Opinion ID: 362303
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Construction of the Act

Text: 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.