B. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:
Janet Wood ("Wood") brought suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging that the surviving spouse benefit provided by the City of San Diego ("the City") to its retired employees discriminates on the basis of sex. The district court dismissed Wood's disparate treatment and disparate impact claims and entered judgment in favor of the City. We affirm.
Wood retired in 2005 after over thirty-two years as an employee of the City.
When a City employee retires, she must choose among several options for allocating the pension benefit and the survivor benefit. We will refer to the option at issue in this case, codified at SDMC § 24.0601(c), as the "surviving spouse benefit." If a City employee is married (or has a registered domestic partner) at the time of retirement and chooses the surviving spouse benefit, the employee will receive her full monthly pension benefit until her death. At that time, if the employee's spouse or registered domestic partner survives her, the spouse or partner will receive a monthly allowance equal to half of the employee's monthly pension benefit.
If a City employee is single at the time of retirement and has chosen the surviving spouse benefit, the City either refunds the employee her contributions to the survivor benefit (plus interest) as a lump sum, or treats the employee's survivor contributions as voluntary additional contributions made to provide a larger monthly pension benefit. SDMC § 24.0601(e). Wood was single when she retired and had chosen the surviving spouse benefit. She elected to have her survivor contributions treated as additional voluntary contributions, adding to her monthly benefit.
On September 24, 2003, Wood filed this class action against the City alleging that the surviving spouse benefit violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII") and California's Fair Employment and Housing Act ("FEHA"). Wood's theory of liability is that because, in the aggregate, the City pays a larger amount of money to the married retirees who select the surviving spouse benefits than it does to single retirees who do the same, and male retirees are more likely to be married, the surviving spouse benefit has an unlawful disparate impact on female retirees. The City does not dispute that, in the aggregate, it costs more to fund surviving spouse benefits for married retirees than it does to refund the survivor contributions made by single retirees.
On May 19, 2004, the City filed a motion for summary judgment arguing that Wood failed to state a claim for relief under Title VII and that she had failed to properly exhaust her administrative remedies. After briefing on the summary judgment motion, the district court dismissed sua sponte Wood's Title VII claim for lack of Article III standing and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over her state law claim. The district court reasoned that Wood had not suffered a concrete injury because she had alleged only that unmarried retirees as a group receive a smaller benefit, and had not alleged that her pension benefit "has been impacted at all, adversely or positively."
On appeal, a different panel of our court reversed the district court in a memorandum disposition. Wood v. City of San Diego, 239 Fed.Appx. 310 (9th Cir.2007). Our decision was based in large part on the fact that "[n]either side was alerted to the need to present evidence or argument about the concreteness or redressability of Wood's injury." Id. at 311. We cautioned that "[i]f the district court determines to
On remand in June 2008, the City filed a motion arguing that intervening law required dismissal of Wood's Title VII claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
The City filed a motion to dismiss Wood's amended complaint. The City's sole argument with respect to the disparate impact claim was that the surviving spouse benefit is part of a bona fide seniority system, which is permitted as a matter of law under Title VII. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(h). The City also argued that Wood failed to state a claim for disparate treatment because she had not alleged discriminatory intent.
The district court denied the motion to dismiss with respect to the disparate impact claim. The district court found that while SDCERS as a whole is a bona fide seniority system, the surviving spouse benefit is a "component of the system [that] is not based on longevity of service." Although the amount of an employee's monthly pension (and thus the surviving spouse benefit) is based on seniority, the ability to receive the surviving spouse benefit is based only on marital status at the time of retirement.
The district court granted, however, the motion to dismiss the disparate treatment claim. The district court observed that Wood had alleged only that the City was aware of the disparate impact of the surviving spouse benefit at the time it adopted the policy and failed "to allege any facts establishing that the City deliberately adopted an employment practice . . . in order to discriminate based on gender." Citing Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit case law, the district court ruled that "[a] plaintiff alleging disparate treatment must allege facts showing intentional discrimination.. . . The fact that an employer was aware of, or totally indifferent to the discriminatory impact of, its policy is not sufficient to state a claim for relief." The district court also denied Wood further leave to amend her complaint, finding that the any attempt to amend her disparate treatment claim would be futile.
