Opinion ID: 3018370
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Functional Test is Appropriate for

Text: Legislative Immunity The Caucus contends that the District Court erred in applying a “functional approach,” in which immunity hangs on whether an action serves “the due functioning of the legislative process.” United States v. Brewster, 408 U.S. 501, 516 (1972). The Supreme Court applied this “functional” approach to a personnel decision in Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 224 (1988). The Caucus, however, argues for an “alter ego” test for the application of legislative immunity. Under this approach, the Court should determine if the person fired, demoted, or otherwise affected by the legislator’s decision was so closely linked to the legislative process that any actions taken towards them were, in effect, legislative. The Caucus contends that the District Court’s application of the Forrester “functional” test was error for several reasons. The Caucus contends that (1) Forrester concerned a personnel decision made by a judge and should not therefore be applied to 9 legislative immunity, and that (2) a circuit split exists on the question of which test is appropriate. We reject the first contention. The second is simply wrong.
immunity by every Court of Appeals to consider the issue The Caucus contends that the “functional” test laid out by the Supreme Court in Forrester should be limited to judicial immunity, as Forrester concerned a state judge’s claim of immunity after firing a probation officer. We reject this sharp limitation of Forrester. The Court’s opinion in Forrester strongly suggests that it intended the “functional” test to be applied broadly. Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 227 (1988). Every court of appeals to consider the issue has followed the Court’s suggestion and applied the Forrester test to legislative immunity. In Forrester, an Illinois state judge demoted, then discharged, a female adult probation officer. Id. at 221. The discharged officer alleged that she had been discriminated against because of her sex, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. The judge argued that this personnel action was protected by absolute judicial immunity. Id. The Forrester Court unanimously rejected this claim. Id. at 229-30. The Forrester Court noted that “[d]ifficulties have arisen primarily in attempting to draw the line between truly judicial 10 acts, for which immunity is appropriate, and acts that simply happen to have been done by judges,” and that “[h]ere, as in other contexts, immunity is justified and defined by the functions it protects and serves, not by the person to whom it attaches.” Id. at 227 (emphasis added) (citing many cases concerning legislators and executive officials). The Court noted that “[r]unning 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.” Id. at 224. The Court responded to the threat of “vexatious” lawsuits by former employees by pointing out that this factor in “no way serves to distinguish judges from other public officials who hire and fire subordinates.” Id. at 330-31. The Forrester Court did not perceive its decision as announcing a new test, but rather restating and clarifying a “functional” approach that it had articulated in prior cases, many of which concerned legislative immunity. Id. The Court most recently applied the functional approach to a claim of common law legislative immunity from a personnel action claim in Bogan v. Scott-Harris. 523 U.S. at 52 (“Absolute immunity for local legislators under § 1983 finds support not only in history, but also in reason.”). The Bogan Court clarified that the functional inquiry is purely objective, holding that, “[w]hether an act is legislative turns on the nature of the act, rather than on the motive or intent of the official performing it. . . . This leaves us with the question whether, stripped of all considerations of intent and motive, petitioners’ actions were legislative.” Id. at 54-55. The Court unanimously 11 held that the city officials who had eliminated plaintiff’s position by passage of a new budget had acted legislatively as “acts of voting for an ordinance were, in form, quintessentially legislative.” Id. at 55 (observing that introduction of a budget and signing into law an ordinance are “formally legislative” and “integral steps in the legislative process.”). We have applied Forrester outside the context of judicial immunity. See Schrob v. Catterson, 948 F.2d 1402, 1409 (3d Cir. 1991) (stating that the “Supreme Court has outlined a functional approach to immunity issues,” and applying Forrester to prosecutorial immunity (internal quotes omitted)). Other courts of appeals have uniformly adopted this view of Forrester and expressly applied the case to legislative immunity. See Kamplain v. Curry County Bd. of Comm’rs, 159 F.3d 1248, 1251 (10th Cir. 1998) (“In order to determine whether Defendants should be cloaked in legislative immunity, we look to the function that the Board members were performing when the actions at issue took place and we examine the nature of those actions.”); Chateaubriand v. Gaspard, 97 F.3d 1218, 1220 (9th Cir. 1996) (“To determine whether legislative immunity applies, courts look to ‘the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it.’”); Alexander v. Holden, 66 F.3d 62, 65 (4th Cir. 1995) (“Under Forrester v. White, the functions of the [Brunswick County] commissioners determine whether their actions are legislative or administrative for purposes of immunity.”); Hansen v. Bennett, 948 F.2d 397, 401 (7th Cir. 1991) (“We look only to the function [Mayor] Bennett was performing when he ejected Hansen. We apply this 12 functional approach even when evaluating conduct that takes place within a meeting which includes some legislative business.”); Gross v. Winter, 876 F.2d 165, 170 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (applying Forrester to a firing by a Washington, D.C. city council member). No court to have considered the issue has limited Forrester in the manner the Caucus proposes. The Caucus urges a radical limitation on the functional test that is unsupported by Supreme Court or lower court precedent. We reject this proposed narrowing of the Forrester test.
