Opinion ID: 200396
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The First Variable.

Text: 27 The district court concluded that the first variable to be used for measuring parity under the Beecher decree was the percentage of minority firefighters in the BFD as a whole. The court did not reach this conclusion through independent analysis, but, rather, premised it on the assumption that this issue had been fully litigated and settled in earlier proceedings. See Quinn, 204 F.Supp.2d at 162. Although we appreciate the district court's sensitivity to the role of precedent, an examination of the prior decisions touching upon the Beecher decree refutes the court's assumption. 28 To the extent that the Beecher I court compared relative racial representation using quantitative data, it did so only to determine proper placement of the burden of proof as to what discriminatory effects could be attributed to the defendants' preexisting recruitment and hiring practices. See 371 F.Supp. at 514, 518-20. Thus, Beecher I did not mandate a particular parity-measuring formula for future use. That omission is understandable: the minuscule number of minorities in the affected fire departments at the time of the original Beecher decree negated any need for precise definition of how to measure anticipated minority penetration. 4 29 This court's initial affirmance of the Beecher decree is unhelpful on this point. In resolving that appeal, we stated that the Beecher decree would remain[ ] in force, for each local fire department, until that department attains sufficient minority fire fighters to have a percentage on the force approximately equal to the percentage of minorities in the locality, Beecher II, 504 F.2d at 1027. This statement begs the question of who is a firefighter. 30 Our subsequent opinion in Mackin likewise left open the issue of how to measure parity. That case rejected an argument that the second variable was the racial composition of the City as it existed in 1974 (when the Beecher decree was first entered). Mackin, 969 F.2d at 1276. We disposed of that argument without ruling on the significance of the figures presented vis-à-vis the composition of the first variable. See id. Elsewhere in that opinion, we addressed an overbreadth challenge and held that the decree continued to survive strict scrutiny. Id. at 1278. In the process, we cited the language of the decree itself as an indicium of its limited life. See id. (acknowledging that the decree would remain[ ] in force only until its requirements have been met). Seen in this light, any elliptical references in Mackin as to how parity might be measured cannot be deemed a holding. 31 Our determination that the district court erred in concluding that stare decisis supplies an answer to the question of how the first variable should be constructed brings us back to square one. While we recognize that district courts enforcing public law consent decrees have, in general, broad discretion in determining such matters as whether the objectives of the decree have been substantially achieved, Navarro-Ayala v. Hernandez-Colon, 951 F.2d 1325, 1337 (1st Cir.1991), the court below did not exercise any such discretion. Instead, it offered its interpretation of judicial precedents dealing with the Beecher decree. Having found that interpretation wanting, we owe no particular deference to the district court's conclusion. See Wessmann v. Gittens, 160 F.3d 790, 795 (1st Cir.1998). 32 If a district court's adjudication of a public sector consent decree does not warrant deference, [o]rdinary contract principles apply to the same extent as they apply to other consent decrees. Navarro-Ayala, 951 F.2d at 1339. This is especially true when, as now, the question involves determining the parties' original intent and, concomitantly, the scope of the arrangement to which they initially consented. 5 Id. Parties to a consent decree are entitled to know that ... [it] will not be treated as a mere entering wedge which ... gives a district court untrammeled discretion to increase the depth and breadth of judicial supervision. Id. at 1339 n. 17. 33 Against this backdrop, we turn to the parties' competing interpretations of the term firefighter. As said, the Candidates view that term as encompassing only the lowest rank, that is, entry-level members of the BFD. 6 In contradistinction, the defendants view the term as encompassing all uniformed BFD personnel, including officers. In the abstract, it may seem possible to stretch the term firefighter to fit the defendants' vision — but this case does not deal with abstractions. Terms in a consent decree cannot be construed in a vacuum; they must instead be read in the context of the decree as a whole. See Newport Plaza Assocs. v. Durfee Attleboro Bank, 985 F.2d 640, 646 (1st Cir.1993); see generally 5 Arthur L. Corbin, Corbin on Contracts § 24.21, at 204 (Joseph M. Perillo rev. ed.1998). From that coign of vantage, the Candidates' definition is much more compelling. 