On August 2, 2010, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment on the federal and state law claims, and the City filed a motion to dismiss the Title VII claim under Rule 12(b)(1) based on lack of Article III standing. On November 22, 2010, the district court granted the motion to dismiss, concluding that Wood "has not suffered an `injury in fact' that is neither `conjectural [n]or hypothetical.'" The district court explained that Wood's allegation that she received a less valuable retirement benefit as a single employee "rests upon a series of contingencies," observing that "[i]f Wood had retired married, the value of her [surviving spouse] benefit . . . would have been unknown on the date of retirement because that value was contingent upon a series of events: pre-deceasing her spouse, her spouse surviving her for a period of years, and her spouse's eligibility for the benefit at the time of her death."
The district court also addressed Wood's contention that she suffered economic injury "by receiving a refund of only her employee
The district court thus dismissed Wood's disparate impact claim, declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over her remaining state law claims, and entered judgment in favor of the City. Wood timely appealed the dismissal of her Title VII disparate treatment and disparate impact claims.
We have jurisdiction over the dismissal of Wood's claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review de novo the district court's decision to dismiss Wood's disparate treatment claim pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). See ASW v. Oregon, 424 F.3d 970, 974 (9th Cir.2005). "We accept as true all well pleaded facts in the complaint and construe them in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party." Id. We review for abuse of discretion the district court's decision not to grant further leave for Wood to amend her disparate treatment claim. See Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1130 (9th Cir.2000) (en banc). The existence of jurisdiction over the disparate impact claim is also a question of law that we review de novo. Bova v. City of Medford, 564 F.3d 1093, 1095 (9th Cir.2009).
Before the Supreme Court's decisions in City of Los Angeles, Department of Water & Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 98 S.Ct. 1370, 55 L.Ed.2d 657 (1978), and Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity & Deferred Compensation Plans v. Norris, 463 U.S. 1073, 103 S.Ct. 3492, 77 L.Ed.2d 1236 (1983), pension plans often openly discriminated on the basis of sex, in order to account for the fact that women as a class live longer than men. The pension plan at issue in Manhart required female employees to make larger contributions than male employees. 435 U.S. at 704, 98 S.Ct. 1370. The Supreme Court held that these contribution requirements constituted discrimination and were thus unlawful under Title VII. Id. at 711, 717, 98 S.Ct. 1370. Five years later, the Court considered the pension plan at issue in Norris, which—rather than discriminating with respect to contribution requirements—paid female retirees smaller monthly benefits than male retirees who had made the same contributions. 463 U.S. at 1075, 103 S.Ct. 3492. The Court held that this too violated Title VII, and reaffirmed that classification on the basis of sex is not permissible at either the "pay-out stage of a retirement plan" or the "pay-in stage." Id. at 1081, 103 S.Ct. 3492. Retirement contributions and benefits must be facially neutral with respect to sex and other classifications protected under Title VII.
Prior to Manhart, the City of San Diego's retirement plan required male employees to make larger contributions to the surviving spouse benefit, based on the assumption that because women live longer, male employees were more likely to still be married when they retired and more likely to die before their spouses. After Manhart, the contribution amounts were equalized. The current plan is facially neutral:
But according to Wood, the surviving spouse benefit continues to violate Title VII in two ways. First, because on average the City pays more in benefits to married retirees who select the surviving spouse benefit than it does to single retirees who do the same, and male retirees are more likely to be married, Wood claims that the surviving spouse benefit has an unlawful disparate impact on women. Second, because the City knew that male employees stood to gain more from the surviving spouse benefit—as evidenced by the original policy requiring men to make larger contributions—Wood claims that the City violated Title VII's disparate treatment provision when it equalized the contribution requirements without otherwise changing the program. We address Wood's disparate treatment claim first.
