Opinion ID: 766113
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Class Plaintiffs and Their Claims

Text: 3 The Class Plaintiffs are the named plaintiffs in two related actions consolidated by the District Court. 1 The proposed class consists of all African-American employees of Metro-North for the period from 1985 through 1996--an estimated 1,300 persons. 4 The Class Plaintiffs allege that Metro-North's company-wide policies for employee discipline and promotion delegate to department supervisors substantial authority to make discretionary decisions about discipline and promotion that is exercised in a racially discriminatory manner and has a disparate impact on African-American employees. Following extensive discovery, the plaintiffs moved for class certification pursuant to Rule 23. In support of their allegations of systematic disparate treatment and disparate impact, the Plaintiffs submitted a report prepared by Dr. Harriet Zellner, the testimony of a sociologist, the testimony of Metro-North's own officers, and anecdotal evidence. Dr. Zellner's report was based on various multiple regression analyses performed on data files provided by Metro-North. In opposition to the motion for class certification, Metro-North submitted the report of Dr. David Evans, which attacked the methodology and conclusions of Dr. Zellner. 5 (a) Disciplinary Policy and Procedure 6 Pursuant to some sixteen collective bargaining agreements, Metro-North's disciplinary system, the Progressive Disciplinary System or PDS, applies to all of the approximately 5,000 union employees at Metro-North, wherever employed in the company. Metro-North's Labor Relations Department oversees the PDS. In addition, Metro-North trains the PDS hearing officers in day-long sessions coordinated by the Labor Relations Department, and the hearing officers receive an official Metro-North Hearing Officers' Manual. 7 Pursuant to the PDS, a supervisor or manager may bring charges against a union employee for misconduct, including violations of Metro-North's policies, procedures, and safety rules. Approximately 400 supervisors and managers have the authority to bring such charges. The charges are investigated by a hearing officer who is responsible for gathering evidence and presenting it at a hearing where the employee is represented by his or her union. A transcript of the hearing is presented to the charging supervisor, who determines what, if any, discipline to impose. Union employees may appeal any sanction pursuant to the procedures set forth in the collective bargaining agreements and the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. §§ 152 et seq. An assistant director of the Labor Relations Department conducts an initial review of the appeal, and a three-member Special Board of Adjustment, chaired by a neutral arbitrator, conducts the final review. 8 In a 1994 memorandum, Metro-North's Affirmative Action Director, Stephen Mitchell, voiced concern about the high percentage of disciplinary cases involving people of color. Also in 1994, because African-American and female employees in one department had complained of discrimination by their supervisor, Mitchell proposed that Metro-North review the disciplinary activities in that department from 1992 to 1993 to determine if protected class employees have been unfairly disciplined. 9 Nineteen of the twenty-seven named Plaintiffs allege that they were unfairly disciplined because of their race. 10 (b) Promotion Policy 11 Metro-North's declared policy for filling management positions is to promote from within its own ranks. Between 60 and 80 percent of management positions are filled in this manner. The declared promotion policy requires the posting of all open management positions. The Personnel Department oversees posting of positions, receives and reviews applications, and maintains job title guidelines and pay structure. Although the Personnel Department assembles a list of qualified applicants, the manager of the department with a vacancy makes the final decision. The manager is directed to hire the most qualified candidate, but no other instructions are given. 12 Several of the named plaintiffs allege that these policies are not strictly adhered to; in particular, they allege that positions are not always posted and, even when they are, that it is well known who will receive the position before it is posted. Furthermore, some positions are filled through exceptions to the posting requirements, which the plaintiffs allege contribute to racial bias in promotions. In addition, approximately 200 union positions at Metro-North, which are viewed as positions that might facilitate promotion to a management position, are not governed by the formal promotion protocol. Hiring decisions in these positions -- labeled partially excepted positions and agreement supervisors -- are left entirely to the individual manager's discretion; the Personnel Department does not participate in the hiring process. The named Plaintiff Joseph Kimbro applied for and was denied promotion to the partially excepted position of chief crew dispatcher. He alleges that Metro-North promoted four White employees, whom Kimbro had trained and all with less experience than he had, to this position. 13 Historically, Metro-North has been predominantly male and White, and the company's employment statistics show that African-Americans are not well-represented in management positions or in those positions in the Metro-North workforce from which promotions to management are made. Internally produced reports that Metro-North submits to the Federal Transit Administration show underutilization of African-Americans in five of the eight job categories applicable to Metro-North. Most striking, African-Americans could be expected, based on census figures for the New York metropolitan area, to fill 58.8 percent of the skilled-craft jobs but in fact filled only 15 percent of such jobs. 14 (c) The Experts' Reports 15 Based on the results of numerous multiple regression analyses, the Class Plaintiffs' expert, Dr. Zellner, concluded that the effect of being black on number of disciplinary charges over the 1990-to-1994 period was positive and highly significant statistically. Similarly, she concluded that the effect of being Black on the likelihood of being promoted from 1985-to-1994 was negative to a degree that was highly significant statistically. Dr. Zellner's analyses were run on eleven computer files provided by Metro-North -- one for each of the ten years from 1985 to 1994 (providing basic data such as job title, hire date, last promotion date, termination date, department, race, and sex) and one providing information on disciplinary proceedings. She describes how she attempted to isolate the effect of race on the likelihood of discipline: 16 In order to estimate the net effect of being black on discipline over the 1990-to-1994 period, we first defined the dependent variable . . . as the number of disciplinary charges recorded for each employee as of the end of this period. Next we obtained measurements on five variables -- age, years with the company prior to 1990, years with the company from 1990 onwards, department, and union vs. management status -- that we expected would affect an employee's chances, regardless of race, of becoming involved in the disciplinary process. We then estimated the effect of being black on number of disciplinary charges, controlling for these variables. 