Marie Jean Charles v. GEO Group Inc., et al

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-13891
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
MARIE JEAN CHARLES,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
GEO GROUP INC.,
BI INC.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 6:21-cv-01364-WWB-EJK
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-13891
____________________
Before J ORDAN, ROSENBAUM , and L AGOA , Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Marie Jean Charles, a Black, Haitian woman, filed a lawsuit
alleging discrimination and retaliation under Title VII following
her termination as a case specialist for a government contractor.
See 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2(a), 2000e-3(a). After the defendants an-
swered, and discovery began, the district court sua spone dismissed
the operative amended complaint as a shotgun pleading and or-
dered Jean Charles to replead. When Jean Charles did so, the de-
fendants moved to dismiss, and the court granted that motion, dis-
missing the action with prejudice on shotgun-pleading grounds and
for failure to state a claim. After careful review, we hold that the
district court abused its discretion by invoking the shotgun-plead-
ing doctrine, and we vacate and remand for further proceedings.
I.
Jean Charles, represented by counsel, filed her initial com-
plaint in August 2021 and an amended complaint in December
2021. According to the seven-page amended complaint, Jean
Charles worked as a case specialist for a government contractor in
Orlando, Florida, which administered a federal immigration pro-
gram. Jean Charles received raises every year until 2011, when she
“reached a cap.” After she hit the cap, she received “lump sum pay-
ments every year but no raises and no promotions.” She was the
only Black, Haitian employee in her office, and the “only employee
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22-13891 Opinion of the Court 3
in her group to reach a cap,” which her employer failed to justify
or explain. In 2016, she was denied a promotion without explana-
tion. Then, after she filed a charge of discrimination raising these
allegations with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(“EEOC”), she was fired despite being in good standing and having
“no previous record of discipline.”
The amended complaint asserted two claims for relief under
Title VII. First, under the heading, “National Origin-Based Dis-
crimination (Disparate Impact),” she alleged that the defendants’
“promotion and compensation policy had an adverse and dispro-
portionate impact on [her] because of [her] national origin, Hai-
tian.” Second, she asserted that the defendants “purposefully fired
plaintiff knowing she had filed a complaint with the EEOC,” which
“was investigating.”
The defendants, GEO Group, Inc., and B.I., Inc., answered
both the complaint and the amended complaint and asserted de-
fenses. Soon after, the court entered a case management and sched-
uling order, and the case was referred to mediation while discovery
went forward.
Nearly three months after entering its scheduling order, the
district court, acting sua sponte, dismissed the amended complaint
without prejudice as an impermissible “shotgun pleading.” Not-
withstanding that the defendants had filed responsive pleadings, the
court found that the amended complaint was deficient in that each
of the two counts incorporated by reference “every allegation of
the entire pleading,” making it “virtually impossible to discern
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-13891
which of the many facts alleged supports each claim.” The court
ordered Jean Charles to file a second amended complaint correct-
ing the deficiencies noted.
Jean Charles filed a second amended complaint in early
March 2022, making minor changes in an attempt to remedy the
deficiency cited in the court’s order. The pleading also added that
she had been terminated “without progressive discipline,” but the
factual allegations and claims otherwise remained essentially un-
changed.
In response, the defendants, instead of answering as they
had previously done, filed a motion to dismiss. They argued that
the second amended complaint failed to state a plausible claim of
disparate-impact discrimination or retaliation, and that any failure-
to-promote claim was time barred. The defendants then asserted
that, even if Jean Charles stated a viable claim, the second amended
complaint should still be dismissed as a “shotgun” pleading.
After Jean Charles responded, the district court granted the
defendants’ motion to dismiss. Despite succinctly describing Jean
Charles’s factual allegations and claims, the court proceeded to de-
scribe the second amended complaint as a shotgun pleading. The
court suggested that the first count was deficient because it com-
mingled “distinct transactions and occurrences,” while the second
count “purport[ed] to reincorporate paragraphs 1–3, but there are
two sets of paragraphs numbered 1–3, one of which includes alle-
gations of discrimination that would need to be separate from
[Jean Charles’s] retaliation claim.” The court noted that the second
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22-13891 Opinion of the Court 5
amended complaint “also makes allegations against Defendants
collectively without identifying which Defendant was responsible
for which acts or omissions.”