The district court dismissed Wood's disparate treatment claim pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) because she failed to adequately allege discriminatory intent. On appeal, Wood argues that her allegations were sufficient, and that in the alternative, the district court should have granted leave for her to amend her complaint a second time.
Disparate treatment occurs "where an employer has treated a particular person less favorably than others because of a protected trait." Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 129 S.Ct. 2658, 2672, 174 L.Ed.2d 490 (2009) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). "A disparate-treatment plaintiff must establish that the defendant had a discriminatory intent or motive for taking a job-related action." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). A discriminatory motive may be established by the employer's informal decisionmaking or "a formal, facially discriminatory policy," but "liability depends on whether the protected trait ... actually motivated the employer's decision." Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 610, 113 S.Ct. 1701, 123 L.Ed.2d 338 (1993). "It is insufficient for a plaintiff alleging discrimination under the disparate treatment theory to show the employer was merely aware of the adverse consequences the policy would have on a protected group." Am. Fed'n of State, Cnty., & Mun. Emps. v. Washington, 770 F.2d 1401, 1405 (9th Cir.1985).
Wood's disparate treatment claim, found at paragraph 33 of her First Amended Complaint, alleges that the surviving spouse benefit "discriminates against women intentionally, within the meaning of Title VII, because it was adopted in 1971 with knowledge of its discriminatory effects." We agree with the district court that this does not adequately allege disparate treatment under American Federation, Hazen, or Ricci. Wood does not claim that the City adopted the surviving spouse benefit because it would benefit men more often than women. Her only allegation is that, when the contribution requirements were equalized to comply with Manhart, the City was aware that male employees would disproportionately benefit from the change.
At oral argument, counsel for Wood argued that Manhart and Norris were decided as disparate treatment cases, despite the absence of any allegation that the defendants were motivated by animus towards their female employees. But the policies challenged in those cases were facially discriminatory, and the Supreme Court has held that a discriminatory motive may in some situations be inferred from reliance on "a formal, facially discriminatory policy." See Hazen, 507 U.S. at 609-10, 113 S.Ct. 1701. Where, as here, a plaintiff is challenging a facially neutral policy, there must be a specific allegation of discriminatory intent. Am. Fed'n, 770
We also conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Wood leave to further amend her complaint. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) instructs that before trial the court should "freely give leave" to amend a pleading "when justice so requires." We have held that a district court should grant leave to amend "unless it determines that the pleading could not possibly be cured by the allegation of other facts." Lopez, 203 F.3d at 1130 (quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, the district court thoroughly explained its reasons for not granting leave to amend:
This decision was not an abuse of discretion. Wood still does not suggest that she can allege any facts to show that the City had a discriminatory intent. We affirm the district court's dismissal of Wood's disparate treatment claim without granting leave to amend.
The district court dismissed Wood's disparate impact claim for lack of Article III standing. On appeal, Wood argues that the City's motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) was untimely because it was made after the City filed a responsive pleading; that the district court should not have dismissed her claim on standing grounds because the jurisdictional and merits issues are intertwined; and that her allegations and evidence are sufficient to demonstrate Article III standing.
As a threshold matter, Wood's assertion that the 12(b)(1) motion was untimely is simply wrong. Wood correctly quotes the language from Rule 12(b) that instructs: "A motion asserting any of these defenses must be made before pleading if a responsive pleading is allowed." But the deadline for making a Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is prolonged by Rule 12(h)(3), which provides that "[i]f the court determines at any time that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, the court must dismiss the action." Indeed, "[t]he objection that a federal court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction ... may be raised by a party, or by a court on its own initiative, at any stage in the litigation, even after trial and the entry of judgment." Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 506, 126 S.Ct. 1235, 163 L.Ed.2d 1097 (2006).
