Opinion ID: 2470930
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Employer Action in This Case

Text: Having held that the Johnson/Weber framework does not apply to make-whole relief, we now apply this rule to the City Defendants' voluntary implementation of the disputed portions of the settlement agreement. In our view, the City Defendants' voluntary implementation of the settlement agreement falls on the Stotts side of the Local 28 distinction between affirmative action and make-whole relief. The City Defendants' implementation of the disputed portions of the settlement agreement granted competitive seniority to the Offerees. Competitive seniority is one of the forms of make-whole relief specifically enumerated in Local 28. Moreover, it was competitive seniority that was, in effect, at issue in Stotts, for when Memphis laid off white firefighters instead of black firefighters with less seniority, the city was treating the white firefighters as if they were the less senior employees. And, perhaps even more importantly, the reason why grants of competitive seniority are generally not affirmative action, and therefore are generally limited to make-whole relief, is that retroactive seniority is by its nature individualized. The Offerees were a group of individuals defined by the settlement agreement to include provisional Custodians and CEs who were women or members of certain racial minority groups. Most of them were identified by name in an appendix to the agreement. It cannot be said that the City Defendants provided [employment benefits] to the class as a whole rather than to individual members. Local 28, 478 U.S. at 474, 106 S.Ct. 3019. Instead, what the City Defendants did was tantamount to an award of make-whole relief, id., to individual provisional Custodians and CEs, arguably without adequate regard to whether there was any reason to think they might have been actual victims of discrimination, or to whether there was a strong basis in evidence that a disparate impact suit by them would succeed. The Caldero Intervenors urge that the retroactive seniority awards in this case are affirmative action even though they do not look like the most typical kind. They say the awards are a reasonable, narrower substitute for a general race or gender preference for school transfers. Their view seems to be that if a broad, non-individualized racial preference is permissible provided that there is a manifest imbalance and the plan is narrowly tailored, then race- or gender-conscious relief for only some of the individuals who would have benefited from such a policy, had it been there in the past, must also be permissible. We do not agree. Just as, in the § 706(g) context, courts have the power to order general racial preferences (as in Local 28 ), but not individualized non-remedial relief (as in Stotts ), so, employers also cannot undertake individualized non-remedial relief and validate it by calling it affirmative action. The cases cited by the Caldero Intervenors are not to the contrary. In Jana-Rock Constr., Inc. v. N.Y. State Dep't of Econ. Dev., 438 F.3d 195 (2d Cir.2006), an equal protection case, a construction company owned by an individual of Spanish descent claimed that New York's definition of Hispanic, which was used for purposes of selecting minority-owned businesses to benefit from affirmative action, violated the Equal Protection Clause because it included individuals of Latin American descent while excluding Spaniards. We rejected this challenge, holding that the Equal Protection Clause does not require a state using an affirmative action plan to expand[ ] the preferred class to include other racial and ethnic groups that may have been discriminated against. Id. at 207. Assuming arguendo that this equal protection reasoning applies in the § 703(a) context, Jana-Rock is distinguishable because it deals with the definition of a racial or ethnic beneficiary class. In our case, nobody is saying that the numerous other minority or female individuals who may have applied for Custodian or CE positionsor, for that matter, the minority or female incumbent Custodians and CEs like Miranda plaintiff Ruben Mirandaare not black, Hispanic, Asian, or female. They were excluded from the settlement agreement's benefits, not because they were deemed to be the wrong gender or race, but rather because they were not among the individuals selected for individualized relief. That there may be some flexibility in how a racial or gender class is defined does not undermine the requirement that affirmative action plans provide, on a prospective basis, equal benefits to all members of that beneficiary class. The Caldero Intervenors also rely on Stuart v. Roache, 951 F.2d 446 (1st Cir. 1991) (Breyer, J.), in which the First Circuit upheld under the Equal Protection Clause a race-conscious promotion plan for Boston police officers. The promotion goals for black officers fell short