educational Justice, Scott, and Advise had not properly been served or had not been served at all, and none had appeared. The court stated that it was considering dismissing the claims against them because of service defects and because the pleading appeared not to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6). It gave Cummings five business days to file one brief, limited to fifteen double-spaced pages, addressing whether any claim against those five defendants was viable.

Disposition

Judge Colleen McMahon granted the motions to dismiss filed by the City Defendants, the Daily News Defendants, the Media Defendants, and Senator Parker. The court dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice as to those defendant groups and directed the clerk to remove the listed motions from the pending-motion list. The order did not finally dismiss the claims against the five non-appearing defendants; instead, it gave Cummings an opportunity to respond before any such dismissal.