Western District reins in deadline for Human Rights Commission

The Missouri Court of Appeals Western District is allowing two employment discrimination suits to proceed, at least for now, despite a new provision of law that exempts religious organizations from the Missouri Human Rights Act.

In a March 8 ruling, the court said the Missouri Human Rights Commission waited too long to deny a lawsuit by a former employee of a Joplin hospital. The same day, the Western District said a Jackson County circuit judge wrongly threw out a lawsuit against a Kansas City university after the commission sought to rescind the plaintiff’s right to sue it.

Neither ruling addressed the validity of the religious exemption itself or whether either defendant is entitled to claim it. But taken together, the rulings indicate that the Human Rights Commission’s ability to explore such issues isn’t unlimited. 

Joan Swartz of the Law Office of Joan M. Swartz in St. Louis, an attorney for plaintiff Mohammad Najib, called it a “significant decision” that could reduce a backlog of cases before the commission.

“They have 180 days,” Swartz said. “Do it or don’t do it. Issue or don’t.”

Najib filed a complaint with the commission in June 2019, alleging that he faced national origin, ancestry and religious discrimination while working at Mercy Hospital Joplin. However, the agency kept the matter open until April 2020, when it said he had no right to sue for any allegations occurring on or after Aug. 28, 2017.

That was the effective date of a legislative overhaul of the state’s employment discrimination statutes.  Among other changes, the new law exempts a number of entities, including those owned or operated by a religious or sectarian organization. The Mercy Hospital system is run by the St. Louis-based Sisters of Mercy.

Although the commission is required to review discrimination claims before a lawsuit can be filed, the Western District said that review period is just 180 days. If the commission isn’t finished with its investigation at that point, it must issue the plaintiff a right-to-sue letter if one is requested.

Judge Thomas N. Chapman wrote that the commission did not have to determine the status of the employer in order to have jurisdiction to process the case.

“Put another way, the Commission is not required, in its administrative processing, to reach the merits of a complaint in every case,” he wrote. “The Commission is not deprived of its authority with respect to a complaint simply because it might have, had it reached the merits of a case, come to the conclusion that the complainant was not entitled to a remedy.” Presiding Judge Anthony Rex Gabbert and Judge Lisa White Hardwick concurred.

Jim Paul of Ogletree Deakins, an attorney for Mercy Clinic Joplin, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

In the other case on March 8, a different Western District panel said it’s too soon to say if plaintiff Julie Gomoletz can pursue her claims of race- and sex-based discrimination and retaliation against Rockhurst University, a private Jesuit university in Kansas City.

Gomoletz received a right-to-sue letter from the Human Rights Commission. But after she filed her lawsuit in Jackson County Circuit Court, the commission told her its initial decision was in error and that it was reopening the administrative case. It later decided that it lacked jurisdiction over the matter because of Rockhurst’s religious affiliation. 

Gomoletz challenged those decisions in a separate action in Cole County, which remains pending. But based on the letters the commission issued to Gomoletz, the circuit court dismissed her suit with prejudice. Judge Janet Sutton, writing for the Western District, said the trial judge “improperly gave full force and effect” to the commission’s findings, which aren’t yet final. 

“As Rockhurst itself argued to the circuit court, it would be ‘duplicative, wasteful and unjust’ for the circuit court to address the validity of MCHR’s June 30 and October 8, 2020 letters, when those issues are being actively litigated in judicial review proceedings pending in the Circuit Court of Cole County,” she wrote. “By the same token, it would be unjust for the circuit court to rely on MCHR’s post-right-to-sue-letter actions to dismiss Ms. Gomoletz’s petition with prejudice, while she is actively challenging those actions using the precise procedural avenue which MCHR, and Rockhurst, have advised her to follow.”

Sutton declined to weigh in on the commission’s ability to rescind a right-to-sue letter or its determination that Rockhurst meets the religious exemption. However, pointing to the Western District’s simultaneous ruling in Najib, she noted that Gomoletz’s “objections to those letters are not insubstantial.” Judges Alok Ahuja and Edward R. Ardini Jr. concurred.

Brandon D. Burkhart of Burkhart Law in Kansas City, an attorney for Gomoletz, and Brian J. Zickefoose of Husch Blackwell, an attorney for Rockhurst, didn’t return messages.

The cases are Najib v. Missouri Commission on Human Rights et al., WD84344, and Gomoletz v. Rockhurst University, WD84330.