Ayvazian v. McDonough

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

JEMMA AYVAZIAN,

Plaintiff, Civil Action No. 24-2804 (JEB) v.

DOUGLAS A. COLLINS,

Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Plaintiff Jemma Ayvazian, a nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs, brought this

Title VII suit against Secretary of the Department Douglas A. Collins, alleging that she had

faced: (1) workplace discrimination based on her race, sex, and national origin; (2) retaliation for

reporting that discrimination; and (3) a hostile work environment based again on her protected

characteristics. After finding each of her claims either unexhausted or meritless, the Court

dismissed her suit for failure to state a claim. Ayvazian v. Collins, 2025 WL 1795037, at *1

(D.D.C. June 30, 2025). Plaintiff now moves for reconsideration under Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 59(e). The Court will deny the Motion.

I. Legal Standard

Rule 59(e) permits the filing of a motion to alter or amend a judgment when such motion

is filed within 28 days after the judgment’s entry. The court applies a “stringent” standard when

evaluating Rule 59(e) motions. Ciralsky v. CIA, 355 F.3d 661, 673 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (quoting

Firestone v. Firestone, 76 F.3d 1205, 1208 (D.C. Cir. 1996)). “A Rule 59(e) motion is

‘discretionary’ and need not be granted unless the district court finds that there is an ‘intervening

1 change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or the need to correct a clear error or

prevent manifest injustice.’” Firestone, 76 F.3d at 1208 (quoting Nat’l Trust v. Dep’t of State,

834 F. Supp. 453, 455 (D.D.C. 1993)); see also 11 C. Wright & A. Miller, Fed. Prac. & Proc.

Civ. § 2810.1 at 158–62 (3d ed. 2016) (restating same basic grounds).

Rule 59(e), moreover, “is not a vehicle to present a new legal theory that was available

prior to judgment,” Patton Boggs LLP v. Chevron Corp., 683 F.3d 397, 403 (D.C. Cir. 2012), or

“to relitigate old matters.” Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 485 n.5 (2008) (citation

omitted). “The strictness with which [Rule 59(e)] motions are viewed is justified by the need to

protect both the integrity of the adversarial process in which parties are expected to bring all

arguments before the court, and the ability of the parties and others to rely on the finality of

judgments.” Mohammadi v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 947 F. Supp. 2d 48, 77 (D.D.C. 2013),

aff’d, 782 F.3d 9 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quoting CFTC v. McGraw-Hill Cos., 403 F. Supp. 2d 34, 36

(D.D.C. 2005)).

II. Analysis

The Court notes at the outset that Plaintiff’s Motion is not grounded in any “intervening

change of controlling law” or the “availability of new evidence.” Firestone, 76 F.3d at 1208.

Instead, she contends that the Court committed clear errors of law and fact in dismissing her

case; in doing so, she retreads much of the same ground from her initial opposition to

Defendant’s motion to dismiss. See ECF No. 15 (Mot.) at 7–11. Addressing each of her

contentions in turn, the Court finds that none of Plaintiff’s arguments meets Rule 59(e)’s

exacting standard for reconsideration.

2 A. Exhaustion

Plaintiff first argues that the Court erroneously dismissed her claims for failure to

exhaust. See Mot. at 15–19. In general, a plaintiff seeking to sue under Title VII must first

“exhaust” her administrative remedies by filing a complaint with the Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission and then file a civil action within a certain period after the agency

proceedings conclude. See 29 C.F.R. § 1614.407. The Court previously held that all claims

arising from conduct detailed in Ayvazian’s first EEOC complaint, filed on November 11, 2021,

must be dismissed for failure to exhaust under these rules. Ayvazian, 2025 WL 1795037, at *8.

Plaintiff does not dispute that her first complaint was not properly exhausted. Still, she

argues that her case “warranted [an] exception to the exhaustion rule,” Mot. at 18, because she

acted “in the best interest of judicial economy” by bringing a single action. See id. at 19.

Plaintiff misunderstands the extent of the Court’s discretion. Although exhaustion is not

jurisdictional, it is still a “mandatory” requirement. Douglas v. Donovan, 559 F.3d 549, 556 n.4

(D.C. Cir. 2009). Absent waiver, estoppel, or equitable tolling, a court must dismiss an

unexhausted claim. Colbert v. Potter, 471 F.3d 158, 167 (D.C. Cir. 2006). None of the

circumstances here, including Plaintiff’s interest in consolidating her litigation, falls within those

exceptions to the exhaustion requirement. The Court thus cannot disturb its prior holding.

B. Discrimination, Hostile Work Environment, and Retaliation

Plaintiff next maintains that the Court applied an overly harsh pleading standard when it

found that she had failed to state claims for discrimination, hostile work environment, and

retaliation. See Mot. at 7–12. Although “detailed factual allegations” are not necessary to

withstand a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007), “a

complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is

3 plausible on its face[,]’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550

U.S. at 570) — that is, the facts alleged in the complaint “must be enough to raise a right to relief

above the speculative level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555. The court need not accept as true,

however, “a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation.” Trudeau v. FTC, 456 F.3d 178,

193 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (quoting Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286 (1986)).

