Opinion ID: 2286987
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of the MHRA

Text: The City argues that the trial court erred in not directing a verdict for the City because the MHRA does not apply to the decision made by the city council. It asserts that municipal court judges are not employees under the MHRA and, therefore, the decision to reject the three candidates was not an employment decision. The City presents this issue as a matter of law. The case was submitted to the jury on an instruction [6] that read: Your verdict must be for plaintiff Howard and against defendant City of Kansas City if you believe: First, defendant limited, segregated or classified plaintiff in a way that deprived or tended to deprive her of employment opportunities with defendant as a municipal judge, and Second, race was a contributing factor in such limitation, segregation or classification, and Third, as a direct result of such conduct, plaintiff sustained damages. The jury is presumed to have found that plaintiff was deprived of employment opportunities pursuant to the instruction given. The City does not contest submissibility, but only the proper scope and application of the MHRA. Therefore, the principal issue for this Court is whether a municipal judge, as defined by the city charter, is an employee and, if so, whether Howard was an employment applicant under the protection of the MHRA. The primary rule of statutory construction is to ascertain the intent of the legislature from the language used, to give effect to that intent if possible, and to consider words used in the statute in their plain and ordinary meaning. Farmers' & Laborers' Co-op Ins. Ass'n v. Director of Revenue, 742 S.W.2d 141, 145 (Mo. banc 1987).
The MHRA protects important societal interests by prohibiting unlawful employment practices on the basis of race, color, religion, national original, sex, ancestry, age, or disability. State ex rel. Dean v. Cunningham, 182 S.W.3d 561, 565 (Mo. banc 2006). Specifically, § 213.055 is a remedial prohibition against discrimination in the employment context. The section provides: 1. It shall be an unlawful employment practice: (1) For an employer, because of the race, color, religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age or disability of any individual: (a) To fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age or disability; (b) To limit, segregate, or classify his employees or his employment applicants in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status and an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age or disability[.] § 213.055.1 (emphasis added). The MHRA defines employer to include the state, or any political or civil subdivision thereof.... Section 213.010(7). The City has conceded that it is an employer covered under the MHRA. The MHRA does not define employee or employment applicant. The City argues that municipal judges are public officials and are not employees or employment applicants within the protection of the MHRA, urging that public officials should be viewed as similar to independent contractors.
Under traditional rules of statutory construction, undefined words are given their plain and ordinary meaning as found in the dictionary to ascertain the intent of lawmakers. Asbury v. Lombardi, 846 S.W.2d 196, 201 (Mo. banc 1993). The word employee is commonly defined as one employed by another, usually in a position below the executive level and usually for wages, as well as any worker who is under wages or salary to an employer and who is not excluded by agreement from consideration as such a worker. WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 743 (1993). To employ means to provide with a job that pays wages or a salary or with a means of earning a living. Id. There is no dictionary definition for employment applicant. These definitions support a finding that a municipal judge is an employee of the City. Under the charter, the City pays its municipal judges a fixed salary and requires that the judges perform their services exclusively for the City. CHARTER OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI §§ 305, 307. Therefore, a municipal judge is employed ... for wages by the City. A municipal judge is likewise a worker ... under wages or salary ... not excluded by agreement from consideration as such a worker. Under the definition of the verb to employ, a municipal judge is provided a job that pays wages or salary. The only ambiguity in the definitions is the language that provides usually in a position below the executive level. The term executive is defined as one who holds a position of administrative or managerial responsibility in a business or other organization. WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 794. A secondary definition includes those belonging to a branch of government that is charged with such powers as ... superintendence of the execution of the laws, which is distinct from the judiciary. Id. Although judges have independent decision-making authority regarding the cases they hear, they are not normally considered in the context of above or below the executive level. This part of the definition simply does not apply. This minor ambiguity in the definition does not disqualify a judge from being an employee when all other portions of the definition of employee apply to Kansas City municipal judges. [7]
