HOUSTON (Legal Newsline) - A former assistant attorney general in Texas recently lost an age discrimination case when an appeals court affirmed a trial court’s ruling that the lawsuit was filed beyond the statute of limitations.
Kim Coogan, who served 19 years as assistant AG in the Law Enforcement Defense Division, sued under the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (TCHR) claiming that early in 2017 she was passed over for a promotion, demoted, then asked to resign – all over a matter of five months. She was 51 at the time.
In 2017, Coogan filed discrimination complaints against the OAG with Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Then on June 27, 2019, more than two years after receiving Coogan’s first complaint, the EEOC issued Coogan a right-to-sue letter.
The OAG filed a plea to the jurisdiction (a plea that seeks dismissal of a case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction). The OAG argued that Coogan’s suit was barred by the statute of limitations because Coogan did not file her lawsuit within two years of submitting her charge of discrimination with the TWC.
“The OAG asserted that the two-year limitations period began when Coogan first filed the TWC complaint, not when she later fully perfected it by filing an amendment,” wrote Judge Sarah Beth Landau in her Dec. 11 opinion for the First Court of Appeals.
“It asserted that the jurisdictional evidence established that Coogan sent a complaint to the TWC on June 19, 2017, and the TWC acknowledged receipt the same day. It therefore asserted that Coogan needed to file a discrimination lawsuit no later than June 19, 2019. Because Coogan did not file the lawsuit until June 28, 2019, Coogan’s age discrimination claims were barred.”
Landau did note that the TCHR establishes an exception to the sovereign immunity (government cannot be sued without its consent) when the state has committed employment discrimination based on race, color, disability, religion, sex, national origin, or age.
She said that Coogan met two requirements under the exception: filing the complaints with the TWC and EEOC within 180 days of the alleged discrimination and waiting 180 days for the TWC to dismiss or resolve the complaint before a suit is filed. However, she failed to meet the third requirement of suing in district court no later than two years after the discrimination complaint was filed.
“Coogan’s TCHRA claims are therefore barred by sovereign immunity,” Landau wrote. “The trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because Coogan did not file her employment discrimination lawsuit within the two-year limitations period.”