Opinion ID: 524254
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Personnel Decisions as Administrative Functions

Text: 25 State officials in Councilmember Winter's position are granted  'absolute immunity not because of their particular location within the Government but because of the special nature of their responsibilities.'  Lake Country Estates, 440 U.S. at 405 n. 30, 99 S.Ct. at 1179 n. 30 (quoting Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 511, 98 S.Ct. 2894, 2913, 57 L.Ed.2d 895 (1978)). Here, as in other contexts, immunity is justified and defined by the functions it protects and serves, not by the person to whom it attaches. Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 108 S.Ct. 538, 544, 98 L.Ed.2d 555 (1988) (emphasis in original). In the case of legislators, absolute immunity is designed to preserve legislative independence from outside interference. See Supreme Court of Virginia v. Consumers Union of the United States, Inc., 446 U.S. 719, 731-32, 100 S.Ct. 1967, 1974, 64 L.Ed.2d 641 (1980). Legislators are thus accorded absolute immunity not for their private indulgence but for the public good. Tenney, 341 U.S. at 377, 71 S.Ct. at 788. 26 In the present case, the district court held that Councilmember Winter was not entitled to absolute immunity for the personnel actions at issue because they were taken in her administrative, not legislative, capacity. The district court reasoned that 27 [h]ere, [Councilmember Winter] was not engaged in a traditional legislative function; she was neither enacting legislation nor participating in a committee investigation. Nor was she working on any particular project which might be characterized as a traditional legislative function. Rather, she was engaged in an administrative function, that of dealing with her staff. 28 692 F.Supp. at 1425. 29 Councilmember Winter seeks on appeal to shift the focus from the functions she was exercising to those Ms. Gross was hired to exercise, arguing that Ms. Gross's duties were integrally related to the due functioning of the legislative process. Brief for Appellant at 16. She relies principally on this court's decision in Browning v. Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, 789 F.2d 923 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 996, 107 S.Ct. 601, 93 L.Ed.2d 601 (1986), a case the district court distinguished on the grounds that its holding is restricted to members of Congress. 692 F.Supp. at 1424. Ms. Gross argues with even greater force than the district court, however, that Browning is undermined by the Supreme Court's later decision in Forrester. 30 There is unquestionably tension between precedent of this court, which has identified the ultimate issue to be the duties of the employee  in the context of immunity for congressional personnel decisions, Browning, 789 F.2d at 928 (emphasis in original), and Forrester, which accords no weight to the duties of the employee, even though they may be essential to the very functioning of the state institution at issue, 108 S.Ct. at 544. 31 Browning involved a racial discrimination suit arising out of the discharge of an Official Reporter of the United States House of Representatives. After reviewing the authorities, this court adopted the following immunity standard in the context of congressional personnel decisions: whether the employee's duties were directly related to the due functioning of the legislative process. Browning, 789 F.2d at 929 (emphasis in original). Thus, under Browning, if the employee's duties are such that they are directly assisting members of Congress in the 'discharge of their functions,' personnel decisions affecting them are correspondingly legislative and shielded from judicial scrutiny. Id. 32 The congressional defendants in Browning were deemed absolutely immune under that standard due to the importance of the legislative matters the Official Reporter recorded, and despite the district court's finding that she was merely  'the human equivalent of a tape recorder,'  id. at 928 n. 11 (quoting trial transcript). Id. at 929-30. This court's primary concern in granting immunity was that the trial court would otherwise have to inquire into matters at the very heart of the legislative process, such as the nature of the hearings to which Browning was assigned, the purposes underlying those hearings, and whether Browning's performance frustrated those purposes. Id. at 930. 33 Browning attempted to clarify, or qualify, this court's earlier decision in Walker v. Jones, 733 F.2d 923, 930-31 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1036, 105 S.Ct. 512, 83 L.Ed.2d 402 (1984), in which we reached the opposite result where the discharged employee was a manager of the House of Representatives' restaurants. Walker rejected as far-fetched the congressional defendants' equation of the restaurant manager to the legislative aide in Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 92 S.Ct. 2614, 33 L.Ed.2d 583 (1972), and reasoned that [t]o characterize personnel actions relating to such [restaurant] services as 'legislative' in character ... is to stretch the meaning of the word beyond sensible proportion. 733 F.2d at 931. Walker expressly reserved two broader questions: (1) Does Speech or Debate Clause immunity apply at all to decisions to dismiss persons employed by the legislative branch, id. at 930 (quoting Davis v. Passman, 544 F.2d 865, 880 (5th Cir.1977), rev'd on other grounds, 571 F.2d 793 (5th Cir.1978) (en banc), rev'd, 442 U.S. 228, 99 S.Ct. 2264, 60 L.Ed.2d 846 (1979)); and (2) if the immunity applies in at least some cases, it is limited to the hiring and firing of congressional staff members who have 'a meaningful input into ... legislative decisionmaking.'  