SEALE v. DOWNTOWNDC FOUNDATION

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
GABRIEL SEALE, 	:
:
Plaintiff, 	: 	Civil Action No.: 	25-79 (RC)
:
v. 	: 	Re Document No.: 	21
:
DOWNTOWNDC BID, 	:
:
Defendant. 	:
MEMORANDUM OPINION
DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION
I. INTRODUCTION
In this employment discrimination action, Plaintiff, Gabriel Seale, has filed a motion
pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) for reconsideration of the Court’s
Memorandum Opinion dismissing the case for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be
granted. Pl.’s Mot. Recons. (“MFR”) at 1, ECF No. 21; see Mem. Op. Granting Def.’s Mot.
Dismiss at 1, ECF No. 20. For the following reasons, Rule 59(e) relief is unwarranted, and the
Court will deny Plaintiff’s Motion for Reconsideration.
II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
The Court presumes familiarity with the factual and procedural history of this case, which
is described in the Court’s recent opinion. See Seale v. DowntownDC BID, No. 25-cv-79, 2025
WL 1865028, at *1–2 (D.D.C. July 7, 2025). What follows is an overview of facts relevant to
Plaintiff’s pending motion.
In December 2023, Plaintiff applied for a posted Safety Maintenance Ambassador
position with Defendant, DowntownDC BID (“DowntownDC”), via email. Am. Compl. at 7,
ECF No. 7-1. DowntownDC’s Safety Maintenance Ambassadors attend to cleaning and other
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services of public areas. See id. at 11–12. After not receiving a response to his application for a
period of weeks, Plaintiff visited Defendant’s headquarters to inquire about his application’s
status. Id. at 7. Plaintiff alleged that the receptionist, after listening to the inquiry, “shout[ed]” at
him and told him that the posting should have been removed because the job was unavailable.
Id. When Plaintiff asked for the hiring manager’s contact information, the receptionist asserted
that “[e]ven though there’s a lot of blacks working here the hiring manager is [S]panish so don’t
think you[’re] getting hired.” Id.
In January 2024, Plaintiff approached a group of DowntownDC’s staff on a street corner,
including Lukas Umana, an Operations Director of DowntownDC. Id. Plaintiff expressed
interest in the Safety Maintenance Ambassador position to Mr. Umana and told him of the
receptionist’s statement. Id. at 7–8. Mr. Umana asked Plaintiff to send him a resume to his
direct email, and in March 2024, Plaintiff was invited for an interview, which Plaintiff alleged
was labeled “second interview,” for this position at the organization. Id. at 8. Around April 2,
2024, Plaintiff was hired by Defendant and began work on April 8, 2024. Id.
Plaintiff alleged that he was never issued a radio phone. Id. at 9–10, 12. Without a radio
phone, Defendant could not monitor Plaintiff’s location, and Plaintiff was unable to request more
supplies and contact his supervisors. Id. at 10. Plaintiff’s manager told him that he “should have
had [a radio phone] weeks before” and did not know why Plaintiff did not yet have one. Id.
On May 3, 2024, Plaintiff had an altercation with a female coworker. Id. After Plaintiff
tapped the coworker on the shoulder to inform her that their group was not in the correct
location, she began “cursing [at Plaintiff] in public” for touching and reporting her to the
supervisor. Id. at 10–11. Hearing of the confrontation, Plaintiff’s supervisors contacted the
group minutes later and directed them to return to headquarters. Id. at 11. There, Plaintiff’s
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supervisors asked him to file an incident report and told him that he would receive a warning for
the unapproved contact he made with the female coworker, but that he was expected to “return to
work the next morning in uniform.” Id. On May 7, 2024, Plaintiff was brought into
headquarters and fired. Id. at 12.
Plaintiff brought suit against DowntownDC, alleging employment discrimination and
retaliation on the basis of race, color, and national origin in violation of Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e–2000e-17. Id. at 1, 4. On April 2, 2025,
Defendant filed a motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. See Defs.’ Mot.
Dismiss at 3–5 (“MTD”), ECF No. 11. On June 17, 2025, Plaintiff moved to compel a
Rule 26(f) conference with Defendant. See Pl.’s Mot. Compel at 1, ECF No. 17. This Court
denied the Motion to Compel without prejudice upon granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss.
