In Runnels v. State of Kansas, No. 25-1104-EFM-TJJ, 2026 WL 395211 (D. Kan. Feb. 12, 2026), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claim of retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
To state a case for retaliation under Title VII, a plaintiff must show ‘(1) that he engaged in protected opposition to discrimination, (2) that a reasonable employee would have found the challenged action materially adverse, and (3) that a causal connection existed between the protected activity and the materially adverse action.
Plaintiff alleges facts sufficient to state his retaliation claim. He states that he complained of the sexual harassment to the State’s management employees. Although lacking any other detail, accepting this as true, it establishes that Plaintiff engaged in a protected opposition to discrimination, satisfying the first prong. Second, the Tenth Circuit liberally defines the phrase “adverse employment action.” As such, Plaintiff being removed and barred from LSH prevents him from earning overtime pay. This is appropriately considered an adverse employment action. Finally, “Tenth Circuit precedent allows the court to ‘infer retaliatory motive from a close temporal proximity between an employee’s protected conduct and an employer’s adverse employment action.’ ” Because Plaintiff alleges that “within days” of objecting to and complaining of sexual harassment, he was removed from LSH, Plaintiff has alleged facts sufficient to infer a retaliatory motive. Although scarce on detail, Plaintiff’s factual averments give rise to the reasonable inference that Plaintiff’s removal and barring from LSH was retaliatory.
(Cleaned up.)
the court did, however, dismiss plaintiff’s claims of sex- and race-based discrimination, finding that these allegations consisted merely of “threadbare legal conclusions.”