of the projected number of such officers eligible for promotion: they amounted to 15.5% of all sergeants, while the eligible pool contained about 20% black officers. Id. at 454. But, like a differently defined racial or gender class, a smaller promotion goal does not turn affirmative action into individualized relief. A 15.5% goal and a 20% goal are both provided to the class as a whole rather than to individual members. Local 28, 478 U.S. at 474, 106 S.Ct. 3019. The retroactive seniority awards at issue in our case are, instead, expressly provided... to individual members. It is noteworthy, as well, that the Government claims it never intended a Stotts -like result when it entered the settlement agreement. The district court held a hearing to determine the intent of the settlement agreement, and at that hearing Norma Cote, the lawyer who had negotiated the agreement for the City Defendants, testified that she did not recall the Government ever explain[ing] to [her] why they wanted these individuals to get retroactive seniority. NYC Board V, 556 F.Supp.2d at 205-06. Katherine Baldwin, a DOJ supervisor who was not directly involved in the settlement negotiations but who approved the settlement after it was negotiated, testified that it was DOJ policy to seek only make-whole relief for actual victims, and that she would not have approved the settlement if it had contravened that policy. Id. at 206. The district court found, on the basis of this testimony, that the settlement agreement was intended to be limited to make-whole relief. Although the awards may have gone beyond make-whole relief, we are skeptical as to whether an employer can adopt an affirmative-action plan by accident. When an employer adopts an affirmative-action plan, it generally does so consciously, with the purpose not to make identified victims whole, but rather to dismantle prior patterns of employment discrimination and to prevent discrimination in the future, Local 28, 478 U.S. at 474, 106 S.Ct. 3019. When applying strict or heightened scrutiny to race- or gender-based classifications in the Equal Protection Clause context, the Supreme Court has cautioned that [t]he [actor's] justification must be genuine, not hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation. United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533, 116 S.Ct. 2264, 135 L.Ed.2d 735 (1996) (heightened scrutiny); accord Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 908 n. 4, 116 S.Ct. 1894, 135 L.Ed.2d 207 (1996) (strict scrutiny). The same, we believe, is true when an employer raises the Weber/Johnson affirmative action defense to a reverse-discrimination suit under § 703(a). The Caldero Intervenors, relying on the testimony recited in footnote 43, infra, and the text of the settlement agreement itself, assert that, notwithstanding the district court's finding to the contrary, the parties to the settlement agreement clearly intended to create an affirmative action plan in 1999. According to these Intervenors, it was manifest in 1999 that the settlement agreement would provide retroactive seniority to the specified Offerees without regard to whether there was any evidence that they were actual victims. Therefore, they say, the Government and the City Defendants must have intended to create an affirmative action plan. The Caldero Intervenors' premise is correct, but their conclusion does not follow. The Caldero Intervenors correctly point out that the settlement agreement contained a specific definition of Offeree, and that this definition was not limited to actual victims. They also correctly point out that the Cote testimony, which the district court credited, indicates that the Government and the City Defendants did not perform any individualized investigation of the Offerees to determine the likelihood that they were victims of discrimination. Once it was determined that an individual satisfied the definition of Offeree in the settlement agreement, that individual was offered retroactive seniority. [43] Yet all that this shows is that the Government and the City Defendants may have been less careful than they should have been. Although it was clear from the four corners of the settlement agreement and from the testimony that nobody was checking to make sure that the Offerees were actual victims or even likely victims, it was equally clear that the retroactive seniority awards would be individualized, and therefore, in light of Stotts, not affirmative action. Not every race- or gender-conscious employment benefit that goes beyond make-whole relief is affirmative action; some such benefits, like those at issue here, fall into the impermissible Stotts category instead. Finally, the City Defendants' race- and gender-conscious actions are a poor fit for the wrongs they seek to redress. True affirmative action, like that undertaken voluntarily by the employers in Johnson and Weber and ordered by the court in Local 