Min. Order, July 7, 2025.
Granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, the Court held that Plaintiff had failed to allege
facts that plausibly demonstrated that his race, color, or national origin were reasons for
Defendant’s adverse actions, a necessary step at the pleading stage of a Title VII discrimination
claim. See Seale, 2025 WL 1865028, at *3-5. The Court also held that Plaintiff had failed to
allege facts plausibly demonstrating a causal connection between his termination and having
reported the receptionist’s statement to Mr. Umana, which foreclosed his Title VII retaliation
claim. See id. at *4.
III. LEGAL STANDARD
Rule 59(e) permits a party to file a motion to “alter or amend” a judgment no later than
twenty-eight days after the entry of the judgment. Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). To prevail, the moving
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party must identify “an intervening change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence,
or the need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” Messina v. Krakower, 439
F.3d 755, 758 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (quoting Firestone v. Firestone, 76 F.3d 1205, 1208 (D.C. Cir.
1996)). Rule 59(e) motions are “disfavored and relief from judgment is granted only when the
moving party establishes extraordinary circumstances.” Niedermeier v. Off. of Baucus, 153 F.
Supp. 2d 23, 28 (D.D.C. 2001).1
Clear error is a “very exacting standard,” requiring a final judgment to have been “dead
wrong.” Bond v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 286 F.R.D. 16, 22 (D.D.C. 2012) (first quoting Hopwood v.
Texas, 236 F.3d 256, 272 (5th Cir. 2000); and then quoting Parts & Elec. Motors, Inc. v. Sterling
Elec., Inc., 866 F.2d 228, 233 (7th Cir. 1988)). Likewise, “manifest injustice” in the context of a
Rule 59(e) motion is an “exceptionally narrow concept”: it “must entail more than just a clear
and certain prejudice to the moving party, but also a result that is fundamentally unfair in light of
governing law.” Wannall v. Honeywell Int’l, Inc., No. 10-351, 2013 WL 12321549, at *3
(D.D.C. Oct. 24, 2013).
Furthermore, Rule 59(e) “may not be used to relitigate old matters.” Exxon Shipping Co.
v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 485 n.5 (2008) (quoting Wright & Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure
§ 2810.1 (2d ed. 1995)). “Absent a demonstrated intervening change of controlling law or new
evidence, the law is well-settled that litigants may not use Rule 59(e) either to repeat
unsuccessful arguments or to assert new but previously available arguments.” Slate v. Am.
Broad. Cos., 12 F. Supp. 3d 30, 34 (D.D.C. 2013). This strictness is “justified by the need to
1 The Court’s July 7, 2025 judgment granted Plaintiff leave to “file an Amended
Complaint on or before August 6, 2025, that cures the deficiencies identified by the Court in [its]
Memorandum Opinion.” Mem. Op. Granting Def.’s Mot. Dismiss at 12. Plaintiff chose instead
to file a Rule 59(e) Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment, raising the bar to meet Rule 59’s “more
stringent standard.” See Firestone, 76 F.3d at 1208.
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protect both the integrity of the adversarial process in which parties are expected to bring all
arguments before the court, and the ability of parties and others to rely on the finality of
judgments.” U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. McGraw-Hill Cos., 403 F. Supp. 2d
34, 36 (D.D.C. 2005).
IV. ANALYSIS
Plaintiff does not submit that the Court’s judgment should be reconsidered on the
grounds of an intervening change of controlling law or the availability of new evidence. Instead,
Plaintiff asserts that the judgment presented manifest injustice and “clear errors of law or fact”
by “overlook[ing] or misconstru[ing] several critical points.” MFR at 1–2. The Court concludes
that its prior grant of dismissal does not present clear error or manifest injustice.
Plaintiff contends, among other things, that the Court’s judgment focused on race as the
sole basis for Title VII discrimination and “appear[ed] to disregard the equally protected
categories of color and national origin.” MFR at 3. This is not the case. As the Court stated in
its judgment, the only mention of race, color, or national origin in the Amended Complaint was a
comment made by the receptionist when she told Plaintiff that “[e]ven though there’s a lot of
blacks working here the hiring manager is [S]panish so don’t think you[’re] getting hired.”