Nonetheless, the district court then considered the merits of
the claims and granted the motion to dismiss. In the court’s view,
the allegations failed to show that the defendants’ “promotion and
compensation” policy had a disparate impact, or that her May 2021
termination was causally related to her November 2020 EEOC
charge. The court denied leave to amend and dismissed the action
with prejudice. Jean Charles appeals.
II.
We review a district court’s decision to dismiss a complaint
as an impermissible shotgun pleading for an abuse of discretion.
Vibe Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1294 (11th Cir. 2018).
Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that
a pleading must contain a “short and plain statement” of the plain-
tiff’s claims, among other things. Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). The short
and plain statement of the claim “need only give the defendant fair
notice of what the claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.”
Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 93–94 (2007) (quotation marks omit-
ted). “Pleadings must be construed so as to do justice[,]” Fed. R.
Civ. P. 8(e), which “excludes requiring technical exactness, or the
making of refined inferences against the pleader, and requires an
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-13891
effort fairly to understand what he attempts to set forth.” DeLoach
v. Crowley’s, Inc., 128 F.2d 378, 380 (5th Cir. 1942).1
“Shotgun pleadings” are complaints that violate federal
pleading rules by “fail[ing] to one degree or another, and in one
way or another, to give the defendants adequate notice of the
claims against them and the grounds upon which each claim rests.”
Weiland v. Palm Beach Cty. Sheriff’s Office, 792 F.3d 1313, 1320 (11th
Cir. 2015). We have “little tolerance for shotgun pleadings” because
they “waste judicial resources, inexorably broaden the scope of dis-
covery, wreak havoc on appellate court dockets, and undermine the
public’s respect for the courts.” Vibe Micro, 878 F.3d at 1295 (cleaned
up). While we have identified several pleading deficiencies indica-
tive of a “shotgun pleading,” the underlying issue is one of sub-
stance, not form—that is, whether the complaint gave the defend-
ants fair “notice of the specific claims against them and the factual
allegations that support those claims.” Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1325.
Here, the district court abused its discretion by dismissing
Jean Charles’s first and second amended complaints as shotgun
pleadings.2 Despite the pleading deficiencies identified by the
1 In Bonner v. City of Pritchard, we adopted as binding precedent all decisions of
the former Fifth Circuit handed down prior to October 1, 1981. 661 F.2d 1206,
1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc).
2 We disagree with the dissent that Jean Charles abandoned any challenge to
the dismissal of the first amended complaint. In arguing that the district court
erred in dismissing the second amended complaint as a shotgun pleading, Jean
Charles maintains that she “put [the defendants] on notice of what the claims
are,” citing both the first amended complaint and the second amended
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22-13891 Opinion of the Court 7
court, it is not “virtually impossible” to understand Jean Charles’s
claims or “which allegations of fact are intended to support which
claim(s) for relief.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). She believes her
employer subjected her to discrimination and retaliation prohibited
by Title VII. And both amended pleadings clearly identify the same
two claims for relief and the factual grounds on which they were
based: (1) national origin discrimination, under a disparate-impact
theory, based on the defendants’ “promotion and compensation”
policy, which capped her pay in 2011 with no raises or promotions3;
and (2) retaliation, based on her termination after filing a charge of
discrimination with the EEOC.
The record shows that neither the defendants nor the district
court had any real difficulty understanding Jean Charles’s claims or
their supporting factual allegations, which were brief and easy to
comprehend. Notably, the defendants answered the complaint and
the amended complaint without seeking a more definite statement
complaint. In other words, the shotgun pleading issue was presented as inter-
twined. And for good reason. The second amended complaint was not mean-
ingfully different from the first amended complaint with regard to the claims
asserted and their supporting factual allegations. On this record, our conclu-
sion that the district court improperly dismissed the second amended com-
plaint as a shotgun pleading necessarily covers the dismissal of the first
amended complaint as well.
