Elizabeth Koke filed an action in New York State Supreme Court against the City University of New York, The Feminist Press and its executive director, Jennifer Baumgardner, alleging that she suffered unlawful employment discrimination because of her gender and actual or perceived sexual orientation in violation of Title VII and the New York State and City Human Rights laws, and also asserting other state law claims. CUNY, “with the consent of the other defendants,” removed the case to federal district court, where it was assigned to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan (S.D.N.Y.). Removal was grounded on the inclusion of a Title VII claim, which gives the federal district court “original jurisdiction.” Koke then moved to remand the case back to state court, unless Judge Kaplan was willing to issue a declaratory judgment that her “Title VII claims of discriminatory treatment are valid and that Title VII is applicable to this matter.” Koke v. Baumgardner, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1979, 2016 WL 93094 (Jan. 5, 2016). Judge Kaplan refused to remand the matter.
Kaplan’s opinion does not mention any of the particulars of Koke’s discrimination charges, focusing primarily on the issue of sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII. The 2nd Circuit ruled in Simonton v. Runyon, 232 F. 3d 33 (2000), that sexual orientation discrimination claims are not actionable under Title VII, but that claims of discrimination against a plaintiff because she fails to conform to sex stereotypes could be actionable as sex discrimination claims under that statute. Judge Kaplan took note of the EEOC’s decision last summer in the Baldwin case (2015 WL 4397641, 2015 EEOPUB LEXIS 1905 (July 16, 2015)) that “sexual orientation is inherently a sex-based consideration,” thus rendering all sexual orientation discrimination cases actionable under Title VII. Of course, as a district judge within the 2nd Circuit, Kaplan is bound by Simonton and may not recognize Koke’s sexual orientation discrimination claim as actionable unless the case presents sex stereotype issues, regardless of what the EEOC has said, until such time as the 2nd Circuit changes its position or the Supreme Court definitively pronounces on the issue.
“It remains to be seen,” he wrote, “whether plaintiff has stated, or can prove, a Title VII claim related to her professed sexual orientation, given that she probably cannot state a legally sufficient Title VII claim based on sexual orientation alone absent a change in law. But even if she has not and cannot plead or make out such a claim, this would be a case over which the federal courts ‘have original jurisdiction’ for two reasons. First, plaintiff sues under Title VII. The jurisdictional inquiry, which is the critical point with respect to removability, is distinct from whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim for relief except where the complaint is ‘wholly insubstantial and frivolous.’ In other words, a complaint purporting to allege a federal claim is one over which a district court has subject matter jurisdiction unless ‘the federal right claimed in a complaint is insubstantial, unsubstantiated, or frivolous.’ Given the door left ajar by Simonton for claims based on ‘failure to conform to sex stereotypes,’ the EEOC’s recent holding that Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the lack of a Supreme Court ruling on whether Title VII applies to such claims, I cannot conclude, at least at this stage, that plaintiff’s Title VII claim is ‘wholly insubstantial and frivolous.’ While it may be that the Title VII claim will not survive the rigors of further testing, even to whatever extent it relates to sexual orientation on a theory of non-conformity to sexual stereotype, it nevertheless arises under the laws of the United States.” The second point, of course, is that Koke also alleged discrimination because of gender in her complaint, and that claim clearly arises under Title VII.
Kaplan also rejected the suggestion that this was an appropriate case to decline jurisdiction over the state and local law claims, pointing out that all the claims arose out of the same nucleus of operative facts and that the anti-discrimination provisions of the federal, state and local laws substantially overlap, at least as to sex discrimination, keeping in mind the requirement to give a more liberal construction to the NY City Human Rights law than to the state or federal laws in light of a particular provision requiring that in the city ordinance.
This opinion by Judge Kaplan is quite interesting for anybody trying to track the potential impact of the EEOC’s ruling last summer. Since a majority of the states still do not ban sexual orientation discrimination expressly in their state anti-discrimination laws and Congress is unlikely to enact the pending Equality Act (which would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to Title VII) within the foreseeable future, the availability of relief from such discrimination under Title VII could be quite valuable in those states in cases involving employers large enough to be subject to Title VII (at least 15 employees). Furthermore, were federal courts to fall in line solidly behind the EEOC’s conclusion that sexual orientation is necessarily sex discrimination, this might lead to more expansive interpretation of state law bans on sex discrimination in the jurisdictions that don’t expressly include sexual orientation in their statutes.
Koke is represented by Erica Tracy Kagan, The Kurland Group, New York City. CUNY is represented by Steven Leon Banks of the State Attorney General’s Office. Baumgardner and the Feminist Press are represented by Bertrand B. Pogrebin and Adam Jeremy Roth of Littler Mendelson PC, also of New York City.