"Not a good fit" comment may support racial discrimination claim

This pro se plaintiff wins his appeal at the Second Circuit, which finds that he asserts a plausible racial discrimination claim against the City of New York arising from his termination as a public school teacher. The Court emphasizes that motions to dismiss under Rule 12 cannot impose an unrealistic burden on the plaintiff.

The case is Mauro v. Department of Education, a summary order issued on December 22. As the Court of Appeals summarizes the case, "Mauro alleges that, after telling him he was not a 'good fit,' Defendants created a hostile work environment, retaliated against him, and eventually fired him. The district court dismissed his complaint for failure to state a claim because Mauro had failed to allege facts giving rise to a plausible inference of discrimination." Is this enough to assert a discriminatory motivation? The Court of Appeals (Livingston, Calabresi and Lynch) says it is. 

The Court opens its analysis with this: "We have often vacated improper dismissals in discrimination cases where courts apply overly stringent pleading standards, cautioning against imposing 'too high a burden on plaintiffs alleging discrimination at the 12(b)(6) stage.'" The Court cites Doe v. Columbia Univ., 831 F.3d 46, 55 n.8 (2d Cir. 2016), for this proposition. Hey plaintiffs: use this language on your motions to dismiss! Hey defendants: read this language before you file a motion to dismiss!

The heart of the analysis stems in part from plaintiff's claim that other, non-white probationary teachers were not fired but had performed similarly, that other non-white teachers who committed the same safety violations were not disciplined, and a second white probationary teacher was disciplined and fired for the same allegedly pretextual violations as plaintiff. The Court says:

Mauro’s complaint can be plausibly read to allege that non-white teachers and administrators at his school felt he was a poor “fit” because he was white. They then created justifications, through letters to his file and poor evaluations, to fire him. Furthermore, they treated him worse than his fellow non-white teachers who were similarly situated. Those allegations are sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

What about the "good fit" allegation? The Court notes that "we have previously held that comments similar to the 'not a good fit' comments supported the presence of a material issue of fact on summary judgment because such comments 'just might have been about race.'" Case support for that proposition is found in Abrams v. Dep’t of Pub. Safety, 764 F.3d 244, 249, 253 (2d Cir. 2014).