Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/97-7186/97-7186a-2011-03-24.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 16:16:23+00:00

Document:
Seth M. Galanter, Attorney, United States Department of Justice, argued the cause for the intervenor. Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General, United States Depart- ment of Justice, was on brief.
Karen LeCraft Henderson, Circuit Judge: The Washing- ton Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) appeals judgments rendered against it in a suit brought by Judy J. Jones alleging discriminatory and retaliatory refusal to pro- mote, discharge and failure to reinstate in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. ss 621 et seq., and of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. ss 2000e et seq. The district court awarded Jones compensatory and liquidated damages under the ADEA, pur- suant to a jury verdict, and reinstatement, back pay (includ- ing prejudgment interest) and retroactive promotion under Title VII. In addition, the court awarded attorney's fees and injunctive relief under each statute. WMATA challenges the both the ADEA and the Title VII judgments. We vacate the ADEA damage award because WMATA is immune from liability therefor under the Eleventh Amendment to the Unit- ed States Constitution. We affirm the Title VII award in toto.
Jones on August 6, 1985. According to Jones, during their meeting Miller told her that her job was "in jeopardy" and asked her to resign. JA 400.
__________ 1 Also in 1987 Jones applied unsuccessfully for promotion to a TS-5 position as Quality Assurance Inspector. She claimed below that her rejection resulted from gender discrimination. This claim is not at issue on appeal.
On March 1, 1989 Jones filed this lawsuit alleging discrimi- natory and retaliatory failure to promote in violation of Title VII and the ADEA. After her lawyer became ill the lawsuit "stalled" until she retained new counsel in February 1991. Jones v. WMATA, 946 F. Supp. 1023, 1029-30 (D.D.C. 1996).
On March 6, 1991 Jones was directed to meet with Allen Brown, one of Bassily's deputies, who was investigating a recent employee protest in which Jones had participated. Brown had previously questioned Jackie Rhodes, one of Jones's subordinates, at great length about the protest, press- ing for information about Jones's role in it. Familiar with Rhodes's experience, Jones refused to meet Brown without her lawyer and subsequently refused a request from Miller as well to meet in his office. After a confrontation with Miller in the lunch room, Jones called her division superintendent, Al Yorro, to tell him she was going home sick. Later that afternoon Jones received a call at home from Yorro, directing her to report for a medical examination by 6:00 p.m., which she did. Following the exam, Aubrey Burton, General Super- intendent of the Department's Rail Transportation office, recommended to Bassily that Jones be fired, after consulting with WMATA's personnel director and its Office of General Counsel. Bassily approved the discharge and signed Jones's termination form on March 7, 1991. In a certified letter to Jones, Brown identified as the cause for Jones's discharge "insubordination" in refusing orders to meet with Miller and himself. JA 252-53. After unsuccessfully requesting rein- statement in a letter to WMATA's Office of General Counsel, Jones amended her complaint to claim retaliatory discharge and failure to reinstate.
On August 6, 1993 the district court granted partial sum- mary judgment in favor of Jones on her claim of retaliatory failure to reinstate in violation of both Title VII and the ADEA. The court reserved "[t]he issue of appropriate relief for this claim" to "be tried together with the remaining claims in this case." JA 74.
ation claims--$10,000 for the 1988 failure to promote to TS-4 and $20,000 each for the termination and failure to reinstate in 1991. In addition, the jury found that the ADEA violations were willful. Accordingly, the district court immediately entered a judgment on the verdict in the amount of $50,000.
In an opinion and order filed October 15, 1996 the court also found for Jones on three of her Title VII claims: retalia- tory failure to promote both in 1987 (in retaliation for signing the 1985 letter complaining of discrimination) and in 1988 (for filing the 1987 EEOC complaint) and retaliatory discharge in 1991 (for filing and prosecuting the Title VII lawsuit).2 At the same time, in accord with its own findings and with the jury's, the court entered a final judgment ordering the follow- ing relief: (1) reinstatement and retroactive promotion to TS- 4 effective October 1, 1987 under both the ADEA and Title VII; (2) back pay under Title VII (consisting of the difference between what Jones was actually paid after October 1, 1987 and what she would have been paid at the TS-4 level) plus prejudgment interest; (3) liquidated damages under the ADEA, 29 U.S.C. s 626(b) (equal to the back pay owed after February 2, 1989, the date the jury found Jones was "willful- ly" deprived of the TS-4 promotion); (4) a permanent injunc- tion prohibiting WMATA "from taking any form of retaliatory action against Jones for engaging in activity protected by Title VII or the ADEA"; and (5) "reasonable" expenses and attorney's fees. 946 F. Supp. at 1032-34.
__________ 2 The court decided the Title VII claims, based on evidence presented in a short bench trial as well as the evidence submitted both during and before the jury trial, because the acts giving rise to Jones's claims occurred before the effective date of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 42 U.S.C. s 1981a(c), which first authorized jury trials for such claims. See Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244 (1994).
our disposition, we need address only three of them. We discuss each separately.
We first consider WMATA's contention that state entities (including WMATA) are immune under the Eleventh Amend- ment from ADEA liability. Because the United States Su- preme Court recently resolved this question in favor of immunity,3 we agree that the ADEA damages awards must be vacated.
