Labor & Employment – Due-Process and Equal-Protection Rights – Employee Dispute Resolution

The district did not err in finding no merit to Plaintiff claim that her immediate supervisor’s supervisor was deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff’s sexual-harassment complaint.

We affirmed both district court decisions.

Plaintiff is an attorney who formerly worked at the Federal Public Defender’s Office (FDO) for the Western District of North Carolina. She alleged that her immediate supervisor, Davis, sexually harassed her, following which the response of both the Fourth Circuit and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts purportedly violated her due-process and equal-protection rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The district court ruled in favor of the government on all of Plaintiff’s claims after a bench trial.

On appeal, Plaintiff challenged the district court’s due-process and equal-protection rulings. She raised two challenges regarding due process. Plaintiff first argued that the court erred in determining that she did not reasonably believe that Davis’s supervisor, Martinez, would be the final decisionmaker on her Employee Dispute Resolution (EDR) complaint. Next, she contended that the court failed to consider that “an accumulation of errors” in the EDR process rendered it “fundamentally unfair,” which coerced her to abandon the process prematurely. Regarding her equal-protection claims, Plaintiff argued that the court erred in not concluding that (1) Davis’s supervisor, Martinez, was deliberately indifferent to her being sexually harassed by Davis, and (2) Martinez subjected Plaintiff to a mixture of retaliation and discrimination in response to her complaint. Plaintiff further contended that the court erred by excluding the “Me Too” evidence, both when considering summary judgment and then at trial. In addition, Plaintiff contended that Title VII’s exclusion of judiciary employees is unconstitutional as applied to her.

Among other things, we determined that Plaintiff’s belief that Martinez would be the final decisionmaker on her complaint was unreasonable. Further, the EDR process was not so “fundamentally unfair” that it violated Plaintiff’s due-process rights or coerced her to abandon the process. Next, Plaintiff’s first “fundamental unfairness” argument—that an accumulation of errors and irregularities in the EDR process violated her due-process rights—does not fit within the coerced-resignation framework. Her argument, moreover, is foreclosed by the structure of the EDR Plan. The district did not err in finding no merit to Plaintiff claim that Martinez was deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff’s sexual-harassment complaint. Finally, the district court did not err in rejecting Plaintiff’s claim that Martinez subjected her to a “mixture” of retaliation and discrimination.

Affirmed.

Strickland v. Moritz (Lawyers’ Weekly No. 001-153-25, 49 pp.) (Ronald Lee Gilman, J.) Appealed from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at Asheville (William G. Young, J.) ARGUED: Caryn Devins Strickland, LAW OFFICE OF CARYN STRICKLAND, Lynn, North Carolina, for Appellant. Kevin B. Soter, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Yaakov M. Roth, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Courtney L. Dixon, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit