In Rogers v. Voltron Data, Inc., Civil Action No.: 24-84 (RC), 2024 WL 4647644 (D.D.C. Oct. 31, 2024), the court, inter alia, denied defendants’ motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claims of race and sex discrimination.
The court rejected defendants’ allegations that plaintiff’s allegations were “threadbare”, explaining:
[Plaintiff’s complaint] contains plenty of “factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft, 556 U.S. at 678. Rogers alleges not only that she was compensated less than a non-Black man for taking on the same duties, see SAC ¶¶ 13, 18, but that company executives acknowledged that this differential existed because of her race and sex, see id. ¶¶ 21, 23. She alleges that Patterson, the Chief Executive Officer, acknowledged that Black employees were paid less than white employees and that Rogers would need to manage an additional department before she could receive the same title as Aramburu. Id. ¶ 21. She additionally alleges that Smart recognized the disparate treatment. Id. ¶ 23. Despite this, Voltron took no steps to rectify the compensation disparity. Id. ¶¶ 20, 24. This is a paradigmatic example of employment discrimination. See Husser v. New York City Dep’t of Educ., 137 F. Supp. 3d 253, 271 (E.D.N.Y. 2015) (denying motion for summary judgment where plaintiff showed employer paid male comparators more than her, that they were similarly situated, and that the employer knew of the pay disparity); see also Arizona Governing Comm. for Tax Deferred Annuity & Deferred Comp. Plans v. Norris, 463 U.S. 1073, 1082 (1983) (Marshall, J., concurring) (holding that paying women lower monthly retirement benefits violates Title VII); Washington Cnty. v. Gunther, 452 U.S. 161, 180–81 (1981) (holding that intentionally paying female prison staff 70 percent as much as men violated Title VII).
Rogers’s description of comparators adds further plausibility to her claims. She contends that Voltron hired her to replace Aramburu, that the two occupied the same role, and that they both reported to Patterson. SAC ¶¶ 12–15. She describes Aramburu’s duties managing the company’s “business operations, legal, human resources, IT enterprise, finance, and communications departments,” id. ¶ 9, and then details her own management of those departments, id. ¶ 15. She alleges that she and Aramburu nonetheless received different compensation. Id. ¶ 13. She further alleges that men at the company often received “title changes, raises, and additional equity” that they requested, whereas she did not. Id. ¶ 33. She also alleges that women were habitually forced out of their roles, while men—including specific individuals—were not dismissed, offering further comparators. Id. ¶¶ 14, 34. A plaintiff may demonstrate employment discrimination by showing that “the employer treated other employees of a different race [or sex] … more favorably in the same factual circumstances.” Burley v. Nat’l Passenger Rail Corp., 801 F.3d 290, 301 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Here, Rogers “identif[ies] a discrete and focused group of comparators” to support her claim. Daughtry v. kmG Hauling, Inc., No. 20-cv-3361, 2021 WL 4078686, at *7 (D.D.C. Sept. 8, 2021). This degree of factual detail is sufficient to render Rogers’s employment discrimination claim plausible. See, e.g., McNair v. Dist. Columbia, 213 F. Supp. 3d 81, 87 (D.D.C. 2016) (concluding that plaintiff stated a claim because (1) the employer “took an adverse employment action against her” and (2) it did not “tak[e] the same action against similarly situated employees of a different race” (footnote omitted)).
Contrary to Defendants’ assertions, Rogers offers much more than “occasional reference to [her] race,” Mot. Dismiss at 9 (quoting Ndondji v. InterPark Inc., 768 F. Supp. 2d 263, 274 (D.D.C. 2011)), and does not “merely invoke[ ] her sex throughout the Amended Complaint’s narrative,” id. at 11. Rather, Rogers states a claim for employment discrimination under which Voltron compensated her less and denied her a superior title because of her race and sex.
Based on this, the court denied Defendants’ motion to dismiss plaintiff’s race and sex discrimination claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, Title VII, and the DCHRA.