remanded the district court’s ruling. It held that the district court abused its discretion in concluding that a conflict of interest existed. Id. at *4. The Ninth Circuit determined that the district court clearly erred in finding that the remedy sought under the plaintiffs’ effective accommodation claim required the defendant to reinstate at least one women’s sports team and that the named plaintiffs would naturally advocate for reinstatement of the women’s lacrosse team at the expense of other female programs. Id. at *5. Rather, the plaintiffs only sought an injunction requiring the defendant to comply with Title IX, which could just as well be achieved by “leveling down programs instead of ratcheting them up.” Id. In other words, the Ninth Circuit reasoned that the district court improperly concluded that compliance dictated reinstatement of a female sports program, which the district court believed would provide women’s lacrosse an unfair advantage. Even if reinstatement were necessary, the district court pointed to no evidence suggesting the named plaintiffs would have input into the selection process. Id. Because the district court ignored the equal treatment claim entirely, the Ninth Circuit vacated the district court’s denial of class certification and remanded to the district court for further proceedings. 4. Rulings Granting Preemptive Motions To Dismiss Or Strike Class Claims Aggressive defendants frequently seek to quell a class action before it even gets off the ground by attacking the sufficiency of the claims as they are pled in the complaint. If successful, the benefits of this strategy are plain and significant by eliminating the class allegations before the plaintiff ever gets to probe the defendant on their policies, procedures, or other practices in class-wide discovery. However, these efforts are often difficult, as they require convincing the court that no amount of discovery will alter the fact that plaintiffs’ claims or class certification theories are fundamentally flawed. But while difficult to prove, defendants can and do prevail. A win for defendants was in Sanchez, et al. v. El-Milagro, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 205115 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 12, 2024). There, the plaintiff a manufacturing worker, filed a class action alleging that the defendant subjected her and other female employees to sexual harassment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Illinois Human Rights Act. Following discovery, the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment and a motion to deny class certification. The court granted the motion for summary judgment and the motion to deny class certification. The plaintiff began working for the defendant in July 2019 in the production department of the tortilla manufacturing company. The defendant contended that during her orientation, the plaintiff participated in sexual harassment prevention training and the defendant also conducted annual sexual harassment training for all employees, with employee sessions lasting two hours and supervisor and manager sessions lasting three hours. Id. at *3. Over the course of her employment, the plaintiff contended that there were multiple incidents of sexual harassment by a co-worker, Francisco Gutierrez, beginning in 2019. These incidents included physical contact and inappropriate comments. The plaintiff claimed that Gutierrez rubbed his genitals against her in May 2020, touched her buttocks in June or July 2020, and again grabbed her buttocks in August 2020. Id. at *5. She reported these incidents to her supervisor, Arturo Brito. Following an investigation by the defendant’s HR Department, the defendant determined that there was insufficient evidence of sexual harassment, although Gutierrez was warned about his conduct. The plaintiff later claimed that she continued to be subjected to verbal sexual harassment, including taunting and inappropriate comments by other employees. The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that that the conduct described by the plaintiff did not equate to a hostile work environment, as the incidents were not severe, pervasive, or objectively unreasonable. The court agreed with the defendant. It opined that while the plaintiff claimed to have been subjected to some harassment, these incidents did not rise to severe or pervasive conduct. The court noted that for conduct to qualify as a hostile work environment, it must be both objectively offensive (as a reasonable person would find it) and subjectively offensive (as the plaintiff herself perceived it). The court stated that the three times that Gutierrez allegedly had contact with the plaintiff occurred over the span of around four months, and while the plaintiff was offended by his behavior, the record did not support a finding that these incidents affected her work performance at all, as the plaintiff worked in the same location, in the same department, on the same shift. Id. at *20-21. The court concluded that the alleged incidents were isolated, brief, and therefore did not create a hostile work environment. Accordingly, the court granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment. The court concluded that since it granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, it would also grant the motion to deny class certification because the plaintiff could establish the requisite showings required by Rule 23. The defendant was again victorious in Smith, et al. v. McDermott Inc., Case No. 19-CV-613 (M.D. La. Nov. 18, 2024). The plaintiff filed a class action alleging that the defendant disproportionately terminated Black employees and rehired White employees on the basis of their race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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Duane Morris Discrimination Class Action Review – 2025
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