Odeiu Joy Powers, et al. v. U.S. Homeland Security, et al.

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-10042
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
ODEIU JOY POWERS,
BP (MINOR CHILD),
PP (MINOR CHILD),
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY,
ACTING SECRETARY KEVIN MCALEENAN,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-10042
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 0:19-cv-62967-AHS
____________________
Before G RANT, L AGOA, and B RASHER , Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Odeiu Joy Powers, proceeding pro se, and her minor chil-
dren, proceeding separately through counsel, appeal the district
court’s orders denying their motion for default judgment and
granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss their amended com-
plaint alleging employment discrimination and retaliation. We
conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in de-
clining to enter a default judgment after two years of litigation or
in granting the motion to dismiss after the plaintiffs refused to re-
spond to the motion as required by the district court’s order and
local rules. We therefore affirm.
I.
In February 2019, Powers filed a complaint in the Northern
District of Georgia against the Department of Homeland Security
and its Secretary alleging harassment, discrimination, and retalia-
tion based on race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The defendants filed a motion to dismiss for improper venue. The
district court denied the motion and transferred the case to the
Southern District of Florida.
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22-10042 Opinion of the Court 3
In the transferee court, the defendants filed an answer to
Powers’s complaint, denying liability and asserting various de-
fenses. After a complicated procedural course that included Pow-
ers’s interlocutory appeal from an order denying her motion for
injunctive relief (which we summarily affirmed) and her appeal
from an order granting judgment on the pleadings (which we va-
cated and remanded), the district court granted Powers leave to file
an amended complaint and directed her to do so within 21 days.
Twenty-two days later, Powers filed an amended complaint against
the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of La-
bor.
The defendants responded by moving to dismiss the
amended complaint, and Powers moved to amend her pleading a
second time. The district court granted Powers’s motion to amend
and instructed the defendants to respond to the second amended
complaint within 14 days “after its filing.”
Powers filed a second amended complaint on August 6,
2021, and it was entered on the docket three days later. The second
amended complaint joined Powers’s minor children, B.P. and P.P.,
as plaintiffs with respect to one claim and named the Secretary of
the Department of Homeland Security and the Secretary of the De-
partment of Labor as defendants. In total, the second amended
complaint alleged 14 claims under state and federal law, all arising
from Powers’s nine-month period of employment as an auditor for
the Department of Homeland Security. On August 23, 2021—14
days after the second amended complaint was docketed, and 17
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-10042
days after it was filed—the defendants moved to dismiss the second
amended complaint.
The same day, Powers filed a motion for default judgment
against the defendants on the ground that their motion to dismiss
was filed after the response deadline set by the court. The district
court denied the motion, explaining that default judgment was not
appropriate where the defendants had appeared and defended the
case for more than two years, and where the motion to dismiss,
though untimely, was filed within a few days after the deadline
with no prejudice to the plaintiffs. The district court stated its in-
tention to decide the case on the merits and directed the plaintiffs
to respond to the motion to dismiss.
Instead of responding as directed, Powers filed a notice of
appeal from the denial of the motion for default judgment and
moved for a stay of the district court proceedings until the appeal
was resolved. The district court granted the motion for a stay.
Eventually, this Court dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
The district court then lifted its stay and ordered the plaintiffs to
respond to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the second amended
complaint by December 3, 2021. Again, the plaintiffs failed to re-
spond by the court’s deadline.
On December 7, 2021, Powers filed a document titled
“Acknowledgement of Order,” in which she acknowledged the dis-
trict court’s order instructing the plaintiffs to respond to the de-
fendants’ motion to dismiss but declined (on behalf of herself and
her two minor children) to comply. Powers asserted that
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22-10042 Opinion of the Court 5
responding to the motion to dismiss “would be prejudicial against
our case” because it would be inconsistent with the plaintiffs’ mo-
tion for reconsideration of this Court’s dismissal of her appeal and
would “establish the legitimacy of Defense’s late-filed response.”
The district court dismissed the second amended complaint
without prejudice for two alternative reasons. First, it concluded
that dismissal was appropriate for the plaintiffs’ willful failure to
comply with a court order. Second, it determined that the defend-
ants’ motion to dismiss should be granted by default under the lo-
cal rules of court. Powers and her children now appeal the denial
of the motion for default judgment and the dismissal of the second
amended complaint.
II.
We review a district court’s orders denying a motion for de-
fault judgment for abuse of discretion. Surtain v. Hamlin Terrace
Found., 789 F.3d 1239, 1244 (11th Cir. 2015). We also review a dis-
trict court’s enforcement of its orders or its local rules for abuse of
discretion, and we give “great deference” to the court’s interpreta-
tion of its local rules. Foudy v. Indian River Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., 845
F.3d 1117, 1122 (11th Cir. 2017); Reese v. Herbert, 527 F.3d 1253, 1267
n.22 (11th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted).
A.
Powers argues that the district court should have granted
the motion for default judgment because the defendants failed to
respond to the second amended complaint within the deadline set
by the court, failed to request an extension of time to respond, and
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-10042
failed to provide any excuse for missing the response deadline. She
argues that the district court lacked the discretion to deny the mo-
tion for default judgment under these circumstances.
We disagree. A district court may enter a default judgment
when a party “has failed to plead or otherwise defend,” but it also
has the discretion to deny a motion for default judgment. Mitchell
v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 294 F.3d 1309, 1316–17 (11th
Cir. 2002); see Fed. R. Civ. P. 55(a)–(b). “A district court abuses its
discretion if it applies an incorrect legal standard, applies the law in
an unreasonable or incorrect manner, follows improper proce-
dures in making a determination, or makes findings of fact that are
clearly erroneous.” Surtain, 789 F.3d at 1244 (citation omitted).
