Sughrim v. State of New York

Background

The plaintiffs moved to reinstate Khaldoun Alshamiri’s and Roland Sofo’s Title VII claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), or alternatively to obtain permission under Rule 15(a) to file a Fourth Amended Complaint. In November 2020, the court had granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss the Third Amended Complaint. That order dismissed Alshamiri’s and Sofo’s Title VII claims without prejudice because neither had received a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The court had stated that they could seek permission to amend if and when they received the letters.

The plaintiffs said the EEOC still had not provided the letters despite their efforts to obtain them. They requested the letters on January 11, 2022, repeated the request on April 6, 2022, and were told on May 25 that the EEOC could not locate the charges. The plaintiffs then sent copies of the charges, which had been stamped as received at the EEOC’s New York office on March 12, 2020. The EEOC later stated that the charges had been processed, but the agency’s website did not list them and the letters still had not been provided.

Legal standard

Rule 15(a) provides that courts should freely allow amendment when justice requires. A court may deny leave for reasons including futility, bad faith, undue delay, or unfair prejudice to the opposing party.

Title VII generally requires a plaintiff to file a charge with the EEOC before bringing a civil action and provides for a notice-of-right-to-sue letter. The court noted that this exhaustion requirement is a prudential requirement rather than a jurisdictional one, meaning that a failure to complete the administrative process does not always prevent judicial review. Courts may excuse the absence of a right-to-sue letter when the plaintiff made diligent efforts to obtain it and the failure resulted from the agency rather than the plaintiff.

Court’s analysis

The court found that amendment was warranted and that there was no evidence of futility, bad faith, undue delay, or undue prejudice. Because Alshamiri and Sofo filed their EEOC charges on March 12, 2020, the EEOC was obligated either to file a civil action or issue right-to-sue letters by September 8, 2020. The court concluded that the EEOC’s failure to act after multiple requests, including its failure to locate the charges more than two years after receiving them, excused the absence of the letters.

The defendants argued that the cited cases involved different types of EEOC errors. The court rejected that distinction, stating that the precise form of the agency’s error did not matter when deciding whether the plaintiffs should be penalized for being unable to obtain right-to-sue letters. The defendants also argued that the plaintiffs waited too long to follow up with the EEOC. The court found no bad faith because the case had been stayed from January 19, 2021, through January 10, 2022, during unsuccessful mediation, and the plaintiffs requested the letters the day after the stay ended.

The defendants further argued that amendment would prejudice them because they would have to respond to pending class-certification and summary-judgment or injunctive-relief motions while the case’s claims and parties remained uncertain. The court found that concern insufficient because it had already postponed the defendants’ responses until after deciding the amendment motion. The court also noted that the defendants did not claim they would need additional discovery and that the need for new discovery alone would not establish undue prejudice.

Disposition

The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to amend. It ordered the plaintiffs to file their Fourth Amended Complaint by August 18, 2022, and stated that the defendants’ oppositions to the pending motions were due by September 16, 2022. Judge Ronnie Abrams directed the clerk to terminate the motion at docket number 249.