ADAMS v. FORT MYER CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MATTHEW ADAMS,
Plaintiff,
v.
FORT MYER CONSTRUCTION
COMPANY,
Defendant.
Case No. 1:25-cv-1949 (TNM)
MEMORANDUM ORDER*
As associate general counsel to Fort Myer Construction Corporation, Matthew Adams
complained about racial discrimination within the company. Adams says the company fired him
for those complaints. He now sues his former employer, bringing retaliation claims under
federal and District law. Fort Myer moves to dismiss the Complaint. For the reasons below, the
Court denies that motion.
I.
Adams began working as associate general counsel for Fort Myer in June 2022. Compl.
¶ 15, ECF No. 1. In that role, he “assist[ed] outside counsel in other litigation, such as
employment-related claims and conducting internal investigations.” Id. ¶ 17.
* Because the parties claim that facts in the Complaint are privileged, the Court first issued this
Memorandum Order under seal on November 19, 2025. See ECF No. 24. Now that the parties
have had an opportunity to propose redactions, this Court files this public version of the
Memorandum Order.
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Id. ¶¶ 20, 22.
Id. ¶¶ 20,
23. Id. ¶ 24.
Id. ¶ 20.
Id. ¶ 25.
Id. ¶ 26.
Id. ¶¶ 16, 26.
Id. ¶ 28.
Id. ¶¶ 29, 30. Id. ¶¶ 29, 30.
Finch, meanwhile, was put on leave in early August. Id. ¶ 32. With Finch gone, Adams became
acting general counsel. Id. ¶¶ 32, 33. But that was short-lived: Adams himself was fired a
month later. Id. ¶ 35.
Adams promptly filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (“EEOC”). Pl.’s Ex. A (“EEOC Charge”) at 2, ECF No. 18-2.1 The EEOC issued
him a right-to-sue letter in 2025. Compl. ¶ 13. Adams then turned to this Court. He brings three
claims: (1) retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; (2) retaliation under 42
U.S.C. § 1981; and (3) retaliation under the D.C. Human Rights Act (“DCHRA”). Id. ¶¶ 36–58.
1 All page citations refer to the page numbers that the CM/ECF system generates.
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Fort Myer moves to dismiss all three claims. Mot. to Dismiss, ECF No. 11-1. That motion is
now ripe.2
II.
To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter,
accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556
U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (cleaned up) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570
(2007)). To meet this standard, a plaintiff must plead “factual content that allows the court to
draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id.
The Court must “treat the complaint’s factual allegations as true and must grant the
plaintiff the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged.” L. Xia v.
Tillerson, 865 F.3d 643, 649 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (cleaned up). But while a complaint need not
contain “detailed factual allegations,” it must provide “more than an unadorned, the-defendant-
unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. The plausibility standard “asks for
more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id.
III.
Because the same standards apply to Adams’s three retaliation claims, the Court
discusses all three under the Title VII retaliation framework. See McFadden v. Ballard Spahr
Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, 611 F.3d 1, 6 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (observing that Title VII and § 1981
retaliation claims have “essentially the same” framework); Touvian v. District of Columbia, 330
F. Supp. 3d 246, 251 (D.D.C. 2018) (explaining that DCHRA “requires the same showing” as a
Title VII retaliation claim). Title VII makes it unlawful “for an employer to discriminate against
2 The Court has federal question jurisdiction over the Title VII and § 1981 retaliation claims, 28
U.S.C. § 1331, and it has supplemental jurisdiction over the DCHRA claim, id. § 1367(a).
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[an employee] . . . because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice
by” Title VII. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). To state a prima facie case of retaliation, Adams must
show “(1) that he engaged in statutorily protected activity; (2) that he suffered a materially
adverse action by his employer; and (3) that a causal link connects the two.” Jones v. Bernanke,
557 F.3d 670, 677 (D.C. Cir. 2009). Fort Myer contests Adams’s showing on the first and third
prongs. Mot. to Dismiss at 6. At this early stage, however, Adams’s allegations are enough.
A.
Start with the protected activity requirement. Title VII’s “opposition clause” prohibits
employers from retaliating against an employee “because he has opposed” the employer’s
discrimination on the basis of race. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a); see id. § 2000e-2(a) (prohibiting
discrimination on the basis of race).
Compl. ¶¶ 20, 25–29. At this stage, that is enough.
Fort Myer seems to agree that these allegations would be enough if Adams had been an
ordinary employee, but, it says, Adams must do more because his job required him to investigate
discrimination. Mot. to Dismiss at 6–10. Invoking the so-called “manager rule” applied in Fair
Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) cases, Fort Myer argues that Adams needed to allege that he
“engag[ed] in oppositional conduct outside” his role as counsel. Id. at 7–8; see DeMasters v.
Carilion Clinic, 796 F.3d 409, 421–22 (4th Cir. 2015) (describing the manager rule’s origin).
That argument has some problems. Most importantly, the FLSA’s anti-retaliation provision is
much narrower than its Title VII counterpart. See DeMasters, 796 F.3d at 422–23 (summarizing
the textual problems with applying the “manager rule” to Title VII); see also Patterson v. Ga.
Pac., LLC, 38 F.4th 1336, 1346 (11th Cir. 2022) (reasoning that the “manager rule” has “no basis
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in the text of Title VII’s opposition clause and actually contradicts the text of it”); Collazo v.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Mfg., Inc., 617 F.3d 39, 49 n.5 (1st Cir. 2010) (expressing similar
concerns).