Plaintiff first asserts that her pleadings sufficiently established Chien Chen as a

comparator for her discrimination claim, and that the Court erred when it concluded otherwise.

See Mot. at 12. As a threshold matter, she claims that the Court never should have reached the

question in the first place because, in her view, comparator evidence is relevant only to pretext.

Id. at 11–12. That is incorrect; comparator evidence can be used to assess a prima facie case of

discrimination as well. Brown v. Sessoms, 774 F.3d 1016, 1022 (D.C. Cir. 2014). In fact, at the

pleadings stage, a plaintiff “must allege some facts to ground a reasonable inference that [she]

was in fact similarly situated to comparator employees.” Owens v. Thompson, 2024 WL

1328461, at *2 (D.D.C. Mar. 28, 2024) (quotation marks and citations omitted).

Plaintiff next contends that Chen is an appropriate comparator, but, as the Court

highlighted in its prior Opinion, her own theory of the case belies this point. According to

Ayvazian, she was forced to hire Chen as her subordinate, see ECF No. 1 (Compl.), ¶ 71, and

treat him “differently than other employees,” id., ¶ 72, and eventually Chen took over her role as

Director of Nursing Education after she was removed from her position. Id., ¶ 186. By

Plaintiff’s own account, at no point did the two of them ever share qualifications, job

responsibilities, performance histories, or even the same supervisor. It is not enough for Plaintiff

“to simply plead that a comparator is a co-worker without further allegations of similarity in job

duties or . . . qualifications.” Thompson, 2024 WL 1328461, at *2 (cleaned up). All told, the

4 Court declines to deviate from its prior conclusion that Chen was not an adequately pled

comparator.

Ayvazian next argues that even without comparator evidence, she sufficiently alleged

facts tying her mistreatment in the workplace to her protected characteristics. See Mot. at 8–9,

10. She did not. Despite submitting nearly three dozen pages of factual allegations, Plaintiff did

not offer a single fact relating the mistreatment she allegedly suffered back to any of her

protected characteristics. Insofar as her protected characteristics were ever mentioned, she did so

in conclusory statements like, “The foregoing actions by Defendant constitute discrimination

against Plaintiff because of her Race (Caucasian), National Origin (Armenian), and Sex (Female)

in violation of Title VII.” Compl., ¶ 332. Title VII does not prohibit freestanding mistreatment

unrelated to the statute’s protected classes. Stewart v. Evans, 275 F.3d 1126, 1133 (D.C. Cir.

2002). As the Court previously held, this deficiency is thus fatal for Plaintiff’s discrimination

and hostile-work-environment claims. She may not like the Court’s conclusion, but “disagreeing

with a court’s answer to an argument is not a proper cause to pursue reconsideration.” Talbot v.

U.S. Dep’t of State, 373 F. Supp. 3d 212, 220 (D.D.C. 2018).

Ayvazian also takes issue with the Court’s finding that she did not sufficiently plead

employer knowledge of her protected activity for her retaliation claim. See Mot. at 9–10. Even

if she had adequately pled such knowledge, however, Plaintiff cannot get past the bar posed by

her aforementioned failure to exhaust. At the heart of her retaliation claim is her September

2021 reassignment, which allegedly occurred a month after Ayvazian first complained to a

supervisor about discrimination. That same reassignment was also the crux of Plaintiff’s first

EEOC complaint. See Compl., ¶ 13(a). As the Court explained in its prior Opinion, and

reiterated above, any claims arising from conduct detailed in that complaint are barred by the

5 exhaustion requirement. Plaintiff’s September 2021 reassignment, whether cast as

discrimination or retaliation, is simply not actionable here. Her Motion for Reconsideration puts

forth no reason to think otherwise.

C. Motion to Amend

Finally, Ayvazian asks that if the Court denies her Rule 59(e) Motion, it grant her leave

to amend her complaint. See Mot. at 20–21. The Court, however, cannot reach the merits of

Plaintiff’s request because she never attached a copy of the proposed amended Complaint to her

Motion as required by Local Civil Rule 7(i). “This is no mere technical requirement, as neither

the Court nor Defendants could know the basis or prospective merit of any [amended] claim

without actually seeing it articulated.” Dun v. Transamerica Premier Life Ins. Co., 2020 WL

13610584, at *1 (D.D.C. Apr. 28, 2020). Without a proposed amended Complaint, there is little

the Court can do.

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the Court will deny Plaintiff’s Motion for Reconsideration. A

separate Order so stating will issue this day.

/s/ James E. Boasberg JAMES E. BOASBERG Chief Judge Date: August 13, 2025