Although federal courts take a broad view of constitutional standing in civil rights cases, a civil rights plaintiff claiming discrimination "must satisfy the case or controversy requirement of Article III by demonstrating [her] standing to sue at each stage of the litigation."
Throughout this litigation, Wood has alleged that she satisfies the standing requirements of Article III because she has suffered a pecuniary injury—namely, that "if married on the day of retirement, a retiring City employee receives a retirement benefit [the surviving spouse benefit] worth far more than the substitute benefit available to an unmarried employee." The City challenged Wood's standing in a 12(b)(1) motion by disputing the truth of that allegation, also known as a "factual" attack on jurisdiction.
To support her allegation, Wood presented declarations stating (1) that in the aggregate, married retirees who choose the surviving spouse benefit receive a larger amount of money than unmarried retirees; (2) that, in the private market, an annuity providing the benefit that married retirees receive would cost more than an annuity providing the benefit that unmarried retirees receive; and (3) that the City makes matching contributions to fund the surviving spouse benefit but does not contribute to the benefit that unmarried retirees receive. First, the district court found that Wood's evidence could not establish that the City in fact made matching contributions to fund the surviving spouse benefit. But regardless of how the surviving spouse benefit is funded, the district court concluded that Wood's evidence could not establish more than speculative, conjectural injuries that are insufficient to satisfy Article III.
The district court's analysis centered on the obvious fact that the value of a pension is tied to the length of a retiree's life. Like every other retired City employee, Wood cannot predict what the ultimate value of her pension will be, or whether
In other words, when Wood retired as a single employee, she received her monthly pension benefits plus a guaranteed refund of her survivor contributions (or at least the option to receive a guaranteed refund by taking them as a lump sum). She has no way of knowing whether this benefit is greater or less than what her hypothetical spouse would have received had she retired married and predeceased her spouse. Some married employees will have spouses who outlive them by many years and end up receiving a pension benefit greater than Wood's; other married employees will outlive their spouses, or they will die simultaneously, and thus receive no benefit from their survivor contributions at all. Similarly, Wood's evidence about the value of her retirement benefit as a private annuity was based on assumptions about the age of her hypothetical spouse and how long they both would have lived. Wood simply cannot show that, because she was single, she received a less valuable retirement benefit. The district court concluded that this means she has not suffered a concrete, particularized injury.
On appeal, Wood challenges the district court's analysis in two ways. First, she continues to emphasize her argument that the private, actuarial value of her retirement benefit (if purchased on the private market) is less than the actuarial value of the benefit a similarly-situated married employee would receive. Second, she points to a line of cases holding that a "jurisdictional finding of genuinely disputed facts is inappropriate when the jurisdictional issue and substantive issues are so intertwined that the question of jurisdiction is dependent on the resolution of factual issues going to the merits of an action." Safe Air For Everyone, 373 F.3d at 1039 (quoting Sun Valley Gas., Inc. v. Ernst Enters., 711 F.2d 138, 139 (9th Cir. 1983)). Wood maintains that the factual question of whether or not she was injured is intertwined with the merits of her claim that she is a member of a protected group which has been subject to an unlawful disparate impact. See Paige v. California, 291 F.3d 1141, 1144-45 (9th Cir.2002). Because these factual issues are intertwined, Wood urges the panel to "review the district court's order below not as a dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction but rather as a grant of summary judgment on the merits for the [City]." Safe Air for Everyone, 373 F.3d at 1040.
We note that, in the Title VII context, the Supreme Court has made clear that its focus is on the compensation actually paid as a retirement benefit rather than the actuarial value of the policy. See Norris, 463 U.S. at 1081-82, 103 S.Ct. 3492 ("We reject petitioners' contention that the Arizona plan does not discriminate on the basis of sex because a woman and a man who defer the same amount of compensation will obtain upon retirement annuity policies having approximately the same present actuarial value."). We also note that at oral argument, counsel for the City seemed to agree that some of the jurisdictional and merits issues in this case are intertwined.
