LANCE M. AFRICK, District Judge.
Before the Court is a motion
The relevant facts are not in dispute. Plaintiff, Jacques Boutte ("Boutte"), was employed by defendants, Lafitte Guest House Property, L.L.C., Frenchmen Hotel Properties, LLC, and Hugh Stiel, for approximately seven months between March and October 2013. His employment was terminated on October 24, 2013. Four months later, on February 25, 2014, Boutte submitted an age discrimination charge to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") claiming that he was terminated by defendants solely as the result of his age. The EEOC completed its review and issued a "Right to Sue" letter to Boutte on September 21, 2015. More than two years after his termination, on December 23, 2015, Boutte filed the above-captioned action in this Court asserting age discrimination in violation of the Louisiana Employment Discrimination Law ("LEDL"), La. R.S. § 23:301, et seq. and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), codified at 29 U.S.C. § 623.
Defendants filed their motion to dismiss Boutte's state law claims as untimely on February 25, 2016, but upon Boutte's motion the Court continued
A district court may dismiss a complaint, or any part of it, for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted if the plaintiff has not set forth a factual allegation in support of his claim that would entitle him to relief. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007); Cuvillier v. Taylor, 503 F.3d 397, 401 (5th Cir. 2007). This Court will not look beyond the factual allegations in the pleadings to determine whether relief should be granted. See Spivey v. Robertson, 197 F.3d 772, 774 (5th Cir. 1999); Baker v. Putnal, 75 F.3d 190, 196 (5th Cir. 1996). In assessing the complaint, a court must accept all well-pleaded facts as true and liberally construe all factual allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Spivey, 197 F.3d at 774; Lowrey v. Tex. A & M Univ. Sys., 117 F.3d 242, 247 (5th Cir. 1997). "Dismissal is appropriate when the complaint `on its face show[s] a bar to relief.'" Cutrer v. McMillan, 308 F. App'x 819, 820 (5th Cir. 2009) (quoting Clark v. Amoco Prod. Co., 794 F.2d 967, 970 (5th Cir. 1986)).
"[P]rescription is a proper reason for granting a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. . . ." Snow v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., No. 15-02375, 2015 WL 5276772, at *2 (E.D. La. Sept. 8, 2015) (Engelhardt, J.); see also Tigert v. Am. Airlines Inc., 390 F. App'x 357, 358 (5th Cir. 2010) (affirming dismissal of time-barred claim under 12(b)(6)). "A statute of limitations may support dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) where it is evident from the plaintiff's pleadings that the action is barred and the pleadings fail to raise some basis for tolling or the like." Jones v. Alcoa, Inc., 339 F.3d 359, 366 (5th Cir. 2003).
Prescriptive statutes are to be strictly construed against prescription and in favor of the obligation sought to be extinguished. Bustamento v. Tucker, 607 So.2d 532 (La. 1992). Generally, the party asserting prescription has the burden of proof. Imbornone v. Tchefuncta Urgent Care, Inc., No. 11-3195, 2012 WL 3440136, at *4 (E.D. La. Aug. 15, 2012) (Milazzo, J.) (citing Titus v. IHOP Rest., Inc., 25 So.3d 761, 764 (La. 2009)). When a claim is prescribed on the face of the complaint, however, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show an interruption or suspension of prescription. Id.
"Louisiana Revised Statute [§] 23:303 sets forth the prescriptive period for an employment discrimination claim."
This one-year prescriptive period begins to run from the date of notice of termination. Eastin v. Entergy Corp., 865 So.2d 49, 54 (La. 2004). The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and this Court have repeatedly recognized that Section 23:303(D) provides for a maximum prescriptive period of eighteen months. See, e.g., Williams v. Otis Elevator Co., 557 F. App'x 299, 302 (5th Cir. 2014) ("The Louisiana anti-discrimination statute has a prescriptive period of one year, which can be suspended for a maximum of six months during the pendency of a state or federal administrative investigation."); Lefort v. Lafourche Par. Fire Prot. Dist. No. 3, 39 F.Supp.3d 820, 825 (E.D. La. 2014) (Vance, J.) ("Consequently, the Louisiana disability discrimination statute requires a plaintiff to file suit on his discrimination claim no later than eighteen months after the occurrence forming the basis for the claim.") (internal quotations omitted); Bellow v. Bd. of Sup'rs of Louisiana State Univ. & Agr. & Mech. Coll., 913 F.Supp.2d 279, 289 (E.D. La. 2012) (Barbier, J.) ("Therefore, the total amount of time that a plaintiff has to bring a claim under Louisiana Revised Statute [§] 23:322 is eighteen months."); accord Wilson v. Bd. of Sup'rs of Louisiana State Univ. Agr. & Mech. Coll., 2014-0074, 2016 WL 1394237 (La. App. 1 Cir. 2016) ("[A complainant's employment discrimination claim] has a one-year prescriptive period, which may be extended up to a total of eighteen months, if the complainant has filed a complaint with the EEOC or the LCHR.").