The district court made none of those errors here. We have
previously explained that a district court acts within its discretion
in denying a motion for default judgment where the defendant
made an appearance in the case before the motion was filed and
filed a motion to dismiss “a short time after the deadline” for filing
the responsive pleading, with no prejudice to the plaintiffs. Mitch-
ell, 294 F.3d at 1317. The defendants here filed their motion to dis-
miss within three days—one business day—after the deadline, and
the plaintiffs have not shown that they were prejudiced in any way
by the short delay. And before Powers filed the motion for default
judgment, the defendants had diligently responded to Powers’s
prior complaints, motions, and appeals spanning more than two
years of litigation. Under the circumstances, the district court did
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22-10042 Opinion of the Court 7
not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for default judg-
ment.
B.
All three plaintiffs challenge the district court’s dismissal of
the second amended complaint. Primarily, the plaintiffs argue that
the motion to dismiss was invalid because it was untimely, and that
the district court lacked the discretion to accept the untimely filing
absent a motion by the defendants and a showing of excusable ne-
glect. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b). The minor children add that in light
of Powers’s pro se status, the district court should have construed
the “acknowledgement” she filed as a response to the motion to
dismiss.
Again, we disagree. We have already explained that the dis-
trict court acted within its discretion in denying the motion for de-
fault judgment. The discretion to deny a motion for default judg-
ment necessarily carries with it the discretion to accept the un-
timely responsive pleading. Cf. Mitchell, 294 F.3d at 1316–17; Wahl
v. McIver, 773 F.2d 1169, 1174 (11th Cir. 1985). Moreover, contrary
to plaintiffs’ arguments, the defendants’ motion was untimely only
under the deadline set by the district court—the motion was filed
within the time provided by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.1
1 Though her pleading did not include the required certificate of service, Pow-
ers claimed to have served the defendants with the second amended complaint
by mail on August 4, 2021. Under Rules 15(a)(3) and 6(d), the response dead-
line would have been August 21, 2021 (14 days from service plus 3 days’ mail
time). But because that day was a Saturday, the deadline would have been
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8 Opinion of the Court 22-10042
Because the district court’s acceptance of the late-filed motion to
dismiss was a natural corollary to its denial of the motion for de-
fault and was not prohibited by any statute or rule, the decision was
within the court’s inherent authority to manage its docket. See
Dietz v. Bouldin, 579 U.S. 40, 45–46 (2016) (district courts possess
inherent authority to “manage their own affairs so as to achieve the
orderly and expeditious disposition of cases,” so long as the exercise
of that authority is a “reasonable response” to the issue before the
court and is not “contrary to any express grant of or limitation on
the district court’s power contained in a rule or statute” (citations
omitted)). Indeed, the district court exercised that authority in
Powers’s favor when it accepted her late-filed first amended com-
plaint, and the court implied that it would have considered accept-
ing a late-filed response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss.
But the plaintiffs’ “acknowledgement” of the court’s order
to respond to the motion to dismiss was not simply a late-filed re-
sponse—and the court could not have construed it as one in the
name of reading pro se filings liberally. The leniency traditionally
accorded to pro se litigants “does not give a court license to serve
as de facto counsel for a party, or to rewrite an otherwise deficient
pleading in order to sustain an action.” Campbell v. Air Jamaica Ltd.,
760 F.3d 1165, 1168–69 (11th Cir. 2014) (citation omitted). To con-
strue the plaintiffs’ “acknowledgement” as a response to the mo-
tion to dismiss, the district court would have had to ignore their
extended to Monday, August 23, 2021—the day the defendants filed their mo-
tion—under Rule 6(a)(1)(C).
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22-10042 Opinion of the Court 9
clear and explicit statements refusing to respond to the motion to
dismiss or to address its merits.
Instead, the plaintiffs chose to rest on their assertion that the
district court should not have accepted the motion to dismiss be-
cause of its late filing. Thus, the district court had before it a mo-
tion to dismiss, which it had accepted and ordered the plaintiffs to
answer, and a filing in which the plaintiffs expressly stated that they
would not respond to the motion to dismiss. The district court’s
local rules warn that the failure to respond in opposition to another
party’s motion “may be deemed sufficient cause for granting the
motion by default.” S.D. Fla. L. R. 7.1(c)(1). The district court in-
structed Powers early in the litigation that she must comply with
the local rules or face sanctions, and Local Rule 7.1 expressly
warned her that the failure to respond to a motion could result in
the court granting the motion. We cannot say that the district
court abused its discretion in enforcing this rule against the plain-
tiffs in the face of their outright refusal to comply with the court’s
order to respond to the motion to dismiss.
III.
The district court’s denial of the plaintiffs’ motion for default
judgment is consistent with the strong preference in this Circuit for
deciding cases on their merits rather than by default, and its deci-
sion was not an abuse of discretion. See Surtain, 789 F.3d at 1244–
45. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs refused to proceed with the litiga-
tion by responding to the defendants’ motion to dismiss, even after
the district court ordered them to do so. Faced with the plaintiffs’
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10 Opinion of the Court 22-10042
explicit refusal to respond to the motion to dismiss, the district
court did not abuse its discretion in granting the motion, as pro-
vided in the court’s local rules. We therefore affirm.
AFFIRMED.
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