Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—PAY—D.D.C.: Property management company secures dismissal of former manager's Title VII, Equal Pay Act claims, (Jul 17, 2026)

By Mandavi Singh, LL.M.

"Complaining about a pay disparity ‘without mentioning discrimination or otherwise indicating that gender was an issue, does not constitute protected activity, even if the employee honestly believes she is the subject of sex discrimination.'"

A residential property management company was entitled to summary judgment on a former community manager's Title VII and Equal Pay Act claims alleging pay discrimination and retaliation, a federal court in the District of Columbia has concluded. The court found that the employer consistently based compensation on the size of the property managed and prior management experience, and that the employee failed to show those reasons were pretextual. It further held that her email requesting a raise did not constitute protected activity because it never alleged unlawful discrimination (Woolcock v. The Michaels Organization LLC, No. 23-cv-01375 (D.D.C. July 14, 2026)).

Dispute. The employee began working for the company in 2014 as an assistant at one of its Washington, D.C., apartment communities. She later served as acting community manager before becoming the permanent community manager and received multiple pay increases during her employment. In March 2022, she emailed management seeking a salary increase, noting that her predecessor had earned more when he started several years earlier.

The company subsequently increased her salary, but she resigned shortly afterward to accept a higher-paying position with another employer. After leaving, she sued, alleging race and sex discrimination, unequal pay, and retaliation after the company discontinued an employment-related rent benefit, served her with a notice alleging lease violations, and inadequately responded to complaints about rodents and excessive noise in her apartment.

No discrimination. The court first rejected the Title VII discrimination claims. Applying the burden-shifting framework of McDonnell Douglas and relying on Brady v. Office of Sergeant at Arms, 520 F.3d 490 (D.C. Cir. 2008), it explained that once an employer offers a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions, the court need not decide whether the employee established a prima facie case. Instead, the question becomes whether the evidence would allow a reasonable jury to conclude that the employer's explanation was not the real reason for the challenged action and that intentional discrimination occurred.

The employer consistently maintained that compensation depended on the size of the property managed and an employee's prior property management experience. The court found the record fully supported that explanation. Two female employees earned higher salaries because they managed a substantially larger residential community. At the same time, the male comparator possessed more than a decade of prior property management experience before joining the company.

The court also observed that all three comparators identified by the employee were Black, undermining any claim that race motivated the pay disparity. Although the employee testified that a supervisor believed women should not earn as much as men, the court found no reasonable jury could conclude that sex, rather than experience and job responsibilities, explained the salary differences.

Equal pay claims. The Equal Pay Act claim failed for essentially the same reasons. Even assuming the employee established a prima facie case, the employer demonstrated that the wage differential resulted from a "factor other than sex." Citing Gaujacq v. EDF, Inc., 601 F.3d 565 (D.C. Cir. 2010), the court held that the undisputed evidence showed the male comparator's substantially greater management experience, together with differences in responsibility, justified the salary disparity as a matter of law.

Protected activity. The retaliation claims likewise failed because the employee did not engage in protected activity under either Title VII or the Equal Pay Act. Relying on Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson County, 555 U.S. 271 (2009), the court explained that an employee must communicate a belief that the employer engaged in unlawful discrimination. Here, the March 2022 email simply requested a raise and compared the employee's salary with that of her predecessor. It never suggested the disparity resulted from race, sex, or any other protected characteristic. Likewise, citing Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 563 U.S. 1 (2011), the court found the communication failed to provide the employer fair notice that she was asserting rights protected by the FLSA.

The court also rejected the employee's reliance on her earlier reports that employees at another property were stealing from the company. Reporting alleged theft, it explained, is not opposition to an unlawful employment practice prohibited by Title VII and therefore does not constitute protected activity under the statute.

No retaliation. Even if the March 2022 email qualified as protected activity, the retaliation claims still failed, the court found. The employer offered legitimate reasons for discontinuing the rent abatement, issuing the lease-violation notice, and responding to the employee's habitability complaints. The rent benefit was tied to work the employee no longer performed after resigning. The lease notice, meanwhile, was based on complaints from residents and staff alleging disruptive conduct. At the same time, the record showed the company inspected the property, scheduled maintenance, and continued pest-control efforts in response to her complaints about rodents and excessive noise.

The employee also failed to establish the required causal connection between her salary email and the challenged actions. The court noted that more than four months elapsed before the lease-violation notice was issued, weakening any inference of retaliation based solely on temporal proximity. Moreover, quoting Brady, it emphasized that "The relevant question is not 'whether the underlying... incident occurred,' but 'whether the employer honestly and reasonably believed that the underlying... incident occurred.'" Because the employer relied on multiple complaints from staff and residents, and the employee produced no evidence that those explanations were dishonest or that retaliation was the but-for cause of the challenged actions, summary judgment was warranted on all remaining claims.

The case is No. 23-cv-01375.

Judge: Chutkan, T.

Attorneys: James R. Klimaski (Klimaski & Associates) for Channer Woolcock. Christian Yingling (Jackson Lewis) for The Michaels Organization LLC.

Companies: The Michaels Organization LLC

Cases: PayDiscrimination Discrimination SexDiscrimination RaceDiscrimination Retaliation DistrictofColumbiaNews