Id. (quoting Davis, 544 F.2d at 880-81 n. 25). The immunity standard this court later articulated in Browning was designed to close the questions Walker left open; Browning answered yes to the first and no to the second. 34 The Supreme Court's strict functional immunity analysis in Forrester, however, contrasts with the employee-centric approach this court took in Browning. Forrester held that a state-court judge did not enjoy absolute judicial immunity to a Section 1983 damage action arising out of his discharge of a probation officer. 108 S.Ct. at 545-46. Yet the import of the case extends beyond state-court judges and probation officers. The Court's holding was informed by a common theme it discerned in its immunity precedents. The Court explained that, 35 [a]ware of the salutary effects that the threat of liability can have ... as well as the undeniable tension between official immunities and the ideal of the rule of law, this Court has been cautious in recognizing claims that government officials should be free of the obligation to answer for their acts in court. Running through our cases, with fair consistency, is a functional approach to immunity questions other than those that have been decided by express constitutional or statutory enactment. Under that approach, we examine the nature of the function with which a particular official or class of officials has been lawfully entrusted, and we seek to evaluate the effect that exposure to particular forms of liability would likely have on the appropriate exercise of those functions. 36 108 S.Ct. at 542. And, in this vein, the Court stressed that it is the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it, that informed [its] immunity analysis. Id. at 545; see also Rateree v. Rockett, 852 F.2d 946 (7th Cir.1988). 10 37 Under this functional approach, the Forrester Court held that the state-court judge was acting in an administrative, not judicial, capacity in his decisions to demote and discharge the probation officer. 108 S.Ct. at 545. It reasoned that the decisions were not themselves judicial or adjudicative. Id. Moreover, the judge's personnel decisions were not immunized even though the probation officer performed functions that were 'inextricably tied to discretionary decisions that have consistently been considered judicial acts,'  id. at 541 (quoting Seventh Circuit's majority opinion below), and even though such personnel decisions may be essential to the very functioning of the courts, id. at 544. 38 In light of this, we can see no basis for distinguishing the importance of a probation officer's functions to a state-court judge from the importance of a legislative researcher, or aide, to a state legislator. Indeed, probation officers and legislative aides have both similarly been accorded derivative immunity due to the importance of their functions to their principals. See Gravel, 408 U.S. at 616-18, 92 S.Ct. at 2622-24; Turner, II v. Barry, 856 F.2d 1539 (D.C.Cir.1988) (per curiam ). Gravel held that a legislative aide to a member of Congress shares in the member's Speech or Debate Clause immunity to the extent the aide assists in the performance of legislative acts, reasoning that the day-to-day work of such aides is so critical to the Members' performance that they must be treated as the latter's alter egos. 408 U.S. at 616-17, 92 S.Ct. at 2623. Similarly, in Turner this court held that a probation officer enjoys derivative judicial immunity in preparing a presentence report for a judge, reasoning that probation officers typically serve as an ' arm of the sentencing judge '.... [and] the prospect of damage liability under section 1983 'would seriously erode the officer's ability to carry out his independent fact finding function' and would, as a result, 'impair the sentencing judge's ability to carry out his judicial duties.'  Id. at 1540 (quoting Demoran v. Witt, 781 F.2d 155, 157 (9th Cir.1986) (quoting Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193, 204, 106 S.Ct. 496, 502, 88 L.Ed.2d 507 (1985))). 39 The functions of probation officers and legislative aides are therefore equally important to the due functioning of the judicial and legislative processes, respectively. Nonetheless, under Forrester, the functions judges and legislators exercise in making personnel decisions affecting such employees are administrative, not judicial or legislative. Forrester's functional approach also forecloses the somewhat curious logic that the greater the employee's importance to the legislative process the greater should be the state legislator's freedom to violate that employee's constitutional rights. 40 On the weight of this authority, therefore, we find Forrester, not Browning, controlling in the present case. However, we do not reach the question whether special considerations applicable to members of Congress, such as separation-of-powers concerns, continue to justify the absolute immunity standard for congressional personnel decisions adopted in Browning. 11 41 In sum, we hold that Councilmember Winter is not absolutely immune to Ms. Gross's constitutional claims under Section 1983, because Councilmember Winter's contested personnel decisions were taken in her administrative, not legislative, capacity. 12