What happened
A D.C. federal judge allowed former International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers employee Taylor Lambert to expand her race-discrimination case over BAC's COVID-19 vaccine policy, permitting a new Section 1981 claim against the union and two senior employees while rejecting a slate of other proposed claims.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the court would "GRANT IN PART and DENY IN PART" Lambert's request to amend her complaint. Lambert may add factual allegations supporting her Title VII and D.C. Human Rights Act race-discrimination theories and may assert a Section 1981 disparate-treatment claim against BAC, BAC President Timothy Driscoll and BAC Executive Director Candice Dubberly.
Lambert, who is Black, alleges BAC implemented its vaccination requirement in a racially discriminatory way by giving predominantly white traveling employees more advance notice and some vaccine-education resources that nontraveling employees did not receive. She alleges all BAC employees who lost their jobs as a result of the vaccination policy were Black.
The case returned to the district court after the D.C. Circuit affirmed dismissal of Lambert's claims on grounds other than race but reversed dismissal of her race-discrimination claims and remanded those claims for further proceedings. After remand, BAC answered, and Lambert filed a proposed amended complaint on the deadline for amending pleadings or joining parties.
The ruling does not allow Lambert to add individual-capacity Title VII claims because the court said Title VII liability runs against the employer, not its agents personally. The court also rejected proposed DCHRA claims against Driscoll and Dubberly as untimely, finding Lambert's administrative complaint did not toll limitations as to those individual defendants because it did not specifically allege discriminatory acts by them.
Other proposed theories also failed. The court said the rescinded executive order Lambert cited did not create enforceable rights, BAC was not a state actor for constitutional claims, the cited international-law sources did not create private U.S. causes of action, and the National Labor Relations Board has primary jurisdiction over unfair-labor-practice claims.
The court ordered any amended complaint to be filed by July 31, 2026, and said amendments beyond those allowed by the opinion would be stricken. That leaves Lambert's race-discrimination case alive, but narrowed to the claims and defendants the court permitted.