3 To the extent Jean Charles wishes to present a disparate-treatment claim,
instead of or in addition to her disparate-impact claim, she must seek leave to
amend from the district court on remand. See, e.g., E.E.O.C. v. Joe’s Stone Crab,
Inc., 220 F.3d 1263, 1273–74 (11th Cir. 2000) (discussing the “discrete theories”
of liability for discrimination under Title VII).
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8 Opinion of the Court 22-13891
or indicating they were unable to understand her claims. And the
second amended complaint was largely unchanged from the prior
versions. In addition, the court was able to describe and address
the merits of each of Jean Charles’s claims in granting the defend-
ants’ motion to dismiss. While the pleadings were not “model[s]
of efficiency or specificity,” they “adequately put [the defendants]
on notice of the specific claims against them and the factual allega-
tions that support those claims.” Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1325.
The dissent’s arguments in response are unpersuasive. We
do not dispute that Jean Charles’s pleadings bear some characteris-
tics of what we call shotgun pleadings. See id. at 1321–23 (listing
the “four rough types or categories of shotgun pleadings”). But
even so, dismissal was not appropriate because the defendants still
had “adequate notice of the claims against them and the factual
allegations that support those claims.” Id. at 1325. While (the sec-
ond) paragraph 3 of the second amended complaint includes a
stray allegation that Jean Charles was “harassed” based on her race,
no facts are alleged in that paragraph, and the actual claims asserted
in Counts I and II are clearly stated in terms of (1) national origin
discrimination based on a disparate impact theory and (2) retalia-
tion. We do not require “technical exactness” in pleading, and a
mere reference to being “harassed” does not create any real imped-
iment to understanding Jean Charles’s claims. See DeLoach, 128 F.2d
at 380.
Likewise, the dissent faults Jean Charles for not distinguish-
ing between defendants, but this is an employment discrimination
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22-13891 Opinion of the Court 9
case where, according to the pleadings, the two defendants oper-
ated together as the single “government contractor” that employed
Jean Charles. A plaintiff in Jean Charles’s position may not be able
to identify in a complaint which defendant was responsible for
which acts or omissions she experienced as an employee. Nor
would such allegations add any clarity to the essence of her
claims—that is, that she experienced discrimination and retaliation
prohibited by Title VII as an employee of the facility operated by
the defendants.
Having concluded that the district court improperly invoked
the shotgun-pleading doctrine, we vacate and remand for further
proceedings. But for the district court’s erroneous dismissal of the
amended complaint as a shotgun pleading, the defendants could
not have filed a motion to dismiss, since they had already answered
the amended complaint. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (stating that a mo-
tion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) “must be made before pleading
if a responsive pleading is allowed”). Thus, we do not address the
merits of the motion to dismiss and instead return this case to its
posture before the sua sponte dismissal of the amended complaint.
For these reasons, we vacate and remand for further pro-
ceedings consistent with this opinion.
VACATED AND REMANDED.
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22-13891 L AGOA , J., dissenting 1
L AGOA , Circuit Judge, dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to vacate
the district court’s orders dismissing Marie Jean Charles’s first and
second amended complaints. In my view, the district court did not
abuse its discretion in dismissing those complaints as impermissible
shotgun pleadings, and I would affirm the district court’s dismissal
orders. Let me explain my reasoning.
Our review of a district court’s dismissal of a complaint as
an improper shotgun pleading is for an abuse of discretion. Weiland
v. Palm Beach Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., 792 F.3d 1313, 1320 (11th Cir. 2015).
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires a complaint
to include “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that
the pleader is entitled to relief.” In turn, Federal Rule of Civil Pro-
cedure 10(b) provides that a party must state its claims “in num-
bered paragraphs, each limited as far as practicable to a single set
of circumstances,” and that “each claim founded on a separate
transaction or occurrence . . . must be stated in a separate count.”
