Case ID: f-appx_205/html/0039-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "SCIRICA, Chief Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Terry HARRIS, Appellant v. SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY; Grostas, Foreman.
    No. 05-2750.
    United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
    Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) Sept. 11, 2006.
    Filed: Sept. 25, 2006.
    H. Francis Delone, Jr., Wayne, PA, for Appellant.
    Richard S. Meyer, Scott A. Mayer, Blank Rome, Nicholas J. Staffieri, Septa Legal Department, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellees.
    Before: SCIRICA, Chief Judge, SLOVITER and BARRY, Circuit Judges.
   OPINION OF THE COURT

SCIRICA, Chief Judge.

Terry Harris appeals the District Court’s order granting SEPTA’s Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim. We will affirm.

I.

Harris was a maintenance custodian driver in a bargaining unit represented by the Transport Workers Union of Philadelphia, Local 234. After being sent by his foreman for drug testing, Harris tested positive for cocaine use. SEPTA held both an informal and a formal hearing, and Harris was subsequently terminated from employment. The terms and conditions of Harris’s employment at the time he was terminated were governed by a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by SEPTA and Local 234. Local 234 filed a grievance, challenging both the results of the drug test and whether SEPTA had “reasonable suspicion” to test Harris. SEPTA conducted a Labor Relations “step” hearing before the Labor Relations manager, who denied Harris’s grievance. Local 234 did not file for arbitration. Harris brought this § 1983 action, claiming SEPTA and the foreman violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and his Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from deprivation of property without due process. The District Court dismissed the action under Rule 12(b)(6).

II.

Our decision in Dykes v. SEPTA 68 F.3d 1564 (3d Cir.1995), is directly applicable and controlling here. In Dykes, plaintiff alleged that SEPTA deprived him of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures because his supervisors had no reasonable basis to order him to submit to a drug test. Plaintiff also contended his Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated because he was deprived of a property interest in his employment without due process of law. We concluded that Dykes failed to allege a constitutional violation cognizable under § 1983. Id. at 1565.

Addressing Dykes’ Fourth Amendment claim, we held, under SEPTA’s collective bargaining agreement, “whether reasonable suspicion exists in a given case is not a question of law under the Fourth Amendment, but is instead a question of fact to be resolved during the course of the grievanee/arbitration process.” Id. at 1565. Moreover, resolution of the reasonable suspicion issue during the grievance/arbitration process is binding on the reviewing court. Id. at 1568 (citing Bolden v. SEPTA, 953 F.2d 807 (3d Cir.1991) (en banc)).

Our analysis in Dykes is directly applicable to Harris’s Fourth Amendment claim. Under the collective bargaining agreement, at Article XII, § 1203.1(a), SEPTA may require an employee “to submit to drug and alcohol testing on a reasonable suspicion basis when a supervisor trained in the detection of drug and alcohol use can articulate and substantiate” sever-al different indicia of drug use. Because the factual issue of reasonable suspicion is to be determined under the grievance system and this issue was not resolved in Harris’s favor, the District Court concluded that the allegations set forth in Harris’s complaint did not support a Fourth Amendment claim under § 1983.

Harris’s Fourteenth Amendment claim is also governed by our decision in Dykes: “where an adequate grievance/arbitration procedure is in place and is followed, a plaintiff has received the due process to which he is entitled under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Dykes, 68 F.3d at 1565. We held SEPTA’s grievance/arbitration procedure adequate for due process purposes under similar circumstances, id. at 1572, and there is no claim that SEPTA did not follow those procedures here. Thus, the District Court concluded that Harris lacked any claim under the Fourteenth Amendment.

III.

Although the District Court applied our clear precedent in Dykes, Harris argues it erred by failing to follow Wright v. Universal Maritime Service Corp., 525 U.S. 70, 119 S.Ct. 391, 142 L.Ed.2d 361 (1998). In Wright, the Supreme Court considered “whether a general arbitration clause in a collective-bargaining agreement ... requires an employee to use the arbitration procedure for an alleged violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act .... ” Id. at 72, 119 S.Ct. 391. The Court reasoned that, although there is generally a “presumption of arbitrability” involving causes of action arising from the contractual claims within a collective bargaining agreement, that presumption does not extend to claims beyond the terms of the agreement. Id. at 78-79, 119 S.Ct. 391. A plaintiffs federal statutory claim could not be subsumed into the agreement absent a “clear and unmistakable waiver of the covered employees’ rights to a judicial forum for federal claims of employment discrimination.” Id. at 82, 119 S.Ct. 391. Although the Court did not explicitly consider “whether such a waiver would be enforceable,” id., it drew a sharp distinction between substantive causes of action arising from the agreement itself and federal statutory claims that exist apart from the agreement. Id. at 78-79, 119 S.Ct. 391.

Relying on this distinction, the District Court held Wright inapposite to Harris’s § 1983 claims. As the District Court noted, Harris’s claims sound in contract, in this case, the collective bargaining agreement. Because Harris’s claims arise from the collective bargaining agreement, they were properly resolved by the grievance/arbitration process, and Wright is not applicable.

Accordingly, nothing in Wright would force a reevaluation of our decision in Dykes.

IV.

We will affirm the judgment of the District Court. 
      
      . Our review of the District Court’s order to dismiss for failure to state a claim is plenary. Angstadt v. Midd-West Sch. Dist., 377 F.3d 338, 342 (3d Cir.2004). We apply the same standard as the District Court, accepting all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and viewing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Carino v. Stefan, 376 F.3d 156, 159 (3d Cir.2004). A Rule 12(b)(6) motion may be granted where the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief. Id. (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957)).