Opinion ID: 59430
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Exhaust EEOC Remedies

Text: As a threshold matter, Lufkin argues that the district court should have dismissed the plaintiffs' initial-assignment and promotion claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies and for lack of standing to represent a broadly defined class. Failure to exhaust is not a procedural gotcha issue. It is a mainstay of proper enforcement of Title VII remedies. Lufkin contends that McClain and Thomas complained to the EEOC about their individual disparate treatment by the company, but not about their hiring nor about any neutral employment practices on which a disparate-impact case depends. The scope of their administrative claims governs the scope of the class claims. Vuyanich v. Republic Nat'l Bank, 723 F.2d 1195, 1201 (5th Cir.1984); Evans v. U.S. Pipe & Foundry Co., 696 F.2d 925, 929 (11th Cir.1983). Consequently, Lufkin asserts, the EEOC was never presented with disparate-impact class claims concerning Lufkin's hiring and promotional practices, and the administrative process was circumvented. The district court ruled that plaintiffs had exhausted their administrative remedies via McClain's January 1995 letter to the EEOC. See 29 C.F.R. § 1601.12(b); Fellows v. Universal Rests., Inc., 701 F.2d 447, 451 (5th Cir.1983). The court also held that a contemporary administrative proceeding pertaining to Lufkin by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) sufficiently fulfilled the purposes of exhaustion. This court reviews de novo the district court's conclusion concerning exhaustion. See Pacheco v. Mineta, 448 F.3d 783, 788 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 299, 166 L.Ed.2d 154 (2006). Title VII requires employees to exhaust their administrative remedies before seeking judicial relief. Id. Private sector employees must satisfy this requirement by filing an administrative charge with the EEOC. Id. at 788 n. 6. The charge enables the EEOC to investigate and, if appropriate, negotiate a resolution with an employer. Only after administrative efforts terminate may the employee sue the employer in federal court. Courts should not condone lawsuits that exceed the scope of EEOC exhaustion, because doing so would thwart the administrative process and peremptorily substitute litigation for conciliation. Nevertheless, competing policies underlie judicial interpretation of the exhaustion requirement. See id. at 788-89. On one hand, the scope of an EEOC charge should be liberally construed for litigation purposes because Title VII was designed to protect the many who are unlettered and unschooled in the nuances of literary draftsmanship. Sanchez v. Standard Brands, Inc., 431 F.2d 455, 465 (5th Cir. 1970). On the other hand, the primary purpose of Title VII is to trigger the investigatory and conciliatory procedures of the EEOC, in [an] attempt to achieve non-judicial resolution of employment discrimination claims. Pacheco, 448 F.3d at 788-89. To reconcile these policies, this court construes an EEOC complaint broadly but in terms of the administrative EEOC investigation that can reasonably be expected to grow out of the charge of discrimination. Sanchez, 431 F.2d at 466. We use a fact-intensive analysis of the administrative charge that looks beyond the four corners of the document to its substance. Id. In sum, a Title VII lawsuit may include allegations like or related to allegation[s] contained in the [EEOC] charge and growing out of such allegations during the pendency of the case before the Commission. Id. Among this court's numerous rulings on exhaustion of EEOC claims, we find most relevant the recent Pacheco opinion, which held that an employee failed to exhaust a disparate-impact claim because his EEOC charge alleged only disparate treatment and identified no neutral employment policy. 448 F.3d at 792. Although Pacheco's administrative charge complained that he had not been promoted because of racial discrimination, his subsequent lawsuit alleged both disparate treatment and disparate impact. Id. at 786-87. This court affirmed the dismissal of the disparate-impact allegations because: a disparate-impact investigation could not reasonably have been expected to grow out of Pacheco's administrative charge because of the following matters taken together: (1) it facially alleged disparate treatment; (2) it identified no neutral employment policy; and (3) it complained of past incidents of disparate treatment only. Id. at 792. In this case, both the district court and the plaintiffs rely principally on McClain's January 1995 letter to establish administrative exhaustion. Like Pacheco, McClain specifically complained to the EEOC of disparate treatment and past incidents of discrimination against himself. His three-page letter to the EEOC describes discriminatory treatment that I have been receiving for some time, and discriminatory acts against me by Mr. Jinkins. McClain alleged that Jinkins, his supervisor, racially discriminated against him and tried to have him demoted or fired on false charges of unsatisfactory performance. McClain's letter nowhere refers to any neutral employment policy of Lufkin. Yet, according to Pacheco, the cornerstone of any EEO[C] disparate-impact investigation is a neutral employment policy. 