Jennings v. City of New York
- Gregory Woods
- 1:22-cv-01885
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Jennings v. City of New York, Judge Woods partly granted and partly denied dismissal, dismissed some claims, and allowed limited amendment.
Arabia Jennings may pursue amendment of the claims the court allowed her to address, while the claims against the New York City Police Department were dismissed with prejudice and the specified other claims were dismissed without prejudice. The defendants’ motion to dismiss was otherwise denied in part.
What happened
In Jennings v. City of New York, Arabia Jennings challenged the defendants’ request to dismiss her complaint. A magistrate judge recommended granting the request in part and denying it in part, and Jennings objected to several parts of that recommendation.
The court agreed with the magistrate judge’s analysis and adopted the recommendation, except for the recommendation to deny Jennings permission to amend her complaint. The court dismissed the claims against the Police Department with prejudice and dismissed specified discrimination, retaliation, and hostile-work-environment claims without prejudice.
Judge Woods granted Jennings’s motion to amend in part and denied it in part. He allowed her to amend the complaint to address identified deficiencies, with the amended complaint due within 14 days of the order.
The detailed version
- Jennings v. City of New York · No. 1:22-cv-01885
- Gregory Woods
- Mar. 1, 2023
Background
The defendants moved to dismiss Arabia Jennings’s complaint. On January 26, 2023, Magistrate Judge Sarah L. Cave issued a report and recommendation advising that the motion be granted in part and denied in part. Jennings timely objected to four parts of that recommendation: conclusions concerning continuing violations for her race- and gender-discrimination claims, whether certain conduct was protected activity, whether she adequately alleged a causal connection based on timing, and whether she should be denied permission to amend.
The district court reviewed the unobjected-to portions for clear error, meaning an obvious mistake, and found none. It reviewed the objected-to portions independently and agreed with Judge Cave’s analysis and conclusions, except concerning leave to amend.
Ruling
The court adopted the report and recommendation in its entirety except for the recommendation that Jennings be denied leave to amend. It ruled that the defendants’ motion to dismiss was granted in part and denied in part as follows:
- Jennings’s claims against the New York City Police Department were dismissed with prejudice. - The following claims were dismissed without prejudice: her federal employment-discrimination and retaliation claims based on discrete acts occurring before November 22, 2018; her claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law based on discrete acts occurring before March 4, 2019; her gender-discrimination and retaliation claims; her race-retaliation claims based on Protected Activities (1) through (5) and (7) through (9); and her federal, § 1983, and New York State Human Rights Law hostile-work-environment claims. - Jennings’s motion to amend was granted in part and denied in part. She could amend the complaint to address the deficiencies identified in the report and recommendation. The amended complaint had to be filed within 14 days after the order.
The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the motions at Docket Nos. 13 and 19.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.