A transgender worker’s discrimination claim can move forward after an Alabama district court determined she provided enough information to suggest sex discrimination, according to a court opinion filed Wednesday in Travis v. Federal Injury Center of Birmingham, LLC.
The worker, a physical therapist assistant at Federal Injury Center of Birmingham, allegedly informed the office manager that she was transgender on May 28, 2024, after one year and eight months of employment. She was fired less than one week later for “bringing morale down,” according to the opinion.
Federal Injury challenged the worker’s claims on three grounds, arguing that the complaint was served in an untimely fashion, that it was a “shotgun pleading” and that it failed to state a claim. The court shot down all three arguments, denying Federal Injury’s motion to dismiss.
In one of the more relevant findings for HR professionals, Judge Harold Mooty III found the worker adequately stated a claim.
Federal Injury argued the worker needed to plead each element of her discrimination case as set out in the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework, including identifying the existence of a comparator. This is not so, the judge said; at the pleading stage, the plaintiff must only show “‘enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest’ intentional race or sex discrimination.”
In Travis, the plaintiff “has alleged that she disclosed her protected status, which was previously unknown to her employer, she suffered an adverse employment action — her termination — just a few days later, and the justification given for her termination was vague, subjective, and had never before been raised with [her] as an issue,” Mooty wrote.
“Although temporal proximity is more often discussed in retaliation cases — due to their having, by definition, a protected activity followed by an adverse employment action — courts may consider suspicious timing, along with other circumstantial evidence, in determining whether a plaintiff has plausibly alleged discriminatory intent,” the opinion continued.
The judge similarly threw out Federal Injury’s failure to serve argument, which suggested the worker did not affect service within 90 days, in part because the worker said the employer listed the wrong address for service on the Secretary of State’s website. Additionally, Federal Injury’s argument that the case was a “shotgun pleading” in that it was “disorganized and confusing” did not hold up, the judge said, as the complaint contained “only twelve fact paragraphs, each one of which is obviously connected to the single cause of action.”
Eric Artrip, an attorney for the plaintiff, said he was pleased with the judge’s decision to deny Federal Injury’s motion.
“We look forward to continuing on [the plaintiff’s] behalf and ultimately to seeing what a Northern District of Alabama jury will do with the case,” he said. “We’re proud to work on behalf of this young woman, and it’s fairly clear that she was discriminated against just because of her status as a male-to-female transgender person.”
Attorneys for Federal Injury did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
