How to plead a retaliation case under Title VII and ADEA

Plaintiff in this case tried to amend her lawsuit to assert a retaliation claim against a school district. The district court denied the amended complaint on the basis that it did not assert a plausible cause of action. The Court of Appeals reverses.

The case is Curry-Malcolm v. Rochester City School District, a summary order issued on May 30. Plaintiff proceeds under Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The question is whether her complaint sufficiently asserts she suffered an adverse action. In plain English, did anything happen to plaintiff that makes this situation worth suing over> Here is the Second Circuit's concise summary of the state of the law in the area of pleading retaliation claims:

An employment action is adverse in the retaliation context if a plaintiff “show[s] that a reasonable  employee would have found the challenged action materially adverse, which in  this context means it well might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.” Davis-Garett v. Urban Outfitters, Inc., 921 F.3d 30, 43 (2d Cir. 2019) (quoting Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 68 (2006)) (emphasis in original). For example, “a poor performance evaluation could very well deter a reasonable worker from complaining.” Vega v. Hempstead Union Free Sch. Dist., 801 F.3d 72, 92 (2d Cir. 2015). At the motion to dismiss stage, “[c]ausation may be shown by direct  evidence of retaliatory animus or inferred through temporal proximity to the protected activity.” Duplan v. City of New York, 888 F.3d 612, 625 (2d Cir. 2018).

The Second Circuit (Walker, Leval and Lohier) holds that the pro se Plaintiff asserts an adverse action under the retaliation cases because within  one to three months after she made internal and external complaints of discrimination, the school district secretly changed her name and social security number in their tax records, demoted her to special education teacher, promoted a less qualified coworker over her, and transferred her to another school with a higher workload. Then, one of her informal internal discrimination complaints was dismissed internally without the district providing her notice or an opportunity to be heard, and plaintiff was ultimately laid-off from her position. Then, after she filed complaints with SDHR and EEOC, the district removed her name from number 11 to number 30 on the preferred eligibility list for recall.