__________ 3 After oral argument we ordered this appeal held in abeyance pending the Supreme Court's decision in Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, which issued on January 11, 2000 and which we discuss infra.
__________ committed in the conduct of any proprietary function, in accor- dance with the law of the applicable signatory (including rules on conflict of laws), but shall not be liable for any torts occurring in the performance of a governmental function.
WMATA Compact, Pub. L. No. 89-774, s 80, 80 Stat. 1324, 1350 (1966).
We next address WMATA's challenge to the district court's Title VII judgment. WMATA contends that the evidence does not support the court's findings that WMATA unlawfully retaliated against Jones in 1987 and in 1988 when it failed to promote her and in 1991 when it discharged her.6 We must uphold the district court's factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous. Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a); see also Pullman- Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 290 (1982). We perceive no clear error here.
__________ challenges to the court's failure to instruct the jury that Jones was not entitled to have her lawyer present during attempted interviews preceding her discharge and that as a supervisor Jones did not engage in protected activity when she signed the 1985 letter to Bassily.
6 Although the court expressly made the latter two findings "in reliance upon the verdict of the jury on Jones' ADEA claim," in each case the court also "note[d] that it would have reached the same conclusion independent of the jury, based upon the filings and oral argument of counsel, and the testimony and other evidence in the record." 946 F. Supp. at 1029, 1030. On the 1987 promotion claim, the court "ma[de] its findings under Title VII independent of the jury's determinations under the ADEA." Id. at 1028. On Jones's claim of failure to reinstate, we need not resolve WMATA's challenge to the district court's summary judgment since the only relief it supports--reinstatement and back pay--would have been awarded in any event under the court's wrongful discharge finding, which we uphold and which the district court made clear "would be the same even in the absence of the summary judgment determina- tion." 946 F. Supp. at 1030.
a showing raises a "rebuttable presumption of unlawful dis- crimination" and shifts to the defendant the burden to "rebut the presumption by asserting a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for its actions." Id. (citing Texas Dep't of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254 (1981)). If the defen- dant meets this burden of production, "the presumption of discrimination dissolves" and the plaintiff assumes the burden "to persuade the trier of fact that the defendant's proffered reason was not the actual or sole basis for the disputed action." Id.
On the 1987 promotion claim, WMATA does not dispute that Jones established a prima facie case, as the district court found, but does contend that Jones failed to rebut as pretex- tual WMATA's proffered legitimate reasons for not promot- ing Jones. We conclude the evidence supports the district court's finding of pretext. Of the three reasons Miller of- fered in his October 30, 1987 letter for not promoting Jones, the district court reasonably rejected as pretextual two: Jones's "marginal" test score, because it was higher than the score of another employee who was promoted, and the in- stance when she gave a cash refund to a customer, because the court found her action consistent both with the Metrorail Handbook and with a Department directive. 946 F. Supp. at 1028. In contrast, the court accepted Miller's third reason, that Jones had "transmit[ted] [her] personal views to [her] subordinates," as "more plausible--but violative of Title VII" because it reflected retaliation for protected activity, namely, the 1985 letter to Bassily complaining of Department discrim- ination. Because the court's findings of pretext and of retali- ation as to the promotion claim are supported by the evi- dence, they are not clearly erroneous.
WMATA's Office of General Counsel was aware she had retained new counsel who had successfully had the suit restored to the court's active docket. Jones v. WMATA, 946 F. Supp. 1011, 1022 (D.D.C. 1996); see also JA 581-87. Further, Rhodes testified that Brown asked her about Jones's lawyers when he questioned her one week before the firing, JA 477, and Bassily testified that before recommending Jones's discharge Burton consulted with WMATA's Office of General Counsel, which "concurred" in the dismissal. JA 628. This evidence supports the court's finding that WMATA decision makers fired Jones with knowledge she had retained new counsel.
Finally, it was not clearly erroneous for the court to find pretextual WMATA's claim it fired Jones for "insubordina- tion" in violation of Department procedure, namely for refus- ing orders to meet with Brown and Miller. As evidence of pretext, the court cited Jones's willingness to meet with Yorro, WMATA's own violation of its procedures in firing her without affording her an opportunity to explain her behavior and other instances of unlawful retaliation by Department management, both against Jones in connection with her 1987 and 1988 promotion denials and against other employees who had complained of discrimination, see 946 F. Supp. at 1026. This evidence suffices.
__________ 7 Since Shaw was decided, the Congress has added to Title VII an express waiver of immunity from interest. 42 U.S.C. s 2000e- 16(d).
8 Because we vacate the ADEA liquidated damages award, we need not address WMATA's argument that awarding both liqui- dated damages and prejudgment interest provides a "double recov- ery."
For the preceding reasons, we vacate the plaintiff's awards of compensatory, and liquidated damages under the ADEA and affirm the relief awarded under Title VII--including reinstatement, promotion, back pay, prejudgment interest, injunctive relief and expenses and attorneys fees. According- ly, we remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision.
__________ 9 Jones claims entitlement only to prejudgment interest accruing after November 21, 1991, the effective date of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, supra note 6. See Appellee's Br. at 36.

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