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Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 10, 2011 Decided June 17, 2011 

No. 10-5215 

JAMES M. JONES, 

APPELLANT

v. 

AIR LINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION, INTERNATIONAL, A LABOR 

ORGANIZATION, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:09-cv-01075) 

Robert B. Fitzpatrick argued the cause and filed the 

briefs for appellant. Constantine J. Gekas entered an 

appearance. 

Granville C. Warner argued the cause for appellees. 

With him on the brief were Jonathan C. Fritts, Russell R. 

Bruch and Marta Wagner. 

Before: HENDERSON, GRIFFITH, and KAVANAUGH, 

Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: In the district court, plaintiff 

James Jones challenged the constitutionality of a provision of 

the Fair Treatment for Experienced Pilots Act (FTEPA), 49 

U.S.C. § 44729, which allows some pilots, but not him, to 

take advantage of Congress’s decision to raise the mandatory 

retirement age from 60 to 65. Jones also alleged that his 

former employer, Continental Airlines, and his former union, 

the Air Line Pilots Association, violated a state law banning 

age discrimination in employment by failing to place him in a 

position at work that would have allowed him the benefit of 

the new retirement age. Before the district court, Jones 

conceded that the strength of his state claims depended on his 

constitutional arguments. It was no surprise, therefore, that 

the district court dismissed his state discrimination claims 

when it found his constitutional arguments wanting. On 

appeal, Jones offers for the first time a legal theory under 

which he says his state claims could succeed. We decline to 

pass on the merits of an argument the district court had no 

chance to consider and affirm the dismissal of Jones’s suit. 

I 

In 1959, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 

issued the “Age 60 Rule” prohibiting people over 60 from 

serving as commercial pilots. 24 Fed. Reg. 9767, 9768 (Dec. 

4, 1959). The most recent version of the Age 60 Rule 

provided that no airline operator “may use the services of any 

person as a pilot on an airplane engaged in operations under 

[Part 121 of the Federal Aviation Regulations] if that person 

has reached his 60th birthday.” 14 C.F.R. § 121.383(c) 

(2008). Part 121 governs the operations of most commercial 

airlines. See id. § 121.1. 

On December 13, 2007, Congress enacted the FTEPA, 

which expressly abrogates the Age 60 Rule, 49 U.S.C. 

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§ 44729(d), and allows “a pilot [to] serve . . . until attaining 

65 years of age,” id. § 44729(a). As a general matter, the 

FTEPA’s repeal of the Age 60 Rule is not retroactive: “No 

person who has attained 60 years of age before [the FTEPA’s] 

date of enactment . . . may serve as a pilot for an air carrier 

engaged in . . . operations [covered by Part 121 of the Federal 

Aviation Regulations].” Id. § 44729(e)(1). 

However, this provision does not apply to someone who 

was over 60 on the date of enactment if he was serving as “a 

required flight deck crew member” at the time. Id.

§ 44729(e)(1)(A).*

 Jones asserts it was possible for the 

airlines to avoid the FTEPA’s nonretroactivity provision by 

temporarily demoting a pilot to “required flight deck crew 

member” when he turned 60, waiting for Congress to pass the 

FTEPA, and then promoting him to pilot. On appeal, Jones 

argues that state employment discrimination law entitled him 

to such a temporary demotion. 

Jones was working as a pilot for defendant Continental 

Airlines based in Newark, New Jersey, when he turned 60 and 

was dismissed on November 9, 2007—just 33 days before the 

FTEPA took effect. He was not working for Continental as a 

“required flight deck crew member” or in any other capacity 

when Congress passed the FTEPA. Shortly before his 

 

*

 In other litigation, the defendants have disagreed about who 

qualifies as a “required flight deck crew member.” See Brooks v. 

ALPA, 630 F. Supp. 2d 52, 54 (D.D.C. 2009). But whatever the 

scope of the phrase, the parties agree that at a minimum it includes 

flight engineers—members of the crew on certain older aircraft 

who monitor a side-facing instrument panel but do not normally 

operate the flight controls. See Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. 

Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 115 n.3 (1985). In any event, there is no 

dispute that Jones was not working as a required flight deck crew 

member when Congress passed the FTEPA. 

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birthday, Jones had petitioned the FAA for an exemption 

from the Age 60 Rule and asked Continental to temporarily 

change his employment status, anticipating that Congress 

would soon pass the FTEPA. The FAA and Continental 

refused his requests. On December 23, 2008, Jones filed a 

petition for review challenging the FAA’s refusal to exempt 

him from the Age 60 Rule. We dismissed Jones’s petition 

under Adams v. FAA, 550 F.3d 1174 (D.C. Cir. 2008), in 

which we had previously held that the FTEPA mooted 

petitions for review challenging the FAA’s application of the 

Age 60 Rule. See Jones v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 2009 WL 

2832030 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 22, 2009). 

Jones then filed suit in the district court against 

Continental, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the 

United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity 

Commission (EEOC), and the FAA, as well as two EEOC 

officials and the Administrator of the FAA in their official 

capacities. Jones’s complaint alleged that the failure to apply 

the FTEPA’s higher age limit retroactively violated the Equal 

Protection and Due Process Clauses and was a bill of 

attainder. He further argued that Continental’s refusal to 

allow him to return to work was part of an effort, joined by 

ALPA, to prevent him from continuing to serve as a pilot 

because of his age in violation of the New Jersey Law 

Against Discrimination (NJLAD). See N.J. STAT. ANN. 

§ 10:5-12. 

After rejecting Jones’s constitutional arguments, the 

district court dismissed his state claims as well because Jones 

had conceded to the court “‘that if the challenged portions of 

FTEPA are constitutional, they preempt his age 

discrimination claims under the New Jersey Law Against 

Discrimination.’” Jones v. Air Line Pilots Ass’n, 713 F. Supp. 

2d 29, 38 n.8 (D.D.C. 2010) (quoting Jones’s Opp’n to 

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Continental’s Mot. to Dismiss 4). On appeal, Jones disputes 

only the dismissal of his state age discrimination claims 

against Continental and ALPA. We review the district court’s 

dismissal of these claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 

II 

Jones’s concession to the district court that the FTEPA 

preempted his NJLAD claims is fatal to his appeal. No doubt 

recognizing that, he argues for the first time on appeal that the 

FTEPA does not preempt the claim he now advances: that 

Continental violated NJLAD by failing to temporarily demote 

him to “required flight deck crew member” so that he could 

take advantage of the newly enacted and higher age limit. But 

we decline Jones’s invitation to consider a legal theory that he 

did not present to the district court, exercising “our wellestablished discretion not to consider claims that litigants fail 

to raise sufficiently below and on which district courts do not 

pass.” Cruz v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 356 F.3d 320, 329 (D.C. Cir. 

2004). 

In its motion to dismiss, Continental argued to the district 

court that the FTEPA preempts Jones’s NJLAD claims. 

Continental’s Mot. to Dismiss 10. The FTEPA’s preemption 

provision provides: 

An action taken in conformance with this section . . . 

or taken prior to the date of enactment of this section 

in conformance with [the Age 60 Rule] may not 

serve as a basis for liability or relief in a proceeding, 

brought under any employment law or regulation, 

before any court or agency of the United States or of 

any State or locality. 

49 U.S.C. § 44729(e)(2). 

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Jones responded that he “agree[d] that if the challenged 

portions of FTEPA are constitutional, they preempt his age 

discrimination claims under [NJLAD] . . . However, if those 

provisions are unconstitutional, they therefore cannot 

invalidate, preempt, supersede, or otherwise make ineffective 

the protections of that State statute.” Jones’s Opp’n to 

Continental’s Mot. to Dismiss 4. Jones’s concession was well 

taken, and the district court dismissed the NJLAD claims after 

rejecting his constitutional arguments. Jones, 713 F. Supp. 2d 

at 38 n.8. On appeal, Jones argues that his seemingly 

unequivocal concession in his response to Continental’s 

motion to dismiss related only to a subset of his NJLAD 

claims and that the FTEPA does not bar his new theory that 

an airline can run afoul of state employment law in the way it 

determines who benefits from the FTEPA’s new age limits. 

