Opinion ID: 362303
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the statutory route to redress

Text: 12 We turn now to ascertain the statutory path that officers of the Metropolitan Police Department must follow in bringing and maintaining charges of employment discrimination. As has been aptly noted, Title VII  'leaves much to be desired in clarity and precision,'  23 and the instant cases exemplify that shortcoming. The two appellants chose to proceed under Section 717, 24 which deals with federal employment, and which contemplates exhaustion of remedies afforded by the employing agency and, at the employee's election, subsequent utilization of the processes of the Civil Service Commission. 25 Admitting that appellants are covered by Title VII, appellee argues that their proper recourse lies in Section 706, 26 which pertains to employees in the private sector and in state and local governmental services. The difference in viewpoint is important because a prerequisite to suit under Section 706 is obtainment of a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 27 something neither appellant acquired because neither ever complained to that agency.
13 Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 28 to extend the protections of Title VII to most federal, state and local government employees. 29 The problem we now face silently dogged this legislation throughout its history. 14 In the House, the Hawkins Bill 30 would have imposed the discrimination ban on federal employment and assigned the task of administrative enforcement to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The bill would have brought within the section pertaining to the Federal Government those positions with the District of Columbia government covered by the Civil Service Retirement Act . . ., 31 but the fate of other District of Columbia positions was not made so clear. While Section 701, the definitional provision governing Section 706 relief, was to be amended to extend Title VII protection to state and local government employees, 32 the amendment flatly excepted employees of the District of Columbia. 33 Yet not all such employees were to be encompassed by Section 717 since not all occupied positions covered by the Civil Service Retirement Act. . . . 15 When the Hawkins Bill was reported out of committee, its language remained unchanged but the section-by-section analysis of Section 701 described the exception as limited to employees of District of Columbia departments or agencies (except those subject by statute to procedures of the Federal competitive service as defined in 5 U.S.C. 2102). 34 This statement manifests an intent that District of Columbia employees be covered by one section or the other of Title VII 35 a point that appellee does not deny. 36 16 The bill introduced in the other chamber by Senator Williams attempted explicitly to include all District of Columbia employees within one section or the other by providing in Section 701 for exclusion from the term employer in Section 706 of any department or agency of the District of Columbia only if it is subject by statute to procedures of the competitive service (as defined in Section 2102 of Title 5 of the United States Code). . . . 37 This language is essentially the wording now on the statute books. 38 The Williams Bill also called for enforcement by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of federal-discrimination complaints and included in Section 717 those portions of the District of Columbia . . . having positions in the competitive service. . . . 39 Quite significantly, Representative Hawkins characterized the Williams Bill as having the same coverages as his own. 40 17 The language of Section 717 of the Williams Bill was modified slightly in committee to embrace those units of the Government of the District of Columbia having positions in the competitive service. . . . 41 At the same time, however, the bill was amended to place enforcement responsibility in the hands of the Civil Service Commission. 42 The committee noted that body's past shortcomings but hoped that it would reconsider its entire complaint structure 43 and believed that it sincerely desired to eradicate federal employment discrimination. 44 No other explanation for switching enforcement from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was expressed. With these exceptions, the relevant provisions of the Williams Bill became law without further change and without additional relevant discussion. The remainder of the congressional history of the 1972 Act consists almost totally of consideration of a proposal to give the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cease-and-desist enforcement powers in cases within its purview. 45
18 Because the legislative history supplies no clear answer to our problem, appellants propose to bridge the gap by a syllogism. They start with the premise that the plain wording of Section 701 excludes from the ambit of Section 706 and thus from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's jurisdiction District of Columbia agencies subject by statute to procedures of the competitive service . . . . 46 They then point out that the Metropolitan Police Department is subject to some Civil Service Commission procedures namely, those governing appointment and promotion. 47 Thus they reason that the Department is omitted from Section 706 and, because no one argues that it is locked out of Title VII's provisions altogether, that the Title VII rights of District police must be controlled by Section 717. 19 Appellants' chain of reasoning suffers from a critically weak link. The language referred to can as easily be read to except from Section 706 only agencies subject to All civil service procedures as to exclude those subject to Any such procedures. Indeed, the parenthetical qualifier to the definitional phrase relied upon indicates that Section 706, by way of Section 701, leaves out only those units subject to the full panoply of competitive service requirements. The qualifier refers to 5 U.S.C. § 2102, which defines the competitive service, and the Metropolitan Police Department simply does not come within that definition. 48 20 Even were we to accept appellants' method of reasoning, they present us with no ground for launching the process with Section 701. It would seem just as logical to begin by ascertaining which agencies are included within Section 717, and then by the same principle of logic the law of the excluded middle 49 place everyone else in Section 706. The explanation for appellants' start at Section 701 is quite obvious: the unequivocal language of Section 717 includes only those units . . . in the competitive service . . . , 50 and as noted the Metropolitan Police Department is not such a unit. 51 Consequently, we are constrained to reject appellants' construction. 21 The Civil Service Commission, as Amicus curiae, suggests a modified version of appellants' interpretation. The Commission views its selection by Congress instead of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as the agency to enforce the ban against federal employment discrimination as a decision to continue its jurisdiction over areas in which it had previously adjudicated discrimination complaints under various executive orders. 52 Accordingly, the Commission perceives a congressional design to give it jurisdiction, pursuant to Section 717, of discrimination complaints against a governmental body subject to some but not all civil service procedures only when those charges concern personnel actions otherwise governed by its procedures. It urges that such a construction is needed to avoid intrusion in areas that it supervises, such as competitive examinations for appointment and promotion of police officers, 53 through discrimination investigations by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 22 We must reject this analysis as well. Title VII leaves no room for a construction that would route some employees of a single agency in one direction and others in quite another, or would conduct a single individual with multiple grievances down two completely divergent procedural paths. We will not strain to reach a construction of this remedial legislation, which often is invoked by lay employees without benefit of a lawyer, 54 likely to ensnare charging parties in a web of procedural traps. 55 Title VII states flatly that some units of the District of Columbia Government are governed by Section 717 56 and that other department(s) or agenc(ies) thereof are subject to Section 706, 57 and indubitably there is some uncertainty as to which entities fall on which side of the split. But there can be no doubt whatever that Congress drew the dividing line on the nature of the entity, not on the character of the grievance. We will not distort a relatively unclouded statutory command to facilitate interpretation of an obscure provision. 23 We note, too, that the Civil Service Commission's fear of dual authority over particular employment practices apparently was not of great concern to Congress. The legislative history evinces a recognition indeed a welcoming of an overlapping mandate. 58 And we do not foresee bureaucratic conflict of such a potentially crippling nature that we should depart from unmistakeable congressional intent in an effort to avoid it. 24 We conclude, then, that Congress consigned discrimination complaints against Units of the Government of the District of Columbia having positions in the competitive service 59 to the procedures erected by Section 717 and left complaints against all other agencies of the District of Columbia within the ambit of Section 706. Since officers of the Metropolitan Police Department do not occupy positions in the competitive service, their avenue to the courts is Section 706, which calls for a charge filed first with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.