Shotgun pleadings are “[c]omplaints that violate either Rule
8(a)(2) or Rule 10(b), or both,” Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1320, and fail,
“to one degree or another[,] . . . to give the defendants adequate
notice of the claims against them and the grounds upon which
each claim rests,” Vibe Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1295
(11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1323). Courts in our
Circuit “have little tolerance for shotgun pleadings,” which “waste
scarce judicial resources, ‘inexorably broaden the scope of discov-
ery,’ ‘wreak havoc on appellate court dockets,’ and ‘undermine the
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2 L AGOA , J., dissenting 22-13891
public's respect for the courts.’” Id. (alterations adopted) (quoting
Davis v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consol., 516 F.3d 955, 981–83 (11th Cir.
2008)). Further, “[a] district court has the ‘inherent authority to
control its docket and ensure the prompt resolution of lawsuits,’
which includes the ability to dismiss a complaint on shotgun plead-
ing grounds.” Id. (quoting Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1320). However, in
dismissing a complaint on shotgun pleading grounds, the district
court is required to “allow a litigant one chance to remedy such
deficiencies,” by explaining “how the offending pleading violates
the shotgun pleading rule so that the party may properly avoid fu-
ture shotgun pleadings.” Id. at 1295–96. And the district court
should strike shotgun pleading even where the parties do not re-
quest it. Id. at 1295; Jackson v. Bank of Am., N.A., 898 F.3d 1348, 1358
(11th Cir. 2018); Est. of Bass v. Regions Bank, Inc., 947 F.3d 1352, 1358
(11th Cir. 2020).
This Court has identified “four rough types or categories of
shotgun pleadings.” Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1321. The first type is “a
complaint containing multiple counts where each count adopts the
allegations of all preceding counts, causing each successive count
to carry all that came before and the last count to be a combination
of the entire complaint.” Id. The second type is a complaint that
is “replete with conclusory, vague, and immaterial facts not obvi-
ously connected to any particular cause of action.” Id. at 1322.
The third type is a complaint that does not separate “each cause of
action or claim for relief ” into a different count. Id. at 1323. And
the final type is a complaint that “assert[s] multiple claims against
multiple defendants without specifying which of the defendants
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22-13891 L AGOA , J., dissenting 3
are responsible for which acts or omissions, or which of the defend-
ants the claim is brought against.” Id.
As to the dismissal of Jean Charles’s first amended com-
plaint, Jean Charles does not challenge the district court’s dismissal
of that complaint. Indeed, the arguments in her brief only address
the district court’s dismissal of the second amended complaint. As
this Court has long held, “[a]ny issue that an appellant wants the
Court to address should be specifically and clearly identified in the
brief,” as otherwise, the issue will be considered abandoned. Access
Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1330 (11th Cir. 2004); ac-
cord Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 680 (11th Cir.
2014). Therefore, Jean Charles has abandoned any challenge to the
dismissal of her first amended complaint, and I disagree with the
majority’s sua sponte consideration and vacatur of the district
court’s order dismissing that complaint.
But even if Jean Charles had not abandoned the issue on ap-
peal, I disagree with the majority that the district court abused its
discretion in dismissing the first amended complaint. Reviewing
that complaint, it falls under the first type of shotgun pleading iden-
tified by Weiland: “a complaint containing multiple counts where
each count adopts the allegations of all preceding counts, causing
each successive count to carry all that came before and the last
count to be a combination of the entire complaint.” 792 F.3d at
1321. Indeed, the first claim in the first amended complaint states,
“Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if fully set forth herein the
allegations contained in paragraphs 1-16, above,” and the second
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4 L AGOA , J., dissenting 22-13891
claim states, “Paragraphs 1-18 are realleged and incorporated
herein.”