But we ultimately need not decide whether Wood satisfies the case or controversy requirements of Article III, or even whether the question of standing is in fact intertwined with the merits of her case.
As discussed previously, in Manhart the Court considered a pension plan that required female employees to make larger contributions than male employees in order to receive the same benefits, on the basis that women live longer than men and their pensions cost more. 435 U.S. at 704-05, 98 S.Ct. 1370. Recognizing that "the parties accept as unquestionably true" the generalization that women live longer than men, the Court framed its inquiry as "whether the existence or nonexistence of `discrimination' is to be determined by comparison of class characteristics or individual characteristics." Id. at 707-08, 98 S.Ct. 1370.
After examining the text of Title VII, the Court held that "[t]he statute's focus on the individual is unambiguous. It precludes treatment of individuals as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual, or national class." Id. at 708, 98 S.Ct. 1370; see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) (making it unlawful "to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (emphasis added)). Therefore, the Court concluded that, in order to comply with Title VII, pension plan contributions must be facially neutral with respect to sex (and presumably any other class protected by Title VII). Id. at 711, 98 S.Ct. 1370. In Norris, the Court confirmed that pension plan benefits must be facially neutral as well. 463 U.S. at 1075, 103 S.Ct. 3492.
As part of the Manhart decision, the Court recognized that facially neutral pension plans would necessarily have a disparate impact on certain groups, and it expressly considered the very situation that Wood challenges here. The Court acknowledged, for example, that "unless women as a class are assessed an extra charge, they will be subsidized, to some extent, by the class of male employees." Manhart, 435 U.S. at 708-09, 98 S.Ct. 1370. But, the Court noted, this type of subsidy is offset somewhat by survivor benefits: "Since female spouses of male employees are likely to have greater life expectancies than the male spouses of female employees, whatever benefits men lose in `primary' coverage for themselves, they may regain in `secondary' coverage for their wives." Id. at 709 n. 14, 98 S.Ct. 1370. As a general matter, the Court explained:
Id. at 710, 98 S.Ct. 1370 (emphasis added).
The Court also specifically addressed a disparate impact challenge based on these sorts of subsidies:
Id. at 710 n. 20, 98 S.Ct. 1370 (internal citations omitted).
This last paragraph speaks directly to Wood's claim. Her argument is that a gender-neutral survivor benefit "itself violate[s] Title VII because of its disproportionately heavy impact on [female] employees." Id. But this suggestion has been firmly rejected by the Supreme Court, based both on its own interpretation of disparate impact liability and on the Bennett Amendment to Title VII, which provides that a compensation differential based on sex is not unlawful if it is authorized by the Equal Pay Act. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(h); see Manhart, 435 U.S. at 711-12, 98 S.Ct. 1370. The Equal Pay Act authorizes differentials "based on any other factor other than sex." 29 U.S.C. § 206(d); see Manhart, 435 U.S. at 712, 98 S.Ct. 1370. While this broad language has been subject to much interpretation, footnote 20 of Manhart clearly interprets it to cover the variations in pension benefits challenged here. Thus, even if the district court had considered Wood's disparate impact claim on its merits, it should have dismissed it as a matter of law.
We can affirm the district court on any basis supported by the record. See, e.g., Dougherty v. City of Covina, 654 F.3d 892, 900 (9th Cir.2011). We affirm the district court's dismissal of Wood's disparate treatment claim because she failed to allege intentional discrimination. We affirm the district court's dismissal of Wood's disparate impact claim because, even assuming she has Article III standing, her claim fails as a matter of law. See Morrison v. Nat'l Austl. Bank Ltd., ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 2869, 2877, 177 L.Ed.2d 535 (2010) ("[A] remand would only require a new Rule 12(b)(6) label for the same Rule 12(b)(1) conclusion."). We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.