Téresa Hudson WILLIAMS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. TIME WARNER INC., and Lisa Quiroz, individually and in her official capacity, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 10-1389-cv.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Sept. 28, 2011.
The detriment Otte relies on is his transfer from one floor to another, at which he performed the same job. Pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement, Mid-Hudson managemеnt has the right, at its sole discretion, to deploy employees between floors within a building. Moreover, Otte‘s transfer was made as a result of Brusinski‘s claim that Otte‘s comments were threatening. It is undisputed that the facility‘s normal operating procedure was to separate an employee frоm a supervisor when a threat was alleged to have been made. In short, Otte‘s transfer was not the type of action that “would deter a similarly situatеd individual of ordinary firmness from exercising his or her constitutional rights” and was therefore not an adverse employment action. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
We have considerеd all of Otte‘s remaining arguments and find them to be without merit. For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is hereby AFFIRMED.
Present: ROSEMARY S. POOLER, RICHARD C. WESLEY and GERARD E. LYNCH, Circuit Judges.
Stacey M. Gray, New York, N.Y., for Plaintiff-Appellant.
SUMMARY ORDER
In 2009, Téresa Hudson Williams filеd suit in the Southern District of New York against her former employer, Time Warner Inc., and Lisa Quiroz, the company‘s Senior Vice President of Corporate Responsibility. Williams claimed, among other things, that defendants violated her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination as well as retаliation against employees who complain about such discrimination. See
We review the district court‘s dismissal of Williаms‘s complaint for “fail[ure] to state a claim ... de novo.” Roth v. Jennings, 489 F.3d 499, 509-10 (2d Cir.2007). We assume that the parties are familiar with the issues on appeal as well as the facts of the case. As such, we only provide some brief context for the allegations before turning to Williams‘s arguments.
On August 6, 2007, Williams, who is an African American woman, started a new job at Time Warner Inc. as the company‘s Vice President of Diversity and Multicultural Initiatives. On November 30, 2007, Williams alleges that she “shared her concerns” with an employee in Time Warner‘s human resources department “about management‘s” mistreatment of her, including
As a preliminary matter, Williams argues that the district court erred by failing to consider dоcumentary materials that were not included in her original complaint. This Court has made clear that a district court, in deciding whether to dismiss a comрlaint under
A mere passing reference or even references, however, to a document outside of the complaint does not, on its own, incorporate the document into the complaint itself. See Sira v. Morton, 380 F.3d 57, 67 (2d Cir.2004); Cosmas v. Hassett, 886 F.2d 8, 13 (2d Cir.1989). Furthermore, the outside materials are not “integral” to the cоmplaint given that it does not “rel[y] heavily upon [their] terms and effect.” Chambers v. Time Warner, Inc., 282 F.3d 147, 153 (2d Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted).
With that preliminary question aside, we turn to the substance of Williams‘s Title VII claims. The first issue is whether the district court erred in granting defendants’ motion to dismiss her discrimination claim. The language of
In assessing claims of employment discrimination, this Cоurt has made clear that there must be a causal connection between the discrimination and a plaintiff‘s race or gender--namely, that the plaintiff was discriminated against “because of” her race, gender, or other protected characteristic. Patane v. Clark, 508 F.3d 106, 112 (2d Cir.2007) (quoting Leibovitz v. N.Y. City Transit Auth., 252 F.3d 179, 189 (2d Cir.2001)).
In this case, Williams fails to mеet her burden, however minimal it may be. Williams alleges that Lisa Quiroz, a senior vice president at Time Warner, “claimed that” another vice president “complained that [Williams] was ‘up in his face.‘” The implicit argument in the complaint--and an argument now made explicitly on appeal--is that thе phrase “up in his face” had racial overtones when it was said. But when it comes to language, context is key. Here, there simply is not enough of it tо plausibly suggest that the comment was intended to have a racial sub-text.
The retaliation claim presents a closer question. A central part of any retaliation claim is that the “employee must show ... that there was a causal connection between the protected aсtivity and [any] adverse employment action.” Manoharan v. Columbia Univ. Coll. of Physicians & Surgeons, 842 F.2d 590, 593 (2d Cir.1988). This Court has only required that a plaintiff provide some evi-
In addition to establishing causality, however, a “plaintiff must demonstrate a good faith, reasonable belief that the underlying challenged аctions of the employer violated the law.” Manoharan, 842 F.2d at 593 (internal quotation marks omitted). In this case, Williams‘s specific complaint “about management‘s ... stеreotyping her as an ‘angry black woman‘” plainly constitutes a claim that she faced discrimination in the workplace as a result of her raсe and gender. In dismissing Williams‘s case, however, the district court essentially concluded that the analysis of the sufficiency of a plaintiff‘s retaliation claim should mirror that of her discrimination claim. The court‘s implicit assumption seems to be that if one fails, the other must as well.
In this appeal, howevеr, we need not reach the question of whether a complaint that fails to allege a plausible discrimination claim could nonetheless allege facts that render it plausible that a plaintiff‘s belief in the viability of her discrimination claim was “reasonable.” Manoharan, 842 F.2d at 593. Williams‘s complaint merely provides a list of allegations of mistreatment by her employer and suggests the weakest of reasons that she believed her rights had been violated. As such, her claim does not state a plausible retaliation claim and must therefore be dismissed.
Accordingly, the order of the district court granting defendants’ motion to dismiss the case is AFFIRMED.