immunity has been rejected by every Court of Appeals to consider the issue The Caucus repeatedly states that a circuit split exists as to whether the “alter ego” or “functional” test applies to legislative immunity for personnel actions. The Caucus relies on two cases, Agromayer v. Colberg and Browning v. U.S. House of Representatives, of the First Circuit and D.C. Circuit, respectively, to support this proposition. See Agromayer v. Colberg, 738 F.2d 55, 60 (1st Cir. 1984); Browning v. U.S. House of Representatives, 789 F.2d 923, 929 (D.C. Cir. 1986). No such split exists. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has repeatedly undermined or ignored Agromayer and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently repudiated Browning in an en banc decision that unanimously rejected the “alter ego” approach. See Fields v. Office of Eddie Bernice Johnson, 459 13 F.3d 1, 6-7 (D.C. Cir. 2006).
Circuit The First Circuit held in Agromayer that the politically motivated refusal to hire a member of the opposing political party as a legislative press officer was protected by common law legislative immunity. Agromayer v. Colberg, 738 F.2d 55, 60 (1st Cir. 1984). The Agromayer Court held that “an employee dealing with the deliberative and communicative processes must be of direct legislative importance.” Id. (citing Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 625 (1972)) (internal quotes and citations omitted). The Court stated that, “in applying the immunity we decline to inquire deeply into the functions performed by a particular personal legislative aide, inasmuch as such an inquiry itself threatens to undermine the principles that absolute immunity was intended to protect.” Agromayer, 738 F.2d at 60. The Court held that personnel actions concerning employees with “enough opportunity for ‘meaningful input’ into the legislative process” should be immunized. Id. The Agromayer Court relied on Chief Justice Burger’s dissent in Davis v. Passman for this approach. Id. at 60 (citing Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 249-50 (1979) (Burger, C.J., dissenting)). The Davis Court declined to reach the legislative immunity issue raised by a United States congressman who fired a female aide, allegedly on account of her sex. Davis, 442 U.S. at 248-49. However, Justices Burger, Powell, and Rehnquist 14 wrote separately to argue that the Court should have reached the issue and that it should have been decided in favor of immunity. Id. at 249-50. The dissent stated that a Member of Congress has a right to expect that every person on his or her staff will give total loyalty to the political positions of the Member, total confidentiality, and total support. . . . lead[ing] a Member to employ a particular person on a racial, ethnic, religious, or gender basis thought to be acceptable to the constituency represented, even though in other branches of Government–or in the private sector–such selection factors might be prohibited. Id. Chief Justice Burger concluded that “long-accepted concepts of separation of powers dictate, for me, that until Congress legislates otherwise as to employment standards for its own staff, judicial power in this area is circumscribed.” Id. The First Circuit Court of Appeals began to move away from the Agromayer approach even before Forrester called the decision into question. A year after Agromayer, the First Circuit turned toward a more functional analysis in Cutting v. Muzzey, in which the Court held that a town board’s imposition of “outrageous conditions” on a subdivision proposal was not protected by legislative immunity. 724 F.2d 259, 262 (1st Cir. 1984). The Cutting Court laid out a two part test “for distinguishing between legislative and administrative activity.” Id. at 262. The Court asked first whether the decision was based 15 on “legislative facts,” generalizations or considerations of policy, and second, whether the decision had a legislative impact, extending prospectively and beyond one person or a small group. Id. The First Circuit continued to apply this strain of functional analysis after Forrester. The Court stated in 1992 that, “[u]nder current legal theory, immunity attaches or does not attach depending on what kind of action was performed rather than on who performed the action,” referring to a decision to eliminate several civil service positions occupied by political opponents. Acevedo-Cordero v. Cordero-Santiago, 958 F.2d 20, 23 (1st Cir. 1992). The Court then explicitly applied the Cutting legislative facts/legislative effects test to the firing of a legislative librarian, extensively referencing Forrester in the process. Negron-Gaztambide v. Hernandez-Torres, 35 F.3d 25, 28 (1st Cir. 1994) (“The issue is thus whether defendants were acting in a legislative or administrative capacity when they discharged Negron.”). The Court reiterated its commitment to a functional test in a case concerning various personnel actions against 88 civil service employees, stating that “[e]mployment decisions generally are administrative except when they are accomplished through traditional legislative functions such as policymaking and budgetary restructuring that strike at the heart of the legislative process.” Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig, 204 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2000) (internal quotes omitted). See also Romero-Barcelo v. Hernandez-Agosto, 75 F.3d 23, 29 (1st Cir. 1996) (“Acts . . . that are administrative in nature do not give rise to absolute immunity from liability in damages under § 16 1983.”) (quoting Forrester, 484 U.S. at 229); Nat’l Ass’n of Social Workers v. Harwood, 69 F.3d 622, 643 (1st Cir. 1995) (“Because immunity is defined by the functions it serves, even legislators themselves are not immune for actions taken in an administrative capacity.”) (quoting Forrester, 484 U.S. at 227). The First Circuit has never explicitly overturned Agromayer. It has, instead, abandoned altogether the “alter ego” approach to legislative immunity.
