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Cheryl Nye v Carl Roberts
State: Maryland
Court: Maryland District Court
Case Date: 05/18/2000
Preview:IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND CHERYL NYE v. CARL ROBERTS, ET AL. * * * Civil No. JFM-99-1797 * * ***** MEMORANDUM

Cheryl Nye has brought this action against the Board of Education of Cecil County and Carl Roberts, the Superintendent of the Cecil County Public Schools ("CCPS"). Nye contends that she was subjected to sexual harassment while she was employed as a school psychologist by the CCPS. After she filed a charge complaining of the harassment, she allegedly was constructively discharged. Defendants have filed a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. The motion will be granted in part and denied in part. A. Defendants first contend that Nye's administrative charge was untimely. The last discriminatory act set forth in her charge was alleged to have occurred on August 15, 1996. She filed her charge with the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education ("OCR"), and OCR received the charge on May 27, 1997. This was more than 180 days after August 15th but less than 300 days after that date. OCR thereafter forwarded the charge to the EEOC. Defendants rely upon Williams v. Board of Education, 972 F. Supp. 248 (S.D.N.Y. 1997), in support of their position. There, the court held that a charge filed with OCR more than 180 days but less than 300 days from the alleged act of discrimination was untimely because OCR is not "a State or

local agency" within the meaning of Title VII and that a complaint therefore had to be filed within 180 days of the act of discrimination in order to be timely. In rejecting the plaintiff's appeal for the more generous limitations period, the Williams court reasoned that the plaintiff had failed to "initially institute proceedings with [the appropriate] state or local agency." Id. at 250. The court, however, did not address a factor that would have controlled its timeliness inquiry and required a different outcome--the worksharing agreement between the EEOC and the New York deferral agency. 1 In this case, the dispute concerning the timeliness of Nye's Title VII claim is resolved by the worksharing agreement between the Maryland Commission on Human Relations and the EEOC which provides that each of the agencies counter-designates the other "as its agent for the purpose of receiving and drafting charges." 1997 Worksharing Agreement II (A). Under the worksharing agreement, a Title VII charge received by one agency is considered received by the other for the purposes of determining timeliness. See EEOC v. Techalloy Maryland, Inc., 894 F.2d 676, 678-79 (4th Cir. 1990) (holding that, consistent with remedial purposes of Title VII, waiver in Maryland's worksharing agreement is self-executing and that complaint received by EEOC 281 days after last alleged discriminatory act was timely); see also Griffin v. City of Dallas, 26 F.3d 610, 613 (5th Cir.

Even in a state without a worksharing agreement, the Williams court would have ended its inquiry prematurely by not considering that a plaintiff in a deferral state can still qualify for the longer limitations period without first personally submitting a charge to the state agency. See Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U.S. 522, 525 (finding that "[n]othing in the Act suggests that the state proceedings may not be initiated by the EEOC acting on behalf of the complainant rather than by the complainant himself"); see also 29 C.F.R.
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