Race (Hispanic) Discrimination Section 1981 Claim Alleged by Complaint; Dismissal Vacated

In Quinones v. City of Binghamton et al, Docket No. 20-3078, 2021 WL 1898117 (2d Cir. May 12, 2021), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, inter alia, vacated the lower court’s dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint, which was based on its holding that he failed to articulate any discrimination claim.

It held that while the complaint did not “enumerate” a claim for discrimination alongside the cause of action for retaliation, plaintiff did indeed “identify” a discrimination claim. Notably, the introduction of the complaint specifies that plaintiff brings “claim for discriminatory conduct based on Hispanic origin … pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1981” and “includes numerous factual allegations sufficient to notify Defendants that Quinones seeks redress for discriminatory conduct.”

Further on, the court elaborated:

Here, Quinones’s complaint does in fact assert a discrimination claim. The complaint’s first paragraph states that [t]he claim for discriminatory conduct based on Hispanic origin is brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Quinones further alleges that he has been consistently and systematically the victim of discriminatory treatment based on his [national] origin, and that he has sustained damages as a result of being discriminated against on the basis of his Hispanic origin.

Quinones’s complaint also describes racial harassment that tracks the section 1981 standard. Quinones claims that Ryan mockingly and repeatedly called him “Ricky Ricardo,” mimick[ed] [him] when he was speaking Spanish by imitating him in a derogatory manner, and made numerous other insulting comments about his background. He describes a patrol officer directing ethnic slurs toward a Hispanic colleague in the presence of other officers. And he alleges that at times this harassment “happened almost on a daily basis,” id. at 20, and “extended to the rank-and-file” within the Department.

Faced with these allegations, Defendants cannot claim that they were blindsided by aspects of the case which may not have otherwise been clear on the basis of the complaint. Indeed, Defendants’ motion to dismiss expressly interpreted Plaintiff’s complaint to assert a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to enforce § 1981 and addressed the merits of that claim at length. Thus, Defendants were on notice of Quinones’s discrimination claim. Having moved to dismiss a discrimination claim on the merits, Defendants cannot assert any prejudice from Quinones’s failure to include a separate section in his complaint enumerating discrimination as a cause of action.

We therefore conclude that Quinones’s complaint sufficiently “informed [Defendants] of the factual basis for” a discrimination claim despite his failure to enumerate it as a separate cause of action. The question we resolve today—whether Quinones’s complaint sufficiently identifies a discrimination claim at all, such that the district court should have addressed it—is separate from whether the complaint’s factual allegations show that [the] claim has substantive plausibility.

[Citations and internal quotation marks omitted; cleaned up.]

While the court held that plaintiff’s complaint contained a discrimination allegation, it “express[ed] no view on the latter question” and declined to “consider any other potential grounds for dismissal, which the district court may address on remand.”

Share This: