Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/458/375
Timestamp: 2013-12-09 09:21:23
Document Index: 542395199

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1981', '§ 1', '§ 5', '§ 1981', '§ 1977', '§ 16', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 16', '§ 1981', '§ 1982', '§ 1981']

GENERAL BUILDING CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION, INC., Petitioner v. PENNSYLVANIA et al. UNITED ENGINEERS & CONSTRUCTORS, INC., Petitioner, v. PENNSYLVANIA et al. CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA and United Contractors Association, Petitione | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews GENERAL BUILDING CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION, INC., Petitioner v. PENNSYLVANIA et al. UNITED ENGINEERS & CONSTRUCTORS, INC., Petitioner, v. PENNSYLVANIA et al. CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA and United Contractors Association, Petitione
458 U.S. 375 (102 S.Ct. 3141, 73 L.Ed.2d 835)
Argued: March 3, 1982.
[HTML] Syllabus Respondentsthe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and several black individuals representing a class of racial minorities who are skilled or seek work as operating engineers in the construction industry in Eastern Pennsylvania and Delawarebrought an action in Federal District Court under 42 U.S.C. 1981, seeking to redress alleged racial discrimination in the operation of an exclusive hiring hall established in collective-bargaining contracts between the local union representing operating engineers and petitioner trade associations and construction industry employers. Respondents also alleged discrimination in the operation of an apprenticeship program established by the union and the trade associations and administered by the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (JATC), half of whose members are appointed by the union and half by the trade associations. Named as defendants were the union and petitioners. The District Court found that although the hiring hall system was neutral on its face, the union in administering the system practiced a pattern of intentional discrimination, and the court also found similar discrimination in the JATC's administration of the apprenticeship program. On the basis of these findings, the court held that the union and the JATC had violated § 1981, and that, although petitioners as a class did not intentionally discriminate against minority workers and were not aware of the union's discriminatory practices, they were nevertheless liable under § 1981 for the purpose of imposing an injunctive remedy. The court reasoned that liability under § 1981 requires no proof of purposeful conduct on any of the defendants' part, but it was sufficient that the employers delegated the hiring procedure to the union and that the union, in effectuating this delegation, intentionally discriminated or, alternatively, produced a discriminatory impact. The court concluded that respondents had shown the requisite relationship among the employers, trade associations, and union to render applicable the theory of respondeat superior, thus making petitioners liable for the union's discriminatory acts. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: 1. Liability may not be imposed under § 1981 without proof of intentional discrimination. This conclusion is supported by the legislative history. The fact that the prohibitions of § 1981 encompass private as well as governmental action does not suggest that the statute reaches more than purposeful discrimination, whether public or private. Pp. 382-391.
* The hiring hall system that is the focus of this litigation originated in a collective-bargaining agreement negotiated in 1961 by Local 542 and four construction trade associations in the Philadelphia area, three of whom are petitioners in this Court.
The agreement was concluded only after a 10-week strike prompted by the resistance of the trade associations to the Union's demand for an exclusive hiring hall.
This action was filed in 1971 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and 12 black plaintiffs representing a proposed class of minority group members residing within the jurisdiction of Local 542. The complaint charged that the Union and the JATC had violated numerous state and federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp.IV), and 42 U.S.C. 1981. The complaint alleged that these defendants had engaged in a pattern and practice of racial discrimination, by systematically denying access to the Union's referral lists, and by arbitrarily skewing referrals in favor of white workers, limiting most minority workers who did gain access to the hiring hall to jobs of short hours and low pay. The contractor employers and trade associations were also named as defendants, although the complaint did not allege a Title VII cause of action against them.
The District Court divided the trial into two stages. See Pennsylvania v. Local 542, Int'l Union of Operating Engineers, 469 F.Supp. 329, 348 (ED Pa. 1978). The first stage, from which petitioners appeal, addressed issues of liability; assessment of damages was deferred to a second stage. For purposes of the first phase of the proceedings, the court certified a plaintiff class of minority operating engineers and would-be engineers, as well as a defendant class consisting of all trade associations and employers who had been parties to labor contracts with Local 542. A single employer, petitioner Glasgow, Inc., was certified to represent the defendant subclass of approximately 1,400 contractor employers.
The court also interpreted 42 U.S.C. 1981 to permit imposition of liability "on roughly the same basis as a Title VII claim," 469 F.Supp., at 401, and therefore concluded that the Union and the JATC had also violated § 1981. Id., at 399-401.
Turning to petitioners' liability under § 1981, the court found that the plaintiffs had failed to prove "that the associations or contractors viewed simply as a class were actually aware of the union discrimination," id., at 401, and had failed to show "intent to discriminate by the employers as a class," id., at 412. Nevertheless, the court held the employers and the associations liable under § 1981 for the purpose of imposing an injunctive remedy "as a result of their contractual relationship to and use of a hiring hall system which in practice effectuated intentional discrimination, whether or not the employers and associations knew or should have known of the Union's conduct." Id., at 401. The court reasoned that liability under § 1981 "requires no proof of purposeful conduct on the part of any of the defendants." Id., at 407. Instead, it was sufficient that "(1) the employers delegated an important aspect of their hiring procedure to the union; and that (2) the union, in effectuating the delegation, intentionally discriminated or, alternatively, produced a discriminatory impact." Id., at 412. "Plaintiffs have shown that the requisite relationship exists among employers, associations, and union to render applicable the theory of respondeat superior, thus making employers and associations liable injunctively for the discriminatory acts of the union." Id., at 413.
