Opinion ID: 3158527
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the holdings of bristol and owens

Text: In Bristol, a confinement officer working for the Sheriff of Clear Creek County, Colorado, brought suit against the Sheriff (in his official capacity) and the Clear Creek Board of County Commissioners for alleged disability discrimination, asserting that both the Sheriff and the Board qualified as her employers for purposes of the ADA.4 “Under the Colorado constitution, the County Sheriff is a distinct position, separate from the Board of County Commissioners.” Bristol, 312 F.3d at 1219 (citing constitutional provisions separately prescribing the election of county commissioners and the election of sheriffs and other county officers). Thus, the circumstances in Bristol were suited to the joint-employer and single-employer tests, which “are designed for situations where there is more than one alleged employer.” Id. at 1218; see also id. at 1218 n.5 (noting that “[i]n various factual contexts, other tests have been followed by the courts, such as the agency test, the alter ego test, and the instrumentality test,” but “[b]ecause the joint-employer test and single-employer test are most applicable to the present factual context, we will limit our analysis to 3 Ms. Cink properly brought the Payne decision to this court’s attention through a notification pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 28(j). 4 We refer at various points to employer status under the ADA, ADEA, and Title VII. There are no material differences in these statutes for our purposes. All refer broadly to a “person” (specified, or judicially interpreted, to include political subdivisions) “engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has [a requisite number of] employees.” 29 U.S.C. § 630(b) (ADA); 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b) (Title VII) 42 U.S.C. § 12111(5)(A) (ADEA). 4 these two tests”). Relying heavily on the fact that the Sheriff, and not the Board, exercised control over labor relations in the Sheriff’s Office, this court held that the Board could not be deemed the employer under the ADA. See id. at 1219-20. In Owens, a Sheriff’s deputy brought suit under Title VII against the Sheriff of Wabaunsee County, Kansas, the Wabaunsee County Board of Commissioners, and Wabaunsee County itself. Focusing on the Sheriff as the only potential employer, the district court dismissed the suit because the Sheriff’s department did not have the fifteen employees required for application of Title VII. This court reversed, making two points relevant to the present action—viz., a Sheriff may be an agent of the County for Title VII purposes, and in assessing whether such an agency relationship exists the court should not conflate the County with the County Board: The district court concluded that the Sheriff should not be considered an agent of the county for purposes of hiring and firing Sheriff department employees because the Board of County Commissioners had little, if any, control over the Sheriff in such matters. Absent a “nexus” between the Board and the improper conduct, the court felt it unwise to impose Title VII liability on the County. The analysis employed by the district court apparently considers Wabaunsee County and the Board of County Commissioners as the same entity. In this lies the error. It is true that the County acts by and through the Board. However, the “Board” is not the “County.” The County is a political subdivision encompassing and representing all citizens within its boundaries. The Board acts on behalf of the County—as its agent. Similarly, the Sheriff is an agent of the County. Like the Board members, he is elected by the body politic and acts on its behalf in enforcing the state’s laws. The Sheriff is an agent of the County for all purposes under his control and jurisdiction. He is an agent of the County whether or not he would be considered an agent of the Board of County Commissioners under traditional agency principles. 5 Owens, 636 F.2d at 286 (footnotes omitted). Significantly, this agency relationship sufficed to show that the County was the employer of Sheriff staff without need to resort to principles for treating distinct entities as one (as was later done in Bristol): “The sheriff and the county in this case are more analogous to a department and the corporation it operates within than to separate corporate entities.” Id. at 286 n.2. Finally, we added that “[a] fair interpretation of Title VII confirms our conclusion that the Sheriff should be considered an agent of the County,” explaining that “[w]hatever the reason for excluding employers with fewer than fifteen employees from Title VII coverage, it should not be construed to exempt a political subdivision with many employees from Title VII proscriptions on grounds that the immediate employing agent has fewer than fifteen employees.” Id. at 287. The same point applies equally to the ADA and ADEA, with their exclusions for employers with fewer than fifteen and twenty employees, respectively, see 42 U.S.C. § 12111(5)(A); 29 U.S.C. § 630(b). To sum up: Bristol held that the Sheriff was a distinct entity from the County Board of Commissioners and, consequently, the Board could not be deemed an employer of Sheriff’s staff absent satisfaction of one of the tests for imputing employer status between separate entities; Owens held that the Sheriff was not a distinct entity from—but rather an agent of—the County and, consequently, the County was properly deemed the employer of Sheriff’s staff under traditional agency principles. In its appellate brief, Grant County refers dismissively to Owens as “outdated,” Aplee. Response Br. at 26, raising the suggestion that the en banc Bristol 6 decision superseded Owens and its agency analysis. We turn to the relationship between Bristol and Owens next.