The City urges that common law principles of agency should be applied to determine whether a municipal judge is an employee within the scope of the MHRA. Specifically, the City cites to Sloan v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co., 1 S.W.3d 555, 563 (Mo.App.1999). In Sloan, an insurance salesperson sued the company he worked for, claiming age discrimination in violation of the MHRA. Id. at 560. The issue in the case was whether Sloan should be considered an independent contractor or an employee under the MHRA. Notably, the contract between Sloan and the insurance company expressly stated that he was an independent contractor, he was paid on commissions only, the company did not withhold taxes from his paycheck, nor did the company provide him with an office or supplies. Id. at 563. Sloan determined his own schedule, set his own hours, and provided for his own transportation and administrative support at his own expense. Id. The court in that case held that, for the reasons stated above, Sloan was an independent contractor; therefore, he lacked standing to bring his discrimination claim because independent contractors are not employees within the meaning of the MHRA. Id. at 563-64. Accordingly, Sloan does not apply to the facts in this case. The City also points to Howard v. Winebrenner, 499 S.W.2d 389, 395 (Mo.1973), and suggests that the Winebrenner eight-factor test designed to gauge the employer's right to control the means and manner of a person's service is appropriate in this case to determine whether Howard is an employee covered by the MHRA. [8] Winebrenner is a workers' compensation case involving a plaintiff who was hired by the defendant to drive one of defendant's tractors to haul a load of freight. After returning the tractor and while on the defendant's property, as the plaintiff walked to his automobile, he was struck by a tractor driven by the defendant and was severely injured. Id. at 391-92. The Court then had to determine whether the plaintiff was an employee of the defendant to assess whether the plaintiff's injuries arose out of the course of his employment such that his exclusive remedy was under Missouri workers' compensation law. Id. at 395-96. The Court in Winebrenner held that an employee-employer relationship existed between the plaintiff and defendant and that the plaintiff's injury arose out of and in the course of his employment. Id. at 396. With the exception of Sloan, almost all cases in Missouri that apply this common law analysis to distinguish employees from independent contractors are concerned with workers' compensation coverage or respondeat superior liability. See, e.g., Ascoli v. Hinck, 256 S.W.3d 592, 594 (Mo. App.2008) (vicarious liability); Leach v. Board of Police Comm'rs of Kansas City, 118 S.W.3d 646, 649 (Mo.App.2003) (workers' compensation). Whether an individual is an employee for purposes of receiving workers' compensation benefits or for purposes of holding the employer liable for its tortious acts involves different considerations than whether an individual is entitled to protection as an employee under the MHRA. Independent contractors are typically hired to complete a specific task, use their own tools in completing their work, are paid a fixed sum on a by-the-job basis, and are not provided with benefits. Missouri has no statutory definition of the term independent contractor. This Court has generally described an independent contractor as one who contracts to perform work according to his own methods without being subject to the control of his employer except as to the result of his work. State ex rel. MW Builders, Inc. v. Midkiff, 222 S.W.3d 267, 270 (Mo. banc 2007). Kansas City municipal judges are employed on a full-time basis, provided the necessary supplies and work space they need, and paid a regular salary that includes benefits. While judges must be free from the control of their employer as to the result of their work, judges are required to follow the law, show up when scheduled, and are subject to removal under certain circumstances. Kansas City municipal judges are not independent contractors as that term is generally understood. [9]
While the City argues that municipal judges are not employees, evidence in this case suggests that these judges are treated as City employees. Here, as opposed to the insurance salesman in Sloan, municipal judges are at no point expressly designated to be independent contractors. To the contrary, they are repeatedly referred to as an employee on various forms they are required to fill out and sign upon being hired. These employment forms require both the judges' signatures as employees and their employee identification number, and several of these forms must then be sent to the City's human resources department to be placed in the judges' personnel files. The following examples highlight the various ways in which the City assigns an employee status to its municipal judges: &lhblk; On one form in particular, each judge must sign and state: As an active employee of the City of Kansas City, Missouri, I hereby designate the following as my pension beneficiaries. &lhblk; Another form explains that the 10-day enrollment period for insurance starts to run the day after the municipal judge's first day of employment with the City. &lhblk; Kansas City municipal judges are eligible for life insurance under a group policy with the City and, as such, they are deemed to meet both the member and active work requirements of the policy, defined as [a]n active employee of the employer regularly working at least 40 hours each week who perform[s] the material duties of [one's] own occupation at [one's] employer's usual place of business. &lhblk; The City pays its municipal judges a fixed salary, which has no relation to the number of cases tried before the judge, guilty verdicts reached, or fines imposed or collected by the judge. CHARTER OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI § 305; § 479.020.6 RSMo Supp.2009. &lhblk; The City requires that its full-time municipal judges perform their services exclusively for the City. CHARTER OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI § 307 (prohibiting municipal judges from engag[ing] in the private practice of law). &lhblk; The City treats its municipal judges as employees for federal and state tax withholding purposes. &lhblk; The City also provides its judges with the work space, staff, and office equipment necessary for them to perform their duties. All of these factors run counter to any assertion that the judges are independent contractors and further emphasize why the common law analysis applied in independent contractor cases simply