Following an appeal authorized by 28 U.S.C. 1292(b), the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed the judgment of liability against petitioners by an equally divided vote. 648 F.2d 923 (1981). We granted certiorari, 454 U.S. 939, 102 S.Ct. 473, 70 L.Ed.2d 246 (1981), and we now reverse.
The District Court held that petitioners had violated 42 U.S.C. 1981 notwithstanding its finding that, as a class, petitioners did not intentionally discriminate against minority workers and neither knew nor had reason to know of the Union's discriminatory practices. The first question we address, therefore, is whether liability may be imposed under § 1981 without proof of intentional discrimination.
We have traced the evolution of this statute and its companion, 42 U.S.C. 1982,
on more than one occasion, see, e.g., McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U.S. 273, 287-296, 96 S.Ct. 2574, 2582-2586, 49 L.Ed.2d 493 (1976); Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 168-170, 96 S.Ct. 2586, 2593-2594, 49 L.Ed.2d 415 (1976); Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 422-437, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 2194-2202, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 (1968), and we will not repeat the narrative again except in broad outline.
The operative language of both laws apparently originated in § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, enacted by Congress shortly after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
"The legislative history of the 1866 Act clearly indicates that Congress intended to protect a limited category of rights, specifically defined in terms of racial equality." Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 791, 86 S.Ct. 1783, 1789, 16 L.Ed.2d 925 (1966). The same Congress also passed the Joint Resolution that was later adopted as the Fourteenth Amendment. See Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 3148-3149, 3042 (1866). As we explained in Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24, 32-33, 68 S.Ct. 847, 851-852, 92 L.Ed. 1187 (1948) (footnotes omitted):
Following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress passed what has come to be known as the Enforcement Act of 1870, 16 Stat. 140, pursuant to the power conferred by § 5 of the Amendment. Section 16 of that Act contains essentially the language that now appears in § 1981.
Indeed, the present codification is derived from § 1977 of the Revised Statutes of 1874, which in turn codified verbatim § 16 of the 1870 Act. Section 16 differed from § 1 of the 1866 Act in at least two respects. First, where § 1 of the 1866 Act extended its guarantees to "citizens, of every race and color," § 16 of the 1870 Actand § 1981protects "all persons." See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 675, 18 S.Ct. 456, 467, 42 L.Ed. 890 (1898). Second, the 1870 Act omitted language contained in the 1866 Act, and eventually codified as § 1982, guaranteeing property rights equivalent to those enjoyed by white citizens. Thus, "although the 1866 Act rested only on the Thirteenth Amendment . . . and, indeed, was enacted before the Fourteenth Amendment was formally proposed, . . . the 1870 Act was passed pursuant to the Fourteenth, and changes in wording may have reflected the language of the Fourteenth Amendment." Tillman v. Wheaton-Haven Recreation Assn., 410 U.S. 431, 439-440, n. 11, 93 S.Ct. 1090, 1095, n. 11, 35 L.Ed.2d 403 (1973). See Runyon v. McCrary, supra, 427 U.S. at 168-170, n. 8, 96 S.Ct. at 2593-2594, n. 8.
In determining whether § 1981 reaches practices that merely result in a disproportionate impact on a particular class, or instead is limited to conduct motivated by a discriminatory purpose, we must be mindful of the "events and passions of the time" in which the law was forged. United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787, 803, 86 S.Ct. 1152, 1161, 16 L.Ed.2d 267 (1966). The Civil War had ended in April 1865. The First Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress met on December 4, 1865, some six months after the preceding Congress had sent to the States the Thirteenth Amendment and just two weeks before the Secretary of State certified the Amendment's ratification. On January 5, 1866, Senator Trumbull introduced the bill that would become the 1866 Act.
Most of these laws embodied express racial classifications and although others, such as those penalizing vagrancy, were facially neutral, Congress plainly perceived all of them as consciously conceived methods of resurrecting the incidents of slavery.
"Since the abolition of slavery, the Legislatures which have assembled in the insurrectionary States have passed laws relating to the freedmen, and in nearly all the States they have discriminated against them. They deny them certain rights, subject them to severe penalties, and still impose upon them the very restrictions which were imposed upon them in consequence of the existence of slavery, and before it was abolished. The purpose of the bill under consideration is to destroy all these discriminations, and to carry into effect the Thirteenth amendment." Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 474 (1866).
The immediate evils with which the Thirty-ninth Congress was concerned simply did not include practices that were "neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent," Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 430, 91 S.Ct. 849, 853, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971), but that had the incidental effect of disadvantaging blacks to a greater degree than whites. Congress instead acted to protect the freedmen from intentional discrimination by those whose object was "to make their former slaves dependent serfs, victims of unjust laws, and debarred from all progress and elevation by organized social prejudices." Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1839 (1866) (Rep. Clarke). See Memphis v. Greene, 451 U.S. 100, 131-135, 101 S.Ct. 1584, 1602-1604, 67 L.Ed.2d 769 (1981) (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment). The supporters of the bill repeatedly emphasized that the legislation was designed to eradicate blatant de