28, has the power to break down old patterns of discrimination and prevent future discrimination against minorities and women. But affirmative action also has its costs. Most significantly, it is race- or gender-conscious, and it puts non-minority and male individuals at a disadvantage. See Ass'n Against Discrimination in Employment, Inc. v. City of Bridgeport, 647 F.2d 256, 280-81 (2d Cir.1981) (Balanced against the broad equitable power to remedy Title VII violations is a recognition that `the use of racial goals means, in practice, that certain nonminority persons will be kept out solely on account of their race or ethnic background' and that this impinges on the basic principle `that individuals are to be judged as individuals, not as members of particular racial groups.' (quoting EEOC v. Local 638, Local 28 of Sheet Metal Workers Int'l Ass'n, 532 F.2d 821, 827 (2d Cir.1976)) (modifications omitted)). Make-whole relief, likewise, is a powerful remedy for past wrongs. By putting the victims of discrimination where they would have been, but for the discrimination, make-whole relief not only undoes much of the harm caused to the victims themselves, but also provides examples so that others know that they, too, can overcome this country's history of discrimination in the workplace. See Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U.S. 747, 763-68 & n. 28, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 47 L.Ed.2d 444 (1976). But make-whole relief is not free either. Someone has to pay for itmost often the non-minority and male employees, as well as the employer. Because of the costs inherent in both affirmative action and make-whole relief, anyone attempting to provide either of these forms of reliefwhether it be a court imposing a remedy under § 706(g) after a Title VII violation has been found, or the Government proposing a settlement to an employer, or an employer acting voluntarilymust be exceptionally careful to ensure that the employer's proposed action is properly tailored to achieve whichever of these two types of remedies for discrimination is sought. That is not to say that one cannot use affirmative action and make-whole relief at the same time; of course one can. See, e.g., Local 28, 478 U.S. at 473 n. 44, 106 S.Ct. 3019 (noting that, along with imposing the affirmative action plan, the district court also gave backpay to specified individual victims of discrimination); cf. Ass'n Against Discrimination in Employment, 647 F.2d at 278 (noting that these two categories [of relief] may overlap to some extent, although their intended functions differ). But a court or employer planning to give out a race- or gender-conscious employment benefit, or a Title VII remedy, should always ask first: What is the purpose of what I am doing? (1) Am I trying to give make-whole relief to individual people who I think are victims of past discrimination, (2) am I trying to implement a non-individualized, class-wide affirmative action plan to dismantle prior patterns of discrimination and prevent future discrimination, or (3) am I trying to do both? Only after these questions have been answered can an appropriately tailored plan or plans be put in place. The Government and the City Defendants should have considered these questions before taking action. Instead, according to the testimony that the district court credited, the Government never explained why it wanted the Offerees to get retroactive seniority, and the City Defendants never asked. [44] The necessity of avoiding Stotts -like remedies,that is, non-remedial, individualized, race- or sex-conscious employment benefitsis not merely an abstract, doctrinal matter. It affects real people in tangible ways. In the instant case, Ruben Miranda, the plaintiff in Miranda, may be the clearest example of how the City Defendants' remedy does not fit. He is a Hispanic male. He studied for, took, and passed Exam 5040, which allegedly discriminated against Hispanics. As a reward for overcoming this hurdle, he was hired as a Custodianonly to be told, some years later, that other, newly appointed Custodians, a specified group of women, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, would be put ahead of him in seniority. As a result, he could be laid off before these newcomers would be, and he wouldand, as it turns out, didlose school transfers to them. Thus, a Hispanic Custodian was hampered in attaining his career goals, including a transfer to a larger and higher-paying school, because of a settlement agreement that the Caldero and Arroyo Intervenors insist is an affirmative action plan for, among others, Hispanics. [45] For all these reasons, while some or all of the retroactive seniority awards may be defensible on some other ground, they are not defensible as part of an affirmative action plan. The City Defendants therefore cannot use the Weber/Johnson defense to the Brennan Plaintiffs' § 703(a) prima facie case.