United States District Court, N.D. Alabama, Southern Division
MEMORANDUM OPINION
KARON
OWEN BOWDRE, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
This
case comes before the court on Defendant City of
Birmingham's “Partial Motion to Dismiss
Plaintiff's Complaint, ” pursuant to Federal Rule
of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). (Doc. 5.) For the reasons
explained below, the court will GRANT the
City's motion.
A.
Background
Plaintiff
Michael Blancher, a white male and nine-year veteran of the
Birmingham Police Department, filed suit against the City of
Birmingham on June 25, 2019, alleging (1) racial
discrimination and (2) retaliation in violation of Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To support his two-count
complaint, Mr. Blancher alleges that on January 6, 2018, he
was called to the scene of a traffic accident featuring a
pickup truck, driven by a white male, that collided with two
other vehicles, including a car driven by a black female (the
“victim”). (Doc. 1 at 4.) Mr. Blancher, the
officer in charge of the scene, was accompanied by three
other officers: one white male and two black females.
(Id.)
According
to the Complaint, while the victim was trapped in her vehicle
and required assistance from paramedics to escape,
“some witnesses” reported seeing the driver of
the pickup truck throwing items off a nearby bridge, and
“conflicting reports” existed as to whether
someone found bags of heroin at the scene. (Id.) Mr.
Blancher alleges that he investigated the scene and, finding
no indication that the truck driver was impaired, did not
charge the truck driver with driving under the influence of
drugs or alcohol. (Id.)
In the
days that followed, according to the Complaint, one of the
black female officers who was at the scene of the accident
discovered that she personally knew the victim's mother.
The officer told the victim's mother that the truck
driver was intoxicated when his truck collided with the
victim's car and that he threw items off a bridge
immediately following the accident; she also told the
victim's mother that someone found bags of heroin at the
scene. (Id. at 5.) Based on this information, the
victim's mother filed a complaint against Mr. Blancher
with the City of Birmingham, and the victim's uncle sent
an email to the mayor of Birmingham suggesting that racial
bias influenced Mr. Blancher's decision to not criminally
charge the truck driver. (Id.)
In
March of 2018, about two months after the accident, a black
female internal affairs officer interviewed both black female
police officers who were present at the scene of the
accident, as well as three witnesses at the scene, all of
whom were also black and female. The internal affairs officer
also interviewed Mr. Blancher, who denied knowledge of any
drugs or alcohol at the scene of the accident. (Id.)
The
internal affairs officer then submitted a “purposefully
misleading” report to Birmingham Chief of Police (and
black male) Orlando Wilson, who fired Mr. Blancher on March
21, 2018. (Id. at 6.) A series of bureaucratic
reversals and appeals followed, culminating with Mr.
Blancher's filing of a discrimination claim with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on September 18, 2018
and the instant case on June 25, 2019. (Id.)
Mr.
Blancher brings two claims against the City of Birmingham:
race discrimination and retaliation, both in violation of
Title VII. The City's “Partial Motion to Dismiss,
” filed on August 26, 2019, seeks only to dismiss the
retaliation claim. (Doc. 5.)
B.
Standard
A Rule
12(b)(6) motion to dismiss attacks the legal sufficiency of
the complaint. Generally, the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure require only that the complaint provide
“‘a short and plain statement of the claim'
that will give the defendant fair notice of what the
plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it
rests.” Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47
(1957) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)). “To survive a
motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient
factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief
that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v.
Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).
C.
Analysis
Although
Mr. Blancher brings two claims against the City of
Birmingham-race discrimination and retaliation-the City's
short, ten-paragraph motion seeks only to dismiss the
retaliation claim. (Doc. 5.) The City essentially argues that
Mr. Blancher cannot allege retaliation because he did nothing
the City could retaliate against. The City is correct.
Title
VII prohibits retaliation when an employee “oppos[es]
any practice made an unlawful employment practice by [Title
VII]” or “has made a charge, testified, assisted,
or participated in any manner in an investigation,
proceeding, or hearing.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a).
The Eleventh Circuit has broken this statutory language into
two distinct categories: the participation clause and the
opposition clause. “The participation clause includes
activity done in connection with proceedings conducted by the
federal government and its agencies.” EEOC v. Total
Sys. Servs., 221 F.3d 1171, 1175 (11th Cir. 2000).
Because this clause protects a plaintiff's
“participation” pursuant to an EEOC complaint, an
EEOC complaint must exist before a plaintiff's
activity is protected by the participation clause. Parker
v. Econ. Opportunity for Savannah-Chatham Cty. Area,
Inc., 587 Fed.Appx. 631, 634 (11th Cir. 2014). On the
other hand, the opposition clause comes into play when a
plaintiff engages in an “act” that is
“directed at an unlawful employment practice of an
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