17 In assessing the effect of race on promotion, Dr. Zellner controlled for years of tenure, department, and union status. 18 Based on her analysis, Dr. Zellner concluded that Blacks, on average, faced .7 disciplinary charges, which was 3½ times the amount for Whites, who faced, on average, .2 disciplinary charges. According to Zellner, the probability of this occurring by chance is less than one in 10,000. Accordingly, she concluded that the estimated effect of race on being disciplined is highly significant statistically. The results of her regression analyses with respect to promotion were similar; being Black reduced an employee's likelihood of promotion by approximately 33 percent. 19 In opposition to class certification, Metro-North submitted a critique of Dr. Zellner's report prepared by its expert, Dr. Evans. Dr. Evans noted that Metro-North has decentralized disciplinary and promotion processes and that, [a]s a result of this decentralization, an organization-wide pattern and practice of discrimination is . . . implausible. Dr. Evans opined that Dr. Zellner's conclusions to the contrary resulted from her failure to account for differences that arise by department and position as well as her failure to take into account any specifics of the situation at Metro-North. 20 Evans' primary criticism of Zellner's report is that her analysis was done on a company-wide basis and not on a position-by-position basis. He stated that her results are examples of the fallacy of composition, i.e., that she had created a statistical illusion of disparity by aggregating data across many different job titles. Based on his analysis of the data, Evans concluded that the experiences of the named Plaintiffs were, at best, typical of only a fraction of the Metro-North workforce. In particular, he pointed out that of 37 particular departments at Metro-North, no disciplinary action was taken in 25 of them during the relevant period. He also reported that in departments where disciplinary action had been taken, there was considerable variation from job to job. Significantly, Evans did not perform any regression analyses in reaching his conclusions; instead, he simply tallied numbers of disciplinary actions and made some basic comparisons. 21 Furthermore, Evans concluded that for two infractions that can be objectively documented--substance abuse and failure to remit--the higher rates of discipline of Blacks corresponded to the higher incidence of infractions by Blacks. Evans dismissed Zellner's findings on discipline, stating that her method cannot show discrimination because blacks could, on average, work for supervisors who mete out more discipline to workers of all races, work in departments where all workers are more severely disciplined, or have committed more violations than whites. 22 With respect to promotion, Evans again cited Zellner's failure to perform a position-by-position analysis; in addition, he criticized Zellner for including non-promotable positions in her data pool, which, he contended, created the statistical illusion that Blacks are less likely to be promoted than Whites. He noted that the overall rates of promotion are 12.7 percent for Whites and 8.1 percent for Blacks. However, when he excluded jobs for which the promotion rate was less than one percent, he found little difference in promotion rates by race (20.3 percent for Whites versus 19.4 percent for Blacks). 23 In response to Evans' critique, Zellner prepared a supplemental report. The report argued that Evans defin[ed] away the possibility of a system-wide pattern of discrimination by taking that term to require either a centralized policy of discrimination or concerted action by all supervisors. Zellner also attacked what she characterized as arbitrary selection of data and Evans' failure to perform regression analyses on the data he considered. Furthermore, she prepared a department-by-department comparison of the number of job titles in which Blacks and Whites, respectively, had higher discipline rates. This analysis showed that Blacks had higher discipline rates in 48 positions, in which 4,266 people were employed. Whites, on the other hand, had higher rates of discipline in 21 positions, and only 543 employees were employed in those positions. Zellner also performed department-by-department regression analyses to estimate the effect of being Black on the number of disciplinary charges within each department. In all departments, the effect of being Black was positive; in only one of the ten departments was the effect not statistically significant. 24 (d) The District Court's Decision 25 In August 1997, the District Court denied the Class Plaintiffs' request for class certification. See Robinson v. Metro-North Commuter Railroad Co., 175 F.R.D. 46 (S.D.N.Y. 1997). The Court found Dr. Zellner's report unpersuasive: 26 [D]efendant has satisfied the Court that the plaintiffs' statistics, even taken most favorably to plaintiffs, cannot carry their burden here, because they fail to take account of the fact that different Metro-North positions have materially different individual rates of discipline and of promotion associated with them. Unless these differences are taken into account, plaintiffs' global statistics are meaningless. Conversely, when these differences are taken into account, no statistically significant racial disparities, either for discipline or promotion, can be established with respect to the great majority of positions at Metro-North. Thus, plaintiffs' statistics are inadequate to carry their burden of establishing commonality as to the company-wide class here sought to be certified. 27 Id. at 48 (citations omitted). The Court further found that the infirmities in the statistics were not cured by the affidavits submitted because they related only to each affiant's individual claim of discrimination. See id. at 48-49. 28 In addition, the Court noted a more fundamental problem with the Plaintiffs' attempt to demonstrate commonality: 29 [E]ven while seeking certification of a company-wide class, [plaintiffs] concede that defendant's standardized, company-wide policies and procedures relating to discipline and promotion are (and were at all relevant times) non-discriminatory. . . . Their claim is that discrimination enters the picture only because defendant does not strictly adhere to its own policies governing discipline and promotion, but, rather, delegates broad authority for decision-making in promotions and discipline to its management personnel. This alleged policy of overdelegation is of no moment, however, in the absence of any proof that it opens the door to generalized discrimination. Here, as mentioned, neither plaintiffs' statistics nor [their] sociological opinion meaningfully supports such an inference. 30 Id. at 49. For these reasons, the Court concluded that the Plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate commonality and typicality. The Class Plaintiffs moved for reargument; the District Court denied the motion during oral argument on Metro-North's motion for summary judgment on the individual claims of the named Plaintiffs. 2