Civil rights — Employment discrimination — Florida Civil Rights Act — Limitation of actions — Section 760.11(5)’s requirement that complaint be filed within one year of receipt of determination of reasonable cause by “the commission,” refers to determination by Florida Commission on Human Relations, not issuance of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission right to sue letter — Where FCHR failed to determine whether there was reasonable cause within 180 days of filing of complaint, four-year statute of limitations for statutory violations applies
GARY WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, v. MANAGEMENT & TRAINING CORPORATION, Defendant. Circuit Court, 2nd Judicial Circuit in and for Gadsden County. Case No. 24-CA-417. April 9, 2025. David Frank, Judge. Counsel: Katherine L. Viker and Marie A. Mattox, Tallahassee, for Plaintiff. Lindsay D. Swiger, Jackson Lewis, P.C., Jacksonville, for Defendant.
ORDER DENYING DEFENDANT’SMOTION TO DISMISS
This cause came before the Court on March 24, 2025 for hearing on defendant’s motion to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds, and the Court having reviewed the motion and response, heard argument of counsel, and being otherwise fully advised in the premises, finds
The plaintiff filed his complaint more than a year after receiving a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) right to sue letter.
Defendant argues that this means the plaintiff’s claim is outside the one-year statute of limitations pursuant to Aleu v. Nova Se. Univ., Inc., 357 So.3d 134 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023) [48 Fla. L. Weekly D357a], review denied, No. SC2023-0609, 2023 WL 4837683 (Fla. July 28, 2023).
In Aleu, the employer filed a summary judgment motion arguing the employee’s action was time-barred under the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992 because the employee had failed to commence the action no later than one year after the date when the EEOC issued the right-to-sue notice. § 760.11(5), Fla. Stat. (2015) (“A civil action brought under this section shall be commenced no later than 1 year after the date of determination of reasonable cause by the commission (emphasis added).”). The current applicable version of the statute reads the same.
Important to the defendant and the Aleu court’s rationale is that a right to sue letter is reasonable cause and that “the commission” includes the federal EEOC. If this were true, then plaintiff’s EEOC right to sue letter would have triggered the one-year limitation period and his claim would be extinguished.
So we start here:
When deciding an issue governed by the text of a legal instrument, the careful lawyer or judge trusts neither memory nor paraphrase but examines the very words of the instrument. As Justinian’s Digest put it: A verbis legis non est recedendum (“Do not depart from the words of the law”).
Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner, Thomson/West, 2012.
Florida Statute 760.02(2) says, “ ‘Commission’ means the Florida Commission on Human Relations” (“FCHR”).
This Court will not depart from the words of the law. “The commission” is not the EEOC, it is the FCHR according to the express, uncomplicated, unambiguous, and seamless wording of the statute. The right to sue letter from the EEOC did not trigger the one-year limitation period.
Since the EEOC right to sue letter does not count, we logically turn to the action taken by the operative “commission,” the FCHR. The FCHR did nothing.
Since the FCHR did nothing, we again look to the express wording of the statute to tell us what that means in terms of options for a claimant. Here is what is supposed to happen:
If the commission fails to conciliate or determine whether there is reasonable cause on any complaint under this section within 180 days after the filing of the complaint:
(a) An aggrieved person may proceed under subsection (4) as if the commission determined that there was reasonable cause.
(b) The commission shall promptly notify the aggrieved person of the failure to conciliate or determine whether there is reasonable cause. The notice shall provide the options available to the aggrieved person under subsection (4) and inform the aggrieved person that he or she must file a civil action within 1 year after the date the commission certifies that the notice was mailed.
(c) A civil action brought by an aggrieved person under this section must be commenced within 1 year after the date the commission certifies that the notice was mailed pursuant to paragraph (b).
§ 760.11(8)(b), Fla. Stat. (2024).