In dismissing the first amended complaint as a shotgun
pleading, the district court set forth all four types of shotgun plead-
ings. The court then found that, “[a]t the very least, Plaintiff’s
[First] Amended Complaint falls into the first category,” as each
count “reincorporates by reference every allegation of the entire
pleading.” It explained that “[t]his circumstance alone makes it vir-
tually impossible to discern which of the many facts alleged sup-
ports each claim.” And the court informed Jean Charles that any
amended complaint “must comply with all applicable rules and or-
ders” and “cautioned that future failures to comply with all appli-
cable rules and orders of this Court may result in the striking or
denial of filings without notice or leave to refile.” Given this Court
has repeatedly held that a district court should strike a shotgun
pleading even where the parties do not request it, see, e.g., Vibe Mi-
cro, 878 F.3d at 1295; Jackson, 898 F.3d at 1358; Est. of Bass, 947 F.3d
at 1358, the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing
Jean Charles’s first amended complaint, which clearly falls under
the first type of shotgun pleading identified by Weiland.
Turning to Jean Charles’s second amended complaint, the
district court found that the complaint fell into the third and fourth
categories identified by Weiland: a complaint that (1) fails to sepa-
rate “each cause of action or claim for relief ” into a different count
and (2) “assert[s] multiple claims against multiple defendants with-
out specifying which of the defendants are responsible for which
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22-13891 L AGOA , J., dissenting 5
acts or omissions, or which of the defendants the claim is brought
against.” 792 F.3d at 1323. As to the second amended complaint’s
first claim—for “National Origin-Based Discrimination (Disparate
Impact) in Violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964”—
the district court noted that Jean Charles asserted a single claim for
color, race, and nationality discrimination regarding Defendants’
“failure to promote Plaintiff, failure to provide equal terms and
conditions of employment including pay or compensation, and ter-
mination of [Plaintiff’s] employment.” The court found that Jean
Charles’s “alleged injuries, which include both discrimination and
harassment, appear to arise from distinct transactions and occur-
rences, making it nearly impossible for Defendants to respond to”
the first claim. As to the second claim—for “Retaliation”—the dis-
trict court noted that while Jean Charles purported to reincorpo-
rate paragraphs 1 to 3, there were two sets of paragraphs num-
bered 1 to 3 in the complaint, and it determined that one of those
sets includes allegations of discrimination that would need to be
separate from her retaliation claim. Finally, the district court found
that the second amended complaint, as a whole, made “allegations
against Defendants collectively without identifying which Defend-
ant was responsible for which acts or omissions,” which “inhibit[ed]
Defendants from formulating responses.”
After reviewing the second amended complaint along with
the district court’s reasoning, the district court did not abuse its dis-
cretion in dismissing the complaint as a shotgun pleading. Jean
Charles’s first claim incorporated all the allegations contained in
the complaint’s previous paragraphs, including an allegation that
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6 L AGOA , J., dissenting 22-13891
Defendants “harassed her on the basis of national origin Haitian
and race – black.” But the first claim is premised on national origin-
based discrimination in violation of Title VII under a theory of dis-
parate impact, not harassment. In other words, Jean Charles im-
properly comingled theories under a single claim. The same holds
true as to her second claim for retaliation, which incorporates par-
agraph 3 of the second amended complaint. As the district court
noted, there are two paragraphs numbered as “3” in the complaint,
with one of those paragraphs referencing both discrimination and
harassment under Title VII—distinct theories of liability separate
from retaliation. Thus, Jean Charles again comingled multiple the-
ories under a single claim. Finally, the district court correctly noted
that Jean Charles did not identify which Defendant was responsible
for which acts or omissions at any point in the second amended
complaint. Instead, the complaint’s allegations are made either col-
lectively against both Defendants or, at times, against a “Defend-
ant” without specifying which of the two Defendants. Given these
deficiencies, which fall under two of the shotgun pleading types
identified in Weiland, the district court did not abuse its discretion
in dismissing the second amended complaint as a shotgun pleading.
For these reasons, I conclude that the district court did not
abuse its discretion in dismissing either of Jean Charles’s amended
complaints. I would affirm the district court’s dismissal orders and
thus respectfully dissent from the majority’s vacatur of those dis-
missal orders.
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