Because Jones did not press this theory before the district 

court, we decline to reach its merits. Jones did not make clear 

in his complaint that he was suing Continental for its failure 

to demote him to a status that might help him take advantage 

of the new age limit in the FTEPA. His complaint never 

alleged that he requested a demotion, that he was qualified for 

such a position, or that such positions were available—all 

facts he would need to prove to make out a prima facie case 

of age discrimination for failure to demote under NJLAD. See 

Andersen v. Exxon Co., 446 A.2d 486, 490-91 (N.J. 1982). Of 

course, “under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a 

complaint need not pin [a] plaintiff’s claim for relief to a 

precise legal theory,” Skinner v. Switzer, 131 S. Ct. 1289, 

1296 (2011), and an employment discrimination plaintiff is 

not required to plead every fact necessary to establish a prima 

facie case to survive a motion to dismiss, Swierkiewicz v. 

Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 511 (2002). Regardless of 

whether the Federal Rules’ liberal pleading standard would 

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have permitted Jones to assert his failure-to-demote theory 

without amending his complaint, see Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. 

Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009), he failed to do so. As a result, neither 

the defendants nor the district court had notice of the type of 

NJLAD claim that Jones now asserts. Under these 

circumstances, we adhere to “the general rule . . . that a 

federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed 

upon below.” Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 120 (1976). 

Jones notes that his complaint alleged that Continental 

“fail[ed] to grant [his] requests to alter his status, or take other 

steps, so as to allow him to remain eligible to maintain his 

employment as a . . . commercial airline pilot once the Age 60 

Rule was repealed.” Am. Compl. 25. The complaint also 

alleged that Jones sent a letter to Continental requesting 

“furlough, medical leave, personal leave, etc.” Id. at 24. Read 

in context, however, these statements relate only to Jones’s 

constitutional arguments: he wanted to be temporarily 

grounded rather than dismissed when he turned 60 so that he 

could return to work after Congress passed the FTEPA, which 

he claimed was possible because the failure to apply the 

FTEPA retroactively was unconstitutional. 

Without reason to suspect that Jones was asserting a 

theory that Continental’s failure to demote him violated 

NJLAD, the defendants did not challenge this theory in their 

motions to dismiss. See ALPA Mot. to Dismiss 20-24; 

Continental Mot. to Dismiss 6-14. Then, rather than clarifying 

that his NJLAD claims should survive even if his 

constitutional theories failed, Jones confirmed in his response 

to Continental’s motion to dismiss that his NJLAD claims 

depended on the success of his constitutional arguments. 

Even if Jones had pled the failure-to-demote theory, his 

subsequent filings in the district court abandoned it. 

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Finally, Jones urges us to construe his statement in his 

response to Continental’s motion to dismiss as a concession 

on a question of law which cannot bind us. See United States 

v. Ginyard, 444 F.3d 648, 649 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“[T]he court 

is not bound by [a] concession on a question of law.”). But 

even if we were to set aside his concession, Jones would still 

be responsible for presenting his legal theories to the district 

court. As we have repeatedly emphasized, “legal theories not 

asserted in the district court ordinarily will not be heard on 

appeal.” Prime Time Int’l Co. v. Vilsack, 599 F.3d 678, 686 

(D.C. Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also 

Jones v. Horne, 634 F.3d 588, 603 (D.C. Cir. 2011); Hall v. 

Ford, 856 F.2d 255, 267 (D.C. Cir. 1988). We see no reason 

to depart from that rule in this case. 

III 

For the foregoing reasons, the district court’s judgment is 

Affirmed.

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