Opinion ID: 149223
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: EEOC's Claim for an Injunction

Text: If EEOC's suit is allowed to proceed and if the district court were to hold that the Navajo employment preference provision violates Title VII, the district court would almost certainly grant an injunction requiring Peabody to ignore the provision in making its employment decisions. This injunction would not only require Peabody to take certain actions; it would also operate as res judicata against the Nation. In the event such an injunction were issued, Peabody and the Nation would quite reasonably want to seek prospective relief preventing the Secretary from enforcing the provision. Rule 14(a) would permit Peabody and the Nation to file a third-party complaint seeking such relief against the Secretary. Sovereign immunity does not bar prospective injunctive relief against the Secretary. We conclude that the availability of prospective relief through a third-party complaint under Rule 14(a) means that in equity and good conscience EEOC's suit against Peabody should be permitted to proceed.
A claim to which sovereign immunity is not a defense may be entertained even if another claim in the suit is dismissed because of sovereign immunity. See, e.g., United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151, 159, 126 S.Ct. 877, 163 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006) (finding sovereign immunity of state was not a bar to some of the plaintiffs' claims and remanding to the district court to allow suit to proceed for any claims that were not shielded by sovereign immunity). Therefore, the district court may entertain Peabody and the Nation's third-party claim for prospective relief if it is not barred by the United States' sovereign immunity, even if a Peabody claim for damages would have to be dismissed. Prospective relief requiring, or having the effect of requiring, governmental officials to obey the law has long been available. Sovereign immunity does not bar such relief. The case often cited for this proposition is Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908), which permitted an injunction against the Attorney General of Minnesota despite the Eleventh Amendment. The Ex parte Young fiction remains the basis for prospective relief against state officers. For example, in Verizon Maryland, Inc. v. Public Service Commission, 535 U.S. 635, 122 S.Ct. 1753, 152 L.Ed.2d 871 (2002), the Supreme Court allowed injunctive and declaratory relief against individual state officials despite the Eleventh Amendment. For a number of years, prospective relief against federal officials was available under the fiction of Ex parte Young. For example, in Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U.S. 682, 69 S.Ct. 1457, 93 L.Ed. 1628 (1949), the Supreme Court allowed prospective relief against a federal official despite an asserted defense of sovereign immunity. The Court wrote: There may be, of course, suits for specific relief against officers of the sovereign which are not suits against the sovereign. If the officer purports to act as an individual and not as an official, a suit directed against that action is not a suit against the sovereign.... [W]here the officer's powers are limited by statute, his actions beyond those limitations are considered individual and not sovereign actions. The officer is not doing the business which the sovereign has empowered him to do or he is doing it in a way which the sovereign has forbidden. His actions are ultra vires his authority and therefore may be made the object of specific relief. Id. at 689, 69 S.Ct. 1457. We explicitly followed the legal fiction described in Larson in Washington v. Udall, 417 F.2d 1310, 1314 (9th Cir.1969), and did so again in Rockbridge v. Lincoln, 449 F.2d 567, 572-73 (9th Cir.1971). However, since 1976 federal courts have looked to § 702 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 702, to serve the purposes of the Ex parte Young fiction in suits against federal officers. In Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) v. United States, 870 F.2d 518 (9th Cir.1989), we explained that after § 702 was amended in 1976, it replaced the Ex parte Young fiction as the doctrinal basis for a claim for prospective relief. We wrote: It is particularly significant that [in enacting § 702 of the APA] Congress referred disapprovingly to the Ex parte Young fiction, which permitted a plaintiff to name a government official as the defendant in equitable actions to redress government misconduct, on the pretense that the suit was not actually against the government. By invoking the Young fiction plaintiffs could, even before Congress amended § 702 in 1976, maintain an action for equitable relief against unconstitutional government conduct, whether or not such conduct constituted agency action in the APA sense. See, e.g., Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp . ... Congress' plain intent in amending § 702 was to waive sovereign immunity for all such suits, thereby eliminating the need to invoke the Young fiction. Id. at 525-26 (citations omitted) (emphasis added). In Presbyterian Church we wrote, On its face, the 1976 amendment [to § 702] is an unqualified waiver of sovereign immunity in actions seeking nonmonetary relief against legal wrongs for which governmental agencies are accountable. 