“alter ego” approach in Fields v. Johnson The Caucus relied on the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Browning v. U.S. House of Representatives as a second case demonstrating a circuit split over which test should govern legislative immunity. See Browning v. U.S. House of Representatives, 789 F.2d 923, 929 (D.C. Cir. 1986). However, that Court unanimously and explicitly overturned Browning in its en banc decision in Fields v. Office of Eddie Bernice Johnson, and unanimously applied Forrester’s functional test to personnel actions. 459 F.3d 1, 6-7 (D.C. Cir. 2006). The D.C. Circuit held in Browning that “the standard for determining Speech or Debate Clause immunity is best expressed as whether the employee’s duties were directly related to the due functioning of the legislative process.” Browning, 789 F.2d at 929. The Court concluded that the official reporter for the House was directly related to the legislative process and, 17 therefore, his firing was shielded by absolute legislative immunity. Id. The Fields decision reconsidered Browning in light of Forrester. See 459 F.3d at 6-7. Fields was the consolidated appeals of two Congressional employees seeking redress for firings allegedly based on racial and disability discrimination. Id. at 5. The discharged employees availed themselves of the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, 2 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1438, which, by its terms, does not displace Speech and Debate Clause immunity. Fields, 459 F.3d at 5. The D.C. Circuit noted that Forrester “cast doubt” on Browning. Id. at 7. The Court stated that its decision in Gross v. Winter had narrowed Browning, as the Court had found that Forrester, not Browning, controlled in a personnel action by a D.C. Council member. Id. See Gross v. Winter, 876 F.2d 165, 170 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (observing that Browning is “unquestionably [in] tension” with Forrester, “which accords no weight to the duties of the employee”). The Court noted with dismay that the Tenth Circuit’s decision in Bastien had created a circuit split. Fields, 459 F.3d at 8. See Bastien v. Office of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, 390 F.3d 1301 (10th Cir. 2004). In explicitly rejecting the Browning test, the Bastien Court held that Speech and Debate Clause immunity protected a U.S. Senator in a personnel action only when the plaintiff “questioned the conduct of official Senate legislative business.” Bastien, 390 F.3d at 1304. The Fields Court stated that many personnel actions lack 18 even “some nexus” to a protected legislative activity and that, “[f]iring an aide for falsifying expense reports, or disciplining an assistant for harassing others in the office is not, by any conceivable interpretation, an act performed as a part of or even incidental to the role of a legislator.” 459 F.3d at 11 (quoting United States v. Brewster, 408 U.S. 526, 507(1972)). The majority opinion written by Judge Randolph overturned Browning: We now see that an employee’s duties are too crude a proxy for protected activity. Our holding in Browning presumes that a personnel decision with regard to an employee whose duties are “directly related to the due functioning of the legislative process,” is always “an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes.” But the presumption is, at a minimum, overinclusive and therefore inconsistent with the Court’s practice of being “careful not to extend the scope of the protection further than its purposes require.” Any number of counter-examples reveal as much: a legislative aide may be discharged because of budgetary cutbacks; a staff member may be demoted solely for consistent tardiness; a person seeking a top-level staff position might be rejected for having a poor college transcript; and so forth. That the person targeted by the personnel decision performs duties “directly related to . . . the legislative process,” is not enough–conduct must 19 be “part of,” not merely “related to,” the “due functioning” of the “legislative process” to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. At best, that an employee’s duties are directly related to the legislative process establishes merely “some nexus” between the personnel decision and that process. We therefore reject Browning’s test for determining when a legislator's personnel decision is protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. Id. at 11-12 (internal citations omitted). The Court then rejected the argument that “[d]irecting one’s alter egos–that is, legislative aides with duties directly related to the legislative process–necessarily is an integral part of the processes of achieving one’s legislative goals, because of the duties such employees perform.” Id. at 12 (internal quotes omitted). The Court noted that “[t]he Speech or Debate Clause protects conduct that is integral to the legislative process, not a Member’s legislative goals,” and that many activities that are integral to “legislative goals,” such as sending newsletters or delivering speeches to constituents, are “political,” not “legislative,”–and are therefore beyond the scope of legislative immunity. Id. The Court also noted that, “[a]nother problem with the formulation lies in its assumption that a Member only directs his alter egos with regard to constitutionally protected activities.” Id. The Fields Court emphasized Gravel’s conclusion that simply because a Senator performs certain duties in his official capacity does not make those duties legislative. Id. (citing Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 625 (1972)). 20 The Fields Court held that, “[l]egislative aides are no different.” Fields, 459 F.3d at 12. The Fields Court was splintered on some issues, but not,