Opinion ID: 70375
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: atkins’ failure to exhaust

Text: A federal employee who wishes to sue for discrimination under Title VII, the ADEA, or the Rehabilitation Act, must first exhaust his administrative remedies. See Tolbert v. United States, 916 F.2d 245, 248 (5th Cir. 1990); 29 C.F.R. § 1614.407 (a federal employee otherwise eligible to proceed to district court with her Title VII, ADEA, or Rehabilitation Act employment discrimination claim may only do so “[w]ithin 90 days of the Commission’s final action on appeal,” or “after 180 days from the date of the filing of an appeal with 3 No. 08-61048 the Commission if there has been no final decision by the Commission”) 2 ; see also Fitzgerald v. Sec 32, U.S. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs, 121 F.3d 203, 206 (5th Cir. 1997) (Before bringing suit under the Rehabilitation Act, an aggrieved federal employee must exhaust the available administrative remedies). Atkins filed suit in the district court before the EEOC issued its “final action” on his appeal, and before the 180 days had passed after the filing of his appeal with the EEOC. Such a premature filing constitutes a failure to exhaust administrative remedies and requires dismissal of the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. Tolbert, 916 F.2d at 249; see also Prewitt v. United States Postal Serv., 662 F.2d 292, 303-04 (5th Cir. 1981) (“[W]e must read the exhaustion of administrative remedies requirement of section 501 into the private remedy recognized by both section 501 and section 504 for federal government handicap discrimination.”). Given that Atkins fully admits that he filed his complaint in the district court 130 days after filing with the EEOC, and before the EEOC had issued its “final action” on its appeal, it is quite clear that the district court did not err when it dismissed Atkins’ complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.3 2 The regulation our court interpreted in Tolbert was succeeded by 29 C.F.R. § 1614.407, which applies the 90- and 180-day windows to claims under Title VII, the ADEA, and the Rehabilitation Act. 3 On appeal, Atkins argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Arbaugh v. Y&H Corp., 546 U.S. 500 (2006), and this Court’s subsequent decision in EEOC v. Agro Distribution, LLC, 555 F.3d 462 (5th Cir. 2009), both overrule Tolbert’s holding that the exhaustion of administrative remedies is a jurisdictional prerequisite. This argument is completely unavailing and contains no merit. The fact that the Arbaugh Court found that Congress did not intend for the employee numerosity requirement in Title VII to be jurisdictional has absolutely no bearing on this Court’s prior conclusion in Tolbert that Congress intended for the exhaustion of administrative remedies to be a jurisdictional prerequisite to filing a civil action in federal court. In Tolbert, we concluded that the exhaustion of administrative remedies was jurisdictional through our adoption of the Third Circuit’s reasoning that: “[a]bsent an indication of contrary congressional intent, we will not countenance circumventing the administrative process in this manner.” Tolbert, 916 F.2d at 249 (quoting Purtill v. Harris, 658 F.2d 134, 138 (3rd Cir. 1981). The fact that the Supreme Court has now decided that the employee numerosity requirement contained within Title VII is not 4 No. 08-61048 However, “[b]ecause we dismiss [his] clai[m] for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the district court’s decision must be modified to reflect a dismissal without prejudice.” Cinel v. Connick, 15 F.3d 1338, 1341 (5th Cir. 1994). Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, we affirm the district court’s decision to dismiss Atkins’ complaint, and we modify the district court’s judgment to reflect dismissal without prejudice. jurisdictional is of no relation to this Court’s conclusion in Tolbert that plaintiffs should not be permitted to thwart congressional intent and circumvent the administrative process. 5