The prior version of this subsection consisted of (a) only; (b) and (c) were added in 2020. That means the earlier court opinions discussed in this order had concluded, and the Legislature did not alter, that telling a claimant he may proceed as if reasonable cause had been determined was insufficient.
In fact, the added language supports the conclusion that the one-year limitation period only applies when specified notice is provided to a claimant — notice of options to proceed and certified notice of the specific limitation period. That, however, did not happen. Mr. Williams was never told he had a one-year limitation period.1
Contrary to defendant’s improvident use of the word “binding,” Aleu is anything but. Our First District and other District Courts of Appeal have disagreed with all or part of the rationale in Aleu.
Here are the most important two sentences of the opinion: “We certify conflict with Hines v. Whataburger Restaurants, LLC, 301 So. 3d 473 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020) [45 Fla. L. Weekly D1995c]. In Hines, the First District held that, pursuant to Joshua, section 95.11(3)(f)’s four-year limitation period, rather than section 760.11(5)’s one-year limitation period, applied to an employee’s statutory civil rights action, even though the employee had received a notice of dismissal stating that the employee was provided a right-to-sue notice.” Id. at 141.
This Court follows the guidance and holdings of the First District Court of Appeal. Why would this Court rely upon a district court case that expressly acknowledges conflict with the First District? The answer is — it will not.
The Aleu court attempted to explain the First District’s Hines decision by implying that the First District either failed to consider or misinterpreted Woodham v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Fla. Inc., 829 So.2d 891, 897 (Fla. 2002) [27 Fla. L. Weekly S834a].
Not so. U.S. District Court Judge T. Kent Wetherell, II tells us why the Aleu court missed the mark, not the First District:
Aleu found Woodham v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Inc., 829 So.2d 891 (Fla. 2002) [27 Fla. L. Weekly S834a], “controlling,” but the issue decided by the Florida Supreme Court in that case was not whether an EEOC right-to-sue letter could trigger the one-year statute of limitations in § 760.11(5). Rather, the only issue decided in Woodham was that an EEOC right-to-sue letter was not equivalent to a no-cause determination by the FCHR for purposes of triggering the 35-day period for requesting an administrative hearing under § 760.11(7). See 829 So. 2d at 897. However, in reaching its decision in Woodham, the Florida Supreme Court pointed out that the right-to-sue letter “d[id] not comply with the notice requirement in subsection (3), which requires the FCHR to ‘promptly notify the aggrieved person . . . of the options available under this section.’ ” Id. (quoting § 760.11(3), Fla. Stat.); see also Joshua v. City of Gainesville, 768 So. 2d 432, 437 (Fla. 2000) [25 Fla. L. Weekly S641a] (rejecting argument that one-year statute of limitations applies when FCHR does not issue a cause or no-cause determination within 180 days because it would be contrary to the statutory scheme “to require a person to proceed to court without any indication from the Commission [i.e., FCHR] of the progress, or lack thereof, in investigating the complaint filed with that body” (emphasis added)). Thus, if anything, Woodham provides additional support for Judge Hinkle’s conclusion in Marbury (and this Court’s conclusion in McCarty) that an EEOC right-to-sue letter is not a substitute for an FCHR notice. Accord Willis, 357 So.3d at 1269, 2023 WL, at *1 (relying on Woodham to hold that an EEOC right-to-sue letter “was not the equivalent of a reasonable cause finding by the [FCHR]”).
Ruffin v. Open Door Corp., No. 3:23CV3136-TKW-ZCB, 2023 WL 3018433, at *2 (N.D. Fla. Apr. 20, 2023).
This Court agrees, as it must, with the rational and holding of our First District, and also the Northern District of Florida and the other district courts of appeal who strenuously decline to follow Aleu.
Accordingly, it is ORDERED and ADJUDGED that defendant’s motion is DENIED.
__________________
1This is not the first time the Court has seen a case for which the FCHR has taken no action even though statutorily required to do so. One must wonder why the situation has not been rectified.