34 The litigation underlying the Beecher decree arose out of discriminatory practices in recruitment and hiring into entry-level positions. See Beecher I, 371 F.Supp. at 509 (describing the focal point of the case as the municipalities' overall hiring policies for the position of firefighter). Consistent with this focus, the district court made specific findings of discriminatory practices in recruitment and hiring, and the decree was tailored to counteract the effects of that discrimination. Id. at 520. This historical perspective sheds considerable light on the meaning of the term firefighter as used in the Beecher decree. Logically, the parties must have intended that term to refer to the class of jobs open to external hiring: entry-level firefighter positions. See Fleet Nat'l Bank v. H & D Entm't, Inc., 96 F.3d 532, 539 (1st Cir.1996) (interpreting terms of a settlement agreement in light of the aim of the litigants at the time of settlement); see generally 5 Corbin, supra § 24.20, at 193. Only by interpreting the term firefighter in that manner is it possible to harmonize the wording of the decree with its evident purpose. 35 Other language in the decree supports this reading. The decree's first paragraph zeroes in on entry-level positions: it enjoins activities that discriminat[e] against any applicant or potential applicant for employment. Beecher I, 371 F.Supp. at 521. The decree purports to regulate the recruiting, certifying, and appointing of entry-level personnel and specifically refers to this three-part process as the hiring procedure. See id. at 522. Subsequent amendments, such as the interim consent decrees entered on April 17, 1975, and November 25, 1975, continue this emphasis on recruitment and hiring for entry-level positions. 36 Custom and usage within an affected industry or workplace can be important aids to the construction of a contract or consent decree. See, e.g., Boston Police Superior Officers Fed'n v. City of Boston, 147 F.3d 13, 17-18 (1st Cir.1998) (interpreting terms with otherwise broad usage narrowly according to usage within the relevant profession); Smart v. Gillette Co. Long-Term Disab. Plan, 70 F.3d 173, 179 (1st Cir.1995) (noting that usages of trade are relevant to interpreting terms of a contract). Here, the usage of the BFD supports the Candidates' definition of the term firefighter. 37 In the court below, the evidence showing the composition of the BFD differentiated the various ranks by specific title. These records consistently referred to the entry-level rank as Firefighter (sometimes written as Fire Fighter or Fire fighter). Corresponding to that term, the evidence showed the number of persons serving in the entry-level rank, broken down by race and ethnicity. That evidence referred to the other ranks — the officers — by such titles as Fire Lieutenant, Fire Captain, and District Fire Chief, giving the racial and ethnic composition of each such rank. This indicates that, within the BFD, the term firefighter carries with it specific duties, responsibilities, pay, and privileges. 38 Lexigraphic insights are frequently helpful in determining the meaning of specific words in consent decrees. See, e.g., Gilday v. Dubois, 124 F.3d 277, 285-86 (1st Cir.1997). Here, the mine-run of dictionary definitions tends to support the Candidates' version of the disputed term. A firefighter is said to be one who fights fires as a member of a municipal fire department, Webster's Third New Int'l Dictionary 855 (1993) (internal dictionary symbols omitted), or a person who fights destructive fires, Random House Dictionary of the English Language 722 (2d ed.1987), or, simply, a person who fights fires, Merriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary (2002), at http://www.mw.com/home.htm. These definitions uniformly emphasize the principal activity that firefighters perform. They show quite clearly that the term firefighter, in its ordinary sense, applies more naturally to those whose exclusive province is attempting to extinguish conflagrations as opposed to those in the higher echelons (who must handle a broader and more diversified range of activities, including administration and supervision). While the dictionary definitions of firefighter do not necessarily exclude those whom the defendants seek to include, they argue persuasively against their inclusion. 39 Our case law also militates against including higher ranks under the appellation firefighter. For example, in Boston Police Superior Officers, 147 F.3d at 17-18, we held that the term police officers used in a consent decree governing promotions within the Boston Police Department did not include all police officers, but, rather, encompassed only patrolmen. That case, like this one, illustrates the importance of honoring contextual constraints that may be placed on a word or phrase within the four corners of a consent decree. 40 Last — but far from least — including higher ranks within the compass of the term firefighter would mean that the Beecher decree was not narrowly tailored to serve its stated purpose. Such an interpretation would effectively transform an instrument carefully crafted to eliminate discrimination in recruitment and hiring into general leverage favoring minorities in a much wider variety of matters. In most of those areas — promotion is a good example — no justification for systematic preferential treatment of minorities has been established. Thus, the transformation that necessarily would accompany an acceptance of the defendants' interpretive gloss would present an insurmountable constitutional obstacle. See Bakke, 438 U.S. at 307, 98 S.Ct. 2733. Because courts should avoid construing a consent decree in a constitutionally offensive way if a feasible alternative construction exists, this looming constitutional quandary is itself a cogent argument for rejecting the defendants' expansive view of the term firefighter. Cf. Walsh v. Schlecht, 429 U.S. 401, 408, 97 S.Ct. 679, 50 L.Ed.2d 641 (1977) ([C]ontracts should not be interpreted to render them illegal and unenforceable where the wording lends itself to a logically acceptable construction that renders them legal and enforceable.). 