New England Biz Law Update
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court has upheld the dismissal of a Title VII sex discrimination complaint brought against the U.S. Navy by a probationary employee, finding the complaint to be “devoid of any assertions of facts that plausibly indicate a causal nexus between his sex and termination.”
The Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a division of the Navy focused on the research and development of submersible weapons systems, asked plaintiff-appellant Matthew Waleyko to resign at the end of his two-year term of probationary employment. He then brought suit in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island.
The plaintiff’s complaint was dismissed because he “failed to specifically describe instances of disparate treatment based on his gender and thus fail[ed] to state a claim” of sex discrimination under Title VII.
“On appeal, Waleyko primarily grounds his arguments in his complaint’s purported comparisons between his treatment by the Navy and how he believes the Navy would treat similarly situated women. Because these comparisons all either rely on Waleyko’s unfounded suppositions or improperly compare apples and oranges, however, they supply no basis to infer the requisite connection between Waleyko’s sex and termination,” Judge Jeffrey R. Howard wrote for the three-judge 1st Circuit panel.
“Waleyko merely supposes that the Navy ‘would’ treat a woman differently in the hypothetical event that one ever landed in the same situation as he did. Such prognostications are precisely the ‘conclusory’ kinds of allegations that remain in the ‘realm of mere conjecture’ and accordingly receive no credit in evaluating a motion to dismiss,” Howard said.
“Finally, Waleyko attempts to cast his challenge as a gender-stereotyping claim, asserting that all the labels he alleges being assigned by Navy personnel — ‘sexual harasser, stalker, [having] an “active shooter” vibe, … code stealer, and … insider threat within a military environment’ — are typically associated with men. … Here, all the labels that Waleyko references in his complaint are gender-neutral. Moreover, we know of no legal authority recognizing commonly held stereotypes of men as more likely to ‘steal’ ‘code’ or pose an ‘insider threat within a military environment’ as Waleyko construes them. In sum, Waleyko’s complaint critically fails to allege any gender-based stereotype on which the Navy acted in asking him to resign from his probationary position, foreclosing a gender-stereotyping claim,” Howard stated.
The 20-page decision is Waleyko v. Phelan.