448 F.3d at 792. Plaintiffs argue that a disparate-impact investigation could have grown out of McClain's letter because he alluded to a cultural problem that extended to all parts of Lufkin's business. A cultural problem, however, is a vague term that cannot be understood as a neutral employment policy. See, e.g., id. at 790. Compare Marshall v. Fed. Express Corp., 130 F.3d 1095, 1098 (D.C.Cir.1997) (A vague or circumscribed EEOC charge will not satisfy the exhaustion requirement for claims it does not fairly embrace.), with Gomes v. Avco Corp., 964 F.2d 1330, 1335 (2d Cir.1992) (disparate-impact investigation would reasonably have flowed from an EEOC complaint that referenced an eight-year track to promotion). McClain's letter not only failed to identify any neutral employment policy, but also said nothing about discriminatory hiring at Lufkin. This limited interpretation of McClain's letter is confirmed by the actual scope of the EEOC's investigation, which is clearly pertinent to an exhaustion inquiry. See Fine v. GAF Chem. Corp., 995 F.2d 576, 578 (5th Cir.1993); Fellows, 701 F.2d at 451. Responding to the January 1995 letter, the EEOC sent McClain a proposed formal charge of discrimination in August 1996, in which the agency summarized his claim as follows: I have been subjected to different terms and conditions of employment by being denied comparable training, access to supplies and equipment needed to do a satisfactory job; given unsatisfactory evaluations. The charge then repeats McClain's complaint of demotion. The plaintiffs also cite another of McClain's written statements to the EEOC, in which he suggests that other evidence could be disclosed to support his discrimination claim. In context, this sentence refers only to Lufkin's disparate treatment of McClain alone. The district court attempted to fortify its conclusion that exhaustion occurred by taking into account an investigation by the OFCCP into similar claims to those now before the court. The court seemed to think that an investigation by another federal agency can exhaust claims that must be handled by the EEOC and that Lufkin was effectively notified of its exposure to disparate-impact claims by responding to the OFCCP investigation. The district court cited no authority in support of its exhaustion bootstrapping, and we are aware of none. Further, no such Title VII shortcut to exhaustion or notification exists. Since 1970, the caselaw has explained that the `scope' of the judicial complaint is limited to the `scope' of the EEOC investigation which can reasonably be expected to grow out of the charge of discrimination. Sanchez, 431 F.2d at 466 (emphasis added); see also Pacheco, 448 F.3d at 792 ([T]he plaintiff's administrative charge will be read somewhat broadly, in a fact-specific inquiry into what EEOC investigations it can reasonably be expected to trigger. (emphasis added)); Fellows, 701 F.2d at 450-51. The district court erred by utilizing OFCCP's investigation as a basis for inferring EEOC administrative exhaustion. Although McClain's EEOC complaint and the OFCCP investigation failed to exhaust the employees' class claims, Buford Thomas's EEOC complaint carries part of the requisite burden. Thomas alleged to the EEOC that he was constructively discharged, denied promotional and training opportunities, and overloaded with work because of his race. He specifically stated that [r]espondent has similarly discriminated against other black African Americans. Thomas's complaint, viewed in light of the recent Pacheco decision, presents a close question of exhaustion directed at a discriminatory, albeit neutral, company policy authorizing subjective promotion decisions. We conclude, however, that exhaustion was sufficient. Significantly, Lufkin did not contend otherwise in the trial court. [1] Lufkin, instead, forcefully urged that the class failed to exhaust claims concerning Lufkin's alleged discriminatory assignment of newly hired black employees to the Foundry division. Hourly work in the Foundry division is hot and heavy to a far greater extent than in the company's other production divisions. But neither Thomas nor McClain, each with twenty or more years at Lufkin, had worked in the Foundry division and neither man could or did complain to the EEOC about Foundry hiring practices. We are persuaded that the EEOC would not reasonably have investigated discriminatory assignment of new Foundry division employees based on either McClain's or Thomas's charge. Eastland v. Tenn. Valley Auth., 714 F.2d 1066, 1067-68 (11th Cir.1983) (class representatives could not assert initial assignment claims because all had been hired years before); Evans v. U.S. Pipe & Foundry Co., 696 F.2d 925, 929 (11th Cir. 1983) (EEOC investigation limited to promotion and harassment). Because of this deficiency, we must vacate the judgment awarding damages and injunctive relief against Lufkin based on discriminatory initial assignments to the Foundry division. [2] Lufkin's liability will next be examined in regard to the class's promotion-discrimination claim.