41 The opposite pan of the scale contains nothing of sufficient weight to counterbalance this powerful asseverational array. Insofar as we can discern, interpreting the word firefighter to include higher ranks has no basis in the record. The decree is utterly silent as to activities affecting higher ranks, and the remainder of the record — both current and historical — is devoid of any allegation or finding that the BFD has ever discriminated against minorities in promotions or in other personnel practices involving those in (or aspiring to reach) the higher ranks. Indeed, the original Beecher plaintiffs would not have had standing to allege discrimination in such respects. 7 Taking these facts into account, it unfairly belittles the Beecher court to read firefighter as that term is used in the decree to include all ranks (and, thus, to impute to the court the injudicious crafting of a remedy that reaches beyond the scope of the surrounding litigation). 42 The defendants, ably represented, nonetheless advance a plethora of counter-arguments. Only four of them require discussion. 43 First, the City and the intervenor point to paragraph 11 of the interim consent decree of November 25, 1975. That proviso requires a municipality seeking to be released from the decree to petition the MDPA, informing that agency that the percentage of post-probationary minority uniformed personnel equals the percentage of minorities in that municipality. We do not believe that this casual (and wholly unexplained) linguistic switch from firefighter to uniformed personnel can be accorded decretory significance. This is especially so in light of two facts. First, that same proviso incorporates by reference paragraph 7 of the April 17, 1975 interim consent decree (which opens the way for release from the decree whenever a particular city or town has achieved a complement of Black or Spanish-surnamed firefighters commensurate with the percentage of minorities within the community). Second, the preamble to the November 25 decree — the decree which introduced the term uniformed personnel into the litigation — unequivocally declared that  the parties consent to entry of this Agreement to permit ... the establishment of an eligibility list for the position of firefighter .... (Emphasis supplied). In the final analysis, then, the phrase upon which the defendants rely leads us back to our starting point. 44 We add, moreover, that if the phraseology employed in the November 25, 1975 decree was intended to clarify that the earlier decrees affected more than the firefighter rank, it seems highly likely that the Beecher court would have used more precise language such as of all ranks or of any rank. But the Beecher court eschewed such language. What is more, the court demonstrated an inclination to use general descriptors for specific subject matter. See Beecher I, 371 F.Supp. at 523 (using the general phrase complement of minorities to refer to the specific minority [g]roup of all eligible blacks and Spanish-surnamed persons). In our view, this proclivity undermines the inference that the defendants (and the dissent) seek to draw from the phrase post-probationary uniformed personnel. 45 Before leaving this point, we note that our dissenting colleague sees no basis for concluding that `firefighter' is the operative word in the Beecher decree and the two interim decrees that followed. Yet that word appears no fewer than twenty-six times in those decrees, while the term uniformed personnel appears only once. This repeated emphasis, especially when coupled with the fact that the litigation revolved around the position of firefighter and did not concern other ranks, makes it perfectly clear that firefighter is indeed the operative term. 46 Next, the defendants strive to convince us that we should defer to a 1987 memorandum issued by the MDPA, which indicates that, for Beecher purposes, the first variable should consist of the actual percentage of the authorized uniformed permanent full-time force which is made up of tenured Black or Hispanic officers of any rank. We are not persuaded. 47 The deference typically owed by a court to an administrative agency derives from the fact that the agency has been entrusted by a legislative body to administer a statute enacted under that branch's separate constitutional authority. See Chevron, U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-44, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984); see also Fireside Nissan, Inc. v. Fanning, 30 F.3d 206, 212 (1st Cir.1994) (reasoning that state officials' interpretation of state statute is entitled to deference). If the legislative branch has left a gap for the agency to fill, there is an express delegation of authority. Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843-44, 104 S.Ct. 2778. Thus, a court must defer to the agency's reasonable construction of a provision in the statute. Id. at 844, 104 S.Ct. 2778. 48 Here, however, a state agency is helping to administer compliance not with a legislative enactment but with a federal judicial decree. A federal appellate court owes no deference to such an agency when endeavoring to discern the meaning and constitutional limits of such a decree. After all, if the judiciary is the final arbiter as to questions of statutory construction and must refuse to accept administrative interpretations that contradict clearly ascertainable legislative intent, see id. at 843 n. 9, 104 S.Ct. 2778, courts certainly have the power — indeed, the duty — to reject an administrative construction that runs contrary to the manifest intent of a judicial decree. 49 Third, the defendants posit a variation on the trickle up theory. See, e.g., Stuart, 951 F.2d at 452 (One obvious reason ... why there may have been few black sergeants in the Boston Police Force in 1978 is that the Department had not hired many black police officers before 1970. Since unjustified discrimination accounted for the latter fact, [it] cannot excuse the former.). They assert that not including higher ranks within the term firefighter would diminish the efficacy of the decree and reward appointing authorities for keeping minorities in the firefighter rank (thus perpetuating underrepresentation in the higher echelons). For that reason, they argue, it makes sense to require parity department-wide before allowing a community to escape from the constraints imposed by the Beecher decree. 50 This argument is specious. We have determined, and the defendants concede, that the parties never intended the decree to address promotions. On that basis alone, it would be improper to extend the decree's reach by judicial fiat. See Boston Police Superior Officers, 147 F.3d at 17-18. Furthermore, alleging that unconstitutional hiring practices within the BFD have caused a disparate impact on the number of minorities in the higher echelons is a heavy charge. Such an allegation should not be addressed in the abstract, but, rather, should be squarely propounded by an injured party with standing to sue and litigated to a just conclusion. Because the litigation giving rise to the Beecher decree is of a different nature than the justification that the defendants now offer, the decree is a constitutionally insufficient vehicle for addressing that justification. See id. at 18; see also Wessmann, 160 F.3d at 802 (The mere fact that an institution once was found to have practiced discrimination is insufficient, in and of itself, to satisfy a state actor's burden of producing the reliable evidence required to uphold race-based action.). 51 Finally, the City and the intervenor make an argument of last resort. They contend that their interpretation of the term firefighter is proper because they have assumed all along that the term embraced more than entry-level personnel. In the circumstances of this case, such a contention does not get them very far. 52 In pressing this point, the defendants lean heavily upon past practice of the MDPA and attempt to apply language derived from Mackin to that practice. There, we rejected the argument that static 1974 population figures controlled the measurement of parity. In so doing, we wrote that [f]ew things evidence a decree's meaning more persuasively than an immutable, decade-old pattern of past practice under the decree, consensually engaged in by all sides in the underlying litigation that produced the decree. 969 F.2d at 1276. 53 That language is inapposite here. In Mackin, we were using a uniformly accepted past practice to validate a facially plausible interpretation of the Beecher decree (i.e., that current population figures would control). See id. We deemed that past practice confirmatory of what appeared to be a commonsense reading of the verbiage chosen by the parties and approved by the district court. In contrast, the defendants here attempt to use an administrative practice first inaugurated in 1987 (thirteen years after the entry of the Beecher decree), and never directly challenged, to change the meaning of plain language and thus to validate an unlikely interpretation that is implausible in the context of the underlying litigation (and one which, in the bargain, would open the decree to constitutional attack). To the extent that the MDPA's past practice points toward that suggested interpretation, it lacks record support and therefore cannot dominate the decisional calculus. See Wessmann, 160 F.3d at 802; Stuart, 951 F.2d at 454-55. 54 To dwell on this issue would be pointless. It suffices to say that the history and purpose of the litigation, the language of the decree, and the usage of the BFD make manifest that the term firefighter, as used in the Beecher decree, was intended to include only those persons serving in the entry-level rank. Interpreting firefighter more broadly would rip the decree from its constitutional moorings, twist its language into something alien to its evident purpose, and violate settled principles of contract law. Accordingly, the proper parity-measuring device — what we have called the first variable — comprises the percentage of minorities in the entry-level rank of the BFD as of the relevant date (November of 2000).