In Wynn v. New York City Hous. Auth., No. 14-CV-2818 SAS, 2015 WL 4578684 (S.D.N.Y. July 29, 2015), the court held that a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) did not foreclose plaintiffs from pressing their employment discrimination claims. In this case, plaintiffs allege that NYCHA systematically undercompensated them due to a policy of race discrimination.
Defendant argued that the CBA deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction, and moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1). The court disagreed:
Even assuming that the CBA covers plaintiffs’ claims, NYCHA’s contention that the CBA divests the federal courts of subject matter jurisdiction to hear plaintiffs’ employment discrimination claims is completely unfounded. …
NYCHA fails to cite any case linking the existence of a collective bargaining agreement to depriving federal courts of subject matter jurisdiction to hear a claim of employment discrimination. There is none. At best, the language of the CBA—if it indeed governs plaintiffs’ claims—can provide the basis for either a motion to compel arbitration or an affirmative defense to plaintiffs’ claims. Even so, there is nothing to suggest that subject matter jurisdiction is lacking due to plaintiffs’ failure to exhaust the CBA’s grievance procedures. NYCHA’s motion for dismissal pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) is therefore denied.
Turning to the merits, the court allowed plaintiffs an opportunity to amend their complaint, finding that their proposed amended complaint sufficiently alleged, for example, a “persistent or widespread practice that has the force of law” for purposes of Monell, and that for purposes of alleging an inference of discrimination under 42 U.S.C. 1981, “plaintiffs need not show that [non-minority comparators who were allegedly given preferential treatment] are identical in all respects to plaintiffs in order to establish that the two groups are similarly situated.”