In the face of this authority and without citation to a single supportive case, Boutte argues that Section 23:303(D) should be read to toll the prescriptive period for the entire duration of administrative proceedings.
Contrary to Boutte's assertions, however, Section 23:303(D) is not susceptible to such an interpretation. Indeed, this Court's interpretation of Section 23:303(D) is compelled by the plain meaning of the statute. Ybarra v. Dish Network, L.L.C., 807 F.3d 635, 640 (5th Cir. 2015) ("First, under traditional rules of statutory interpretation, we look at the plain meaning of the statutory language."). Boutte's arguments for a different interpretation of Louisiana Revised Statute § 23:303(D) are therefore rejected. Because Boutte admittedly initiated the above-captioned action more than eighteen months from the last allegedly discriminatory act committed by defendants, his state law discrimination claims must be dismissed unless the prescription statute is unenforceable as violative of the U.S. Constitution. Boutte claims that Section 23:303(D) violates both the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection as well as his right to due process.
To prove an equal protection violation, Boutte must show (1) that he has been treated differently by the state from others similarly situated and (2) that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment. Stotter v. Univ. of Tex. at San Antonio, 508 F.3d 812, 824 (5th Cir. 2007). Boutte argues that Section 23:303(D) lacks a "rational basis" because "on average the EEOC takes 10 months to conduct and complete an investigation," and "[w]hat possible rationale could there be in providing a suspension of prescription during the pendency of administrative review only to arbitrarily take suspension away after 6 months, well short of the average length of EEOC investigations?"
In short, Boutte has not been treated differently by the state from others similarly situated. Section 23:303(D) treats individuals who file administrative claims with the EEOC or the LCHR before initiating a civil action no differently than individuals who choose to pretermit the administrative process and proceed directly to court. As defendants explain in their opposition, the LEDL does not require that administrative remedies be exhausted before filing suit.
Boutte's decision to initiate an administrative proceeding in no way affected his right to file an LEDL claim in court and he was not, as he claims, "penalized by a delay that [was] beyond [his] control."
In addition, Boutte's equal protection argument fails because there is a rational basis for limiting the prescriptive period for employment discrimination claims to eighteen months even where administrative investigations may exceed that time frame. The rational basis review bar is low: "The question is only whether a rational relationship exists between the [policy] and a conceivable legitimate governmental objective." FM Properties Operating Co. v. City of Austin, 93 F.3d 167, 174-75 (5th Cir. 1996). "If the question is at least debatable, there is no substantive due process violation." Id. at 175. The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that "[a] State's interest in regulating the work load of its courts and determining when a claim is too stale to be adjudicated certainly suffices to give it legislative jurisdiction to control the remedies available in its courts by imposing statutes of limitations." Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 486 U.S. 717, 730 (1988). None of the arguments advanced by Boutte convince the Court that there is no rational relationship between Section 23:303(D) and this legitimate government objective.
Turning to Boutte's assertion that the prescription statute violates his right to due process, the Court first observes that Boutte advances no specific arguments addressing how Section 23:303(D) denied him that right. Nevertheless, for the same reasons outlined above, it is clear that Boutte's right to due process was not violated by the statute at issue. See Doe v. Jindal, No. CV 15-1283, 2015 WL 7300506, at *7 (E.D. La. Nov. 18, 2015) (Vance, J.) (citing Exec. Air. Taxi Corp. v. City of Bismarck, N.D., 518 F.3d 562, 569 (8th Cir. 2008)) ("A rational basis that survives equal protection scrutiny also satisfies substantive due process.").
For the foregoing reasons,
Even if Boutte was unable to obtain such a stay, the prescription statute would not thereby be rendered unconstitutional. The fact that a state prescription statute may under some circumstances deprive a plaintiff of a federal forum for his state law discrimination claims does not render the prescription statute unconstitutional. Indeed, the Fifth Circuit has repeatedly held that "federal administrative claims filed with the . . . EEOC . . . do not [automatically] interrupt prescription for state law claims." Drury v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 359 F.3d 366, 368 (5th Cir. 2004). It follows that a state prescription statute may permissibly require a plaintiff with a pending administrative claim to file suit in state court in order to avoid the expiration of his state law claims. This is certainly true where, as here, there is no requirement that plaintiff exhaust his administrative remedies before seeking relief on his state law claims. See Radford v. Gen. Dynamics Corp., 151 F.3d 396, 399 (5th Cir. 1998) ("If there is no exhaustion requirement, there is no need to toll the statute [of limitations].").