But that is an issue for another day. Even if the manager rule applies to Title VII
retaliation claims, Adams passes it for now.
Compl. ¶ 25.
Id. ¶ 26. Drawing “all reasonable inferences” in Adams’s favor, Williams v. Lew,
819 F.3d 466, 472 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (cleaned up), the Complaint alleges that Adams transcended
his official duties—including investigating “employment-related claims”—
, Compl. ¶ 17. Courts applying the
manager rule have found that allegations like these suffice at the motion-to-dismiss stage. E.g.,
Arnold v. Weld Cnty. Sch. Dist. RE-5J, 677 F. Supp. 3d 1218, 1230 (D. Colo. 2023) (finding that
a school superintendent plausibly alleged that “she acted beyond her ordinary job
responsibilities” by “actively resisting” the continued employment of a principal “on behalf of
employees that she believed were subject to discrimination”).
Perhaps at summary judgment Fort Myer will be able to show the manager rule applies to
Title VII retaliation claims and that Adams’s job falls within that rule and that his complaints
about the ongoing discrimination fell completely within the scope of his job. But the Court need
not decide that now.
B.
Consider now causation. Adams must plead facts giving rise to a “plausible inference”
that “his protected activity was a but-for cause” of his termination. Ho v. Garland, 106 F.4th 47,
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51 (D.C. Cir. 2024). That is not a high bar at the motion-to-dismiss stage. See Jones v.
Bernanke, 685 F. Supp. 2d 31, 39–40 (D.D.C. 2010). And Adams’s allegations clear it.
First, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, Adams “can meet [his] prima facie burden of
alleging causation simply by alleging that the adverse actions were caused by [his] protected
activity.” Vance v. Chao, 496 F. Supp. 2d 182, 187 (D.D.C. 2007). And Adams’s EEOC Charge
says that he
EEOC Charge at 3; see, e.g., Klotzbach-Piper v. Nat’l
R.R. Passenger Corp., 373 F. Supp. 3d 174, 182 (D.D.C. 2019) (noting that EEOC complaints
are subject to judicial notice as public documents).
Second, timing supports a causal inference. “A plaintiff can sometimes plead causation
by relying solely on the fact that an adverse action shortly followed the plaintiff’s protected
activity.” Ho, 106 F.4th at 52. That is true here because Adams plausibly alleges “close”
temporal proximity between his last opposition
Id.
Compl. ¶ 28. The later end of this period would bring the incident within three
months of his termination on September 8, 2023. Id. ¶ 35. And courts have suggested that
conduct occurring less than three months before the adverse action is sufficiently “close” to
create a causal inference. See, e.g., Pratt v. Pompeo, 318 F. Supp. 3d 34, 40 (D.D.C. 2018)
(holding that a plaintiff adequately pleaded causation by alleging that the adverse action occurred
two months after the protected activity); but cf. Ho, 106 F.4th at 52 (suggesting that a three-
month gap may “be too lengthy to raise an inference of causation”). More, though unnecessary
to rely on here, Adams’s EEOC materials suggest that his last protected act occurred a mere
month before his termination. See Pl.’s Ex. B (“EEOC Rebuttal”) at 3–4, ECF No. 18-3.
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Fort Myer offers two responses, but neither justifies dismissal. First, it argues that
Adams has not plausibly alleged causation because he “does not allege who made the decision to
terminate his employment.” Reply at 12, ECF No. 21-1. That is wrong. At the motion-to-
dismiss stage, a plaintiff need not allege that the decisionmaker knew about the protected
activity. McManus v. Kelly, 246 F. Supp. 3d 103, 116 (D.D.C. 2017); Hamilton v. Geithner, 666
F.3d 1344, 1358 (D.C. Cir. 2012).
Second, Fort Myer argues that Adams’s temporary promotion severs any inference that
he was fired for his prior complaints. Reply at 11–12. While favorable treatment of an
employee may break the causal chain between protected activity and adverse action, Seale v.
DowntownDC BID, No. CV 25-79 (RC), 2025 WL 1865028, at *5 (D.D.C. July 7, 2025), it is
unclear whether Adams received favorable treatment. Fort Myer briefly promoted Adams to
acting general counsel after his predecessor’s firing, Compl. ¶¶ 32–33, but Adams’s EEOC
Charge paints that promotion as an intermediary step in “pushing the legal department out of the
company,” EEOC Charge at 4. And there is no suggestion that Adams received better pay or
other benefits during his brief promotion. Fort Myer is, of course, entitled to contest Adams’s
account. But now is not the time for that. See ACLU Found. of S. Cal. v. Barr, 952 F.2d 457,
467 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (“Rule 12(b)(6) is not a device for testing the truth of what is asserted or for
determining whether a plaintiff has any evidence to back up what is in the complaint.”).
IV.
Fort Myer raises significant concerns about Adams’s claims. It remains to be seen
whether these claims will survive summary judgment. But for now, he had pled enough to
surpass the motion-to-dismiss stage’s low bar.
For all these reasons, it is hereby
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ORDERED that Defendant’s [12] Motion to Dismiss is DENIED.
Dated: December 8, 2025 TREVOR N. McFADDEN, U.S.D.J.
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