She volunteered the information herself - then refused to answer questions about it
Two unchecked boxes on an EEOC form cost a former transit police detective her discrimination case - years after she filed it.
The US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on September 14 that Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) was entitled to summary judgment on the worker's remaining Title VII claims for sex discrimination, race discrimination, and retaliation.
The worker joined WMATA's Metro Transit Police Department in November 2005. After notifying supervisors of her pregnancy in May 2012, she alleged she was treated differently than male and non-pregnant employees on transfers, duty assignments, and evaluations. Her first EEOC charge, filed in April 2013, checked boxes for race, sex, retaliation, disability, and hostile work environment.
Her second charge, filed in January 2014, checked only retaliation and hostile work environment. Not race. Not sex.
Meanwhile, the events that would generate her retaliation claim were already underway. In early February 2014, a supervisor announced at roll call that case files must stay in the office. The next day, while looking into another detective's file storage, the supervisor learned the worker also kept files in her car - around 30 to 35. She volunteered this herself.
Supervisors handed her four written questions about the files. She spent hours on a response she described as given "under duress," but supervisors found it unresponsive. Over the following two weeks - through escalating warnings that refusal could mean termination - she declined to answer directly, each time referring back to her original statement.
The department terminated her in March 2014 for violating a general order requiring cooperation with internal investigations. She won reinstatement through arbitration roughly a year later. The panel found the investigation questions were "poorly worded" and designed "to force brief and incriminating responses."
None of that helped in federal court.
On discrimination, the court held the worker never exhausted her administrative remedies. Her second EEOC charge - the only one tied to the suspension and termination - never put the agency on notice of race or sex claims.
On retaliation, WMATA argued the worker was the only officer in department history known to have refused to cooperate with an internal affairs investigation. The court found the pretext evidence insufficient. Her proposed comparator was her own supervisor, not a valid comparison, and had never refused to cooperate. The chief who approved the termination did not learn of the EEOC charge until more than a month after signing the paperwork.
The court granted WMATA summary judgment on all three claims.
