Hofmann v. City & County of San Francisco

870 F. Supp. 2d 799, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60145, 2012 WL 1534992
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedApril 30, 2012
DocketNo. C 11-4016 CW
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 870 F. Supp. 2d 799 (Hofmann v. City & County of San Francisco) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hofmann v. City & County of San Francisco, 870 F. Supp. 2d 799, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60145, 2012 WL 1534992 (N.D. Cal. 2012).

Opinion

ORDER GRANTING IN PART, WITH LEAVE TO AMEND, DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS and DENYING THEIR MOTION TO STRIKE (Docket No. 10)

CLAUDIA WILKEN, District Judge.

Plaintiffs Heinz Hofmann and Thomas Buckley have filed suit against the City and County of San Francisco (City), the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and former SFPD Chiefs of Police George Gascón and Jeffery Godown. Plaintiffs allege five causes of action, including violations of federal law under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, 1985 and Title VII, and a violation of California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. Defendants have moved to dismiss Plaintiffs’ federal claims under §§ 1981, 1983 and 1985, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). In addition, Defendants move to strike immaterial and impertinent allegations under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f). Having considered all of the parties’ submissions and oral argument, the Court grants in part Defendants’ motion to dismiss and denies their motion to strike. Docket No. 10. The Court grants leave to amend.

BACKGROUND

Buckley and Hofmann allege the following facts in their complaint. Both are white, male Lieutenants in the San Francisco Police Department. In 2007 Buckley and Hofmann took the City’s examination for the position of Police Captain. A list was created, ranking all eligible candidates for Captain based on examination scores alone. Buckley’s and Hofmann’s scores ranked them at sixteen and twenty, respectively, on the eligible list.

[801]*801The City announced the “Rule of 5 Scores” as the “certification rule”1 for selection from this list of candidates eligible for appointment to the position of Captain. Under the Rule of 5 Scores, the Human Resources Department certifies to the appointing officer the names of the eligible candidates with the five highest scores on the list who are available for appointment. According to the announcement, the Rule of 5 Scores was to be used for the first eleven hiring selections, reaching candidates through rank fifteen.

The City also announced that it would use an additional method, which Plaintiffs refer to as “banding,” to promote candidates to the position of Captain.2 Plaintiffs claim that the City decided to apply the banding method to make promotion decisions because no African Americans or Asian Americans were reachable under the Rule of 5 Scores applied to the 2007 list. A “band” was created within which the differences in the test scores of applicants for the Captain’s position were considered statistically insignificant. “The band is a statistically derived confidence range that is applied to the examination results.” Compl. ¶ 11 (quoting Officers for Justice v. Civil Service Comm’n of the City and Cnty. of San Francisco, 979 F.2d 721, 722 (9th Cir.1992)). The City was to select candidates within the band for promotion based on “secondary criteria” including education, training, assignments, disciplinary history, and commendations and awards. The complaint alleges that the City used banding to promote a higher percentage of minority officers than would be promoted under a strict ranking system using test scores alone.

The City originally used the banding method to comply with a consent decree arising from a 1973 class action, Officers for Justice v. Civil Service Commission of the City and County of San Francisco, C 73-0657. In that case an association of police officers sued City officials, alleging race and sex discrimination in connection with SFPD’s hiring and promotion procedures. The litigation resulted in a consent decree which ended in 1998.3

With respect to the 2007 list at issue here, a band of forty-five points was applied, starting with rank number sixteen. Thus, eligible candidates on the list who ranked lower than sixteen but had a score within forty-five points of the score for the candidate ranked sixteen were evaluated [802]*802for promotion using the secondary criteria. When making the promotions from the list using the band, the City did not promote Plaintiffs Buckley and Hofmann and promoted three African Americans — Charlie Orkes, ranked number twenty, John Sanford, ranked number twenty-one, and Valeria Agard, ranked number twenty-six — as well as two Asian Americans — Garret Tom, ranked number twenty-three, and Curtis Lum, ranked number twenty-eight. The complaint does not allege the dates when these promotions were made. The City’s 2007 list expired on January 14, 2011. Plaintiffs assert that they were denied promotions in favor of lower-scoring and less qualified people of color because Plaintiffs are white and Defendants sought to promote African Americans and Asian Americans from the 2007 list.

Apart from the banding method, Plaintiffs claim a “longstanding custom and practice in discriminating against white males in SFPD promotions to the rank of Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain.” Compl. ¶ 14. Plaintiffs allege, as an example, an incident in 1984 when the City re-scored an examination administered for candidates for Inspector and Sergeant positions. As a result of the re-scoring, a larger number of minorities ranked in the top group. The Ninth Circuit held that the City’s decision to re-score the examination was arbitrary and did not comply with the consent decree because it discriminated against candidates on the basis of race and sex. San Francisco Police Officers’ Ass’n v. City and Cnty. of San Francisco, 869 F.2d 1182, 1184 (1988).

As an additional example of the City’s custom and practice of discrimination, Plaintiffs allege that the City applied the banding method to the list of candidates for a Lieutenant position, which was generated based on the City’s examination administered in 2000. All five African American candidates within a certain band were promoted as a result. The promotions spurred three separate race discrimination lawsuits, which were settled in 2006.4 During discovery, two Deputy Chiefs of Police testified that the five African American candidates were promoted under a deal negotiated by Chief Fred Lau, Officers for Justice and the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association.

Finally, Plaintiffs claim that Gascón and Godown intentionally discriminated against them based on their race by not selecting them for promotion from within the band. Plaintiffs allege that they were objectively better qualified for the position of Captain, based on the secondary criteria, than the non-whites who were selected.

ANALYSIS

I. Dismissal of Claims Against SFPD

Defendants seek dismissal of the claims against SFPD because it is not an independent legal entity under the City Charter.

A police department’s capacity to be sued in federal court is determined by California law. Shaw v. State of Cal. Dept. of Alcoholic Beverage Control, 788 F.2d 600, 604 (9th Cir.1986) (citing Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(b)). As explained in Shaw,

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870 F. Supp. 2d 799, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60145, 2012 WL 1534992, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hofmann-v-city-county-of-san-francisco-cand-2012.