870 F.2d at 525. We explained that the waiver is not limited to judicial review in suits challenging agency action as defined in the APA, but instead covers all actions seeking relief from official misconduct except for money damages. Id. In Gallo Cattle Co. v. United States Department of Agriculture, 159 F.3d 1194 (9th Cir.1998), we stated that the APA's waiver of sovereign immunity contains several limitations, including the final agency action requirement that we had considered irrelevant in Presbyterian Church. Id. at 1198. We held that, because the plaintiffs failed to challenge final agency action, the waiver of sovereign immunity did not apply. Id. In Gros Ventre Tribe v. United States, 469 F.3d 801 (9th Cir.2006), we discussed but declined to resolve the tension between the two cases, observing that there is no way to distinguish The Presbyterian Church from Gallo Cattle.  Id. at 809. We similarly need not resolve this tension here. Unlike in Gallo Cattle, there is final agency action in this case, because the Secretary has mandated the disputed lease terms. Agency action under the APA is defined as the whole or a part of an agency rule, order, license, sanction, relief, or the equivalent or denial thereof, or failure to act. 5 U.S.C. § 551(13). Persons entitled to judicial review under the APA include an individual, partnership, corporation, association, or public or private organization other than an agency. 5 U.S.C. § 701(b)(2)(providing that, for purposes of provisions on judicial review, definition of person in 5 U.S.C. § 551 applies); id. § 551(providing definition of person). Both Peabody and the Navajo Nation come within this definition of person. Peabody is a corporation, and the Nation is a public organization. Id. Therefore, under § 702 of the APA, as would be the case under the Ex parte Young fiction, either Peabody or the Nation may assert a claim against the Secretary requesting injunctive or declaratory relief. We therefore conclude that neither Peabody nor the Nation is barred by sovereign immunity from bringing a thirdparty complaint seeking prospective relief against the Secretary under Rule 14(a).
If a required party under Rule 19(a) cannot be joined as a plaintiff or defendant, the court must determine whether under Rule 19(b) the action must be dismissed in equity and good conscience. Among the factors to be considered in making that determination is whether, under Rule 19(b)(2)(C), measures may be taken that would lessen or avoid any prejudice. To the degree that Peabody and the Nation may be prejudiced by the absence of the Secretary as a plaintiff or defendant, that prejudice may be eliminated by a third-party complaint against the Secretary under Rule 14(a). The courts of appeals that have addressed the question are unanimous in holding that if an absentee can be brought into an action by impleader under Rule 14(a), a dismissal under Rule 19(b) is inappropriate. In Pasco International (London) Ltd. v. Stenograph Corp., 637 F.2d 496 (2d Cir.1980), the Second Circuit repeatedly indicated that prejudice to existing parties could be eliminated by impleader under Rule 14(a). The court wrote, Stenograph can always protect itself from the possibility of inconsistent verdicts by impleading Croxford under Rule 14[.] ... [T]he existence of the Rule 14 provisions demonstrates that parties such as Croxford who may be impleaded under Rule 14 are not indispensable parties within Rule 19(b). Id. at 503. It summarized, [A]ll persons subject to impleader by the defendant are not indispensable parties. This is... merely an extension of the settled doctrine that Rule 19(b) was not intended to require the joinder of persons subject to impleader under Rule 14 such as potential indemnitors. Id. at 505 n. 20. The other circuits that have addressed the question have come to the same conclusion. See, e.g., Boone v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 682 F.2d 552, 553 (5th Cir.1982) (defendants could protect their interests by joining the dealer as a third party should they care to do so); Challenge Homes, Inc. v. Greater Naples Care Ctr., Inc., 669 F.2d 667, 671 (11th Cir.1982) (defendant may protect itself against [prejudice] by impleading [the absent person] under Rule 14).