Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 179
court granted the motion. The plaintiff worked as a management associate at the
defendant’s fulfillment center. The plaintiff asserted that the defendant “failed to
aggressively implement policies intended to protect” from COVID-19 “its fulfillment
center staff, the preponderance of whom were African American, Latino/a or recently
arrived immigrants of various minority national origins.” Id. at *2. The plaintiff contended
that the defendant failed to quarantine employees who had close contact with an
employee who tested positive for COVID-19, until after other Caucasian employees
were also affected. The plaintiff further asserted that the defendant thereafter
quarantined all employees who were exposed. Two days later, the plaintiff returned to
the fulfillment center in order to lead a demonstration of workers in the parking lot, and
stated that he was leading employees in opposition of the defendant’s “practices which
discriminated against minority workers and immigrants by subjecting them to inferior
terms and conditions of employment due to their race/ethnicity.” Id. at *3-4. The
defendant terminated the plaintiff’s employment for violating the quarantine order and
jeopardizing the health and safety of other employees. Id. at *4. The court found that the
plaintiff failed to plausibly allege that he was fired because of his race or engagement in
a protected activity. The court opined that the plaintiff did not establish any basis that
provided even minimal support for the inference that his race played a role in the
defendant’s decision to terminate his employment. Id. at *8. The court ruled that the
plaintiff did not provide any evidence that race was a motivating factor in his termination.
The court also determined that the plaintiff failed to adequately plead that the defendant
engaged in unlawful retaliation by terminating his employment. The court explained that
protesting general grievances about health or safety was not a protected activity for
purposes of the NYSHRL and the NYCHRL. The court further noted that the plaintiff
never alleged that he discussed complaints of race discrimination or retaliation with
management. Finally, the court ruled that the plaintiff failed to make allegations that
raised an inference of discriminatory intent because he did not allege that the defendant
subjected similarly-situated groups differently on the basis of their race. For these
reasons, the court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss and dismissed the class
action.
Similarly, in Goins, et al. v. UPS, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 224802 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 13,
2022), the plaintiffs filed a class action alleging that the defendant discriminated against
female employees on the basis of their sex and brought claims under Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, the Equal Pay Act,
the California Equal Pay Act, and unfair competition under California Business and
Professions Code. The defendant filed a motion to dismiss, and the court granted the
motion. The court determined that the complaint was full of conclusory statements, and
failed to provide a “formulaic recitation of the facts comprising the elements of each
claim.” Id. at *1. The court ruled that the complaint made it impossible to review the
sufficiently of the claims. The court noted that although plaintiffs’ counsel indicated at
the hearing on the motion that the first two causes of action were intended to include
both disparate impact and disparate treatment, it was not apparent from a plain reading
of the complaint. The court also opined that the theories should be pleaded separately
for clarity, given the distinctions between the elements for disparate treatment and
disparate impact. Id. at *3. As for the Equal Pay Act claim, the court stated that the
complaint failed to provide any information regarding the duties performed by
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
