Employment – Retaliation – First Amendment

Where a plaintiff has alleged that she was terminated in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights, the defendant city’s motion to dismiss should be allowed because the plaintiff has failed to state a claim of municipal liability based on the decision to terminate her employment.

“Plaintiff … worked for Defendant City of Boston (the ‘City’) as the Deputy Director of the City’s Office of Equity from March 2021 to December 2021. … [The plaintiff] alleges that [the Chief of the Office of Equity] improperly pressured her and others in the office to support a candidate in the November 2021 Boston mayoral election and ultimately terminated her because she supported a different candidate. [The plaintiff] subsequently sued the City under 42 U.S.C. §1983, claiming in her second amended complaint that she was terminated in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights.

“The City now moves to dismiss [the plaintiff’s] second amended complaint for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The City argues that [the plaintiff] has failed to adequately allege that the decision to terminate her was made by an individual with final policymaking authority as required to establish municipal liability under §1983. …

“In her §1983 claim, [the plaintiff] alleges that she was terminated in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment right to support a certain candidate in the Boston mayoral election. The City contends that this claim must be dismissed because [the plaintiff] has failed to plausibly allege that the City is liable for any constitutional violation. Specifically, the City argues that [the plaintiff] has not adequately alleged that the decision to terminate her was made by an individual with final policymaking authority as required to establish municipal liability under §1983. …

“Here, [the plaintiff] has failed to state a claim of municipal liability based on the decision to terminate her employment. She alleges that [Celina] Barrios-Millner ‘informed’ her of the termination decision, … but does not identify who actually made that decision. The Court therefore lacks any basis for determining whether the relevant decisionmaker possesses final policymaking authority with respect to the termination of employees in the Office of Equity. Even assuming, as [the plaintiff] asserts in her opposition to the City’s motion to dismiss, that Barrios-Millner was the decisionmaker behind her termination, [the plaintiff] has not offered any facts or cited to any state or local law indicating that the Chief of the Office of Equity has the relevant final policymaking authority. This omission is especially notable given that the Court granted [the plaintiff] leave to amend after a hearing on the City’s motion to dismiss a prior iteration of the complaint in which the Court indicated that [the plaintiff’s] allegations were insufficient to adequately allege municipal liability via the decision of a final policymaker. [The plaintiff’s] second amended complaint includes no changes that respond to this deficiency.

“Absent information about the relevant decisionmaker and the decisionmaker’s authority to make final policy under state and local law, [the plaintiff’s] second amended ‘complaint fails to state more than respondeat superior liability on the part of the’ City. … The Court therefore dismisses [the plaintiff’s] §1983 claim. …”

Williams v. City of Boston (Lawyers Weekly No. 02-317-26) (8 pages) (Saris, J.) (Civil Action No. 25-cv-12098-PBS) (June 18, 2026).

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