Story Highlights
- Federal court denies motion to dismiss ADEA claims
- Judge finds sovereign immunity doesn’t bar injunctive relief
- MSU professor alleges age and racial discrimination, retaliation
- Decision clarifies Ex Parte Young‘s role in ADEA enforcement
A plaintiff’s claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act are not barred by sovereign immunity a U.S. District Court judge has ruled in denying a motion to dismiss.
The plaintiff, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, filed suit, alleging violations of Title VII, including discrimination because of his race, national origin and age. He also claimed he was retaliated against for reporting alleged discrimination in violation of the ADEA.
The defendants included the university’s board of trustees, the chair of the department the plaintiff worked in, and the interim dean of the university’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. They moved to partially dismiss the complaint, arguing that the allegations were insufficient to overcome sovereign immunity.
The plaintiff consented to the dismissal of the Title VII claims against the two individual defendants. But the court denied the motion to dismiss the ADEA claims.
“[The plaintiff’s] retaliation claim is based on a negative performance review that he allegedly received after reporting [the defendants’] discrimination. Defendants contend that one past performance review is not the sort of ongoing violation that supports prospective relief under Ex Parte Young,” Judge Hala Y. Jarbou wrote. “Because the Court can grant prospective relief to remedy the negative performance reviews, [the plaintiff] satisfies Ex Parte Young’s sovereign immunity exception and can bring his ADEA claims.”
The 10-page case is Melakeberhan v. Michigan State Univ. Bd. of Tr.; MiLW No. 03-109834.
Balancing immunity and accountability
Ann Arbor attorney David A. Nacht of Nacht Law represented the plaintiff. Matthew R. Daniels of Michigan State University’s Office of the General Counsel represented the defendants.
Daniels did not respond to a request for comment before deadline, but Fabiola Galguera, a partner at Nacht Law, said the firm is glad to see the case moving forward.
Sovereign immunity is not the sword institutions of higher education and their officials want it to be,” she said. “It is a great sign that the court is prepared to look at the whole picture and consider how employees often experience racial and age discrimination in the modern age; rather than active abuse and explicit racism, it can often manifest instead as years of exclusion and the slow erosion of the enormous potential of a promising academic career.”
Southfield employment attorney Tad T. Roumayah of Sommers Schwartz said the decision strikes a balance between respecting state immunity and ensuring accountability for ongoing civil rights violations.
“The court recognized that sovereign immunity may limit monetary recovery, but it does not shield state officials from accountability for ongoing discrimination,” he said.
Roumayah said the decision sets an important precedent for future civil rights cases involving state institutions.
“It reminds public employers that they cannot hide behind sovereign immunity when violations are ongoing,” he said. “Plaintiffs’ lawyers will look to this ruling as support for seeking equitable remedies that compel state officials to correct and prevent ongoing discrimination or retaliation.”
Termination and discrimination allegations
The plaintiff is a tenured assistant professor in the university’s Department of Horticulture, having worked at the school since 1990. The plaintiff, who is 72 years old, Black, and of African origin, alleged that the school mistreated him in several ways.
First, he claimed that the university never allowed him to obtain funding in connection with state agricultural commodities. He argued that he used his own money each year to keep his program running and was passed over for commodities responsibility, despite his experience and repeatedly raising the issue with faculty leadership.
The plaintiff also alleged that he had been discriminated against regarding compensation and promotion. Although he made significant contributions to his field, the plaintiff alleged he was not promoted to full professor.
In addition, the plaintiff claimed that the school forced him to implement unnecessary quarantine procedures which hindered his ability to do research.
The plaintiff filed a discrimination complaint with the school’s Office of Institutional Equity in July 2022. The office closed the investigation with no finding of discrimination. The plaintiff subsequently filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He claimed that after his complaints to the OIE and EEOC, he was given a negative performance review as a result.
The school sought to have the EEOC complaint dismissed based on sovereign immunity.
Sovereign immunity doesn’t bar suit
The court said that because the university is a state actor sovereign immunity bars an ADEA suit for damages against it.
But, she said, the plaintiff can seek injunctive relief against university officers in their official capacities under the sovereign immunity exception detailed in Ex Parte Young, which allows a lawsuit when a plaintiff “seeks prospective relief to end a continuing violation of law.”
“To bring an Ex Parte Young suit against a state official, “[a] plaintiff must allege facts showing how a state official is connected to, or has responsibility for, the alleged constitutional violations,” the judge wrote. “It is sufficient that ‘the state officer, by virtue of his office, has some connection’ to the alleged violation.”
The defendants argued that the plaintiff did not allege that either individual named in the suit was personally responsible for the alleged discrimination or retaliation. They also argued that the plaintiff did not allege an ongoing violation of federal law regarding the retaliation claim.
But Jarbou found that the plaintiff satisfied the illegal conduct requirement of Ex Parte Young because the individual defendants had authority over areas involved in the plaintiff’s allegations.
“[B]oth Defendants presumably have authority over funding, promotions, salaries, and personnel evaluations — i.e., the areas in which [the plaintiff] alleges discrimination and retaliation have occurred,” the judge wrote. “The supervisory offices held by these Defendants sufficiently establish the ‘connection’ to the illegal conduct that Ex Parte Young requires, even if there is no allegation that they personally took part in that conduct.”
The defendants also argued that the negative performance review he received did not support prospective relief under Ex Parte Young.
But the judge disagreed.
“Though [the plaintiff] does not specify the specific injunctive relief he seeks, it can be inferred from the nature of the harm alleged that he wants [the university] to withdraw the negative performance review,” Jarbou wrote.
Because prospective relief can be granted to remedy the negative review, the plaintiff’s ADEA claims were not barred by sovereign immunity.
MiLW