Seale, 2025 WL 1865028, at *1, *3 (quoting Am. Compl. at 7). Plaintiff alleged no facts
connecting the receptionist’s comments to his termination four months later. Id. at *5. And he
alleged no other facts otherwise connecting his race, color, or national origin to his termination.
Thus, dismissal of his discrimination claim was warranted. See Forkkio v. Powell, 306 F.3d
1127, 1130 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (stating that to successfully plead a Title VII discrimination claim, a
plaintiff must demonstrate that “(1) he is a member of a protected class, (2) he suffered an
adverse employment action, and (3) the unfavorable action gives rise to an inference of
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discrimination”); Doe #1 v. Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps., 554 F. Supp. 3d 75, 102 (D.D.C. 2021)
(“[P]laintiff must ‘allege some facts that demonstrate [his] race was the reason for defendant’s
actions’ and cannot merely ‘invoke his race in the course of a claim’s narrative.’” (second
alteration in original) (quoting Bray v. RHT, Inc., 748 F. Supp. 3, 5 (D.D.C. 1990))).
Plaintiff further contends that the Court “did not fully account for the evidence presented
regarding Mr. Umana’s actions after [Plaintiff] reported the receptionist’s discriminatory
statement.” MFR at 2. But after Plaintiff reported the statement, Mr. Umana asked Plaintiff to
send him a resume to his direct email, and Plaintiff was ultimately hired. Am. Compl. at 7–8.
Plaintiff does not explain how this qualifies as an adverse action. Forkkio, 306 F.3d at 1130
(stating that Title VII discrimination claims require an “adverse” employment action).
Furthermore, Plaintiff’s allegation that his invitation to interview was labeled “second interview”
has no bearing on race or any other protected characteristic. See MFR at 2. Likewise, Plaintiff
pleads no facts connecting his allegation that his supervisors purposely delayed his radio locator
phone to his race, color, or national origin. Such facts do not change the court’s conclusion that
Plaintiff failed to state a discrimination claim.2
Plaintiff’s contentions regarding his retaliation claim are also without merit. Plaintiff
provides no support for his assertion that he sufficiently alleged a causal link between events in
his complaint. MFR at 3. As the Court stated, “Plaintiff fail[ed] to allege . . . [that] a causal link
2 Plaintiff also states that the Court did not consider “that [his] last name Seale was too
close to Seal of the President” and that this influenced his supervisors in not “want[ing] [him] to
have a company radio locator phone while at work.” MFR at 2. This fact was neither pled in
Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint nor “newly available,” therefore the Court will not consider it.
See Martin v. Omni Hotels Mgmt. Corp., 321 F.R.D. 35, 38–39 (D.D.C. 2017) (declining to
consider a newly-pled fact in a Rule 59(e) motion because the “evidence was previously
available”). Regardless, Plaintiff does not connect his name to a protected characteristic.
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existed between his termination and reporting the receptionist’s statement to Mr. Umana,”
particularly because he was hired after reporting the statement. Seale, 2025 WL 1865028, at *5.
Finally, Plaintiff contends that the Court committed procedural error by dismissing his
case without penalizing Defendant for “refusing the mandatory 26(f) conference” that he
requested. MFR at 3. This argument fails. Defendant filed its Motion to Dismiss on April 2,
2025. Seale, 2025 WL 1865028, at *2. In Plaintiff’s subsequently filed Motion to Compel a
Rule 26(f) conference, he stated no legitimate basis for the Court to compel such a conference
while Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss was pending. See generally Pl.’s Mot. Compel. Had
Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss been denied, Plaintiff would have been entitled to a conference
“at least 21 days before a scheduling conference [was] to be held or a scheduling order [was] due
under Rule 16(b)” in accordance with Rule 26(f). Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f).
V. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff’s Motion for Reconsideration of Judgment (ECF No.
21) is DENIED. An order consistent with this Memorandum Opinion is separately and
contemporaneously issued.
Dated: November 12, 2025 	RUDOLPH CONTRERAS
United States District Judge
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