Through several cases issued in the past two years, the United States Supreme Court has clarified that, in all civil cases, a plaintiff must plead factual content that allows the court to draw a reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Therefore, a plaintiff may no longer rely on naked assertions of legal harm, devoid of further factual enhancement, in his or her complaint. As a result of these recent Supreme Court cases, district courts have become more willing to dismiss complaints filed against all employers, including boards of education, if those complaints do not contain sufficient allegations of misconduct. For example, on May 14, 2010, a district court in Maryland dismissed an employee’s claim that the board of education discriminated against her when it terminated her employment due to her conviction for submitting a false application to obtain public assistance. In her complaint, the employee merely stated that similarly situated employees with criminal records were treated differently, and she failed to specify the employees to whom she was referring, their job titles, or their criminal histories. The district court granted the board’s motion to dismiss, finding that the plaintiff had failed to plead any facts that would create an inference of discrimination. Therefore, based on the complaint, “it would be speculative to believe the Board terminated [her] employment for any reason aside from her criminal conviction.” See DeLoatch v. Hartford County Bd. of Educ., Civ. Action CCB-09-3125 (D.Md., May 14, 2010)(Blake, J.). As this case demonstrates, these new Supreme Court cases have increased the ability of board of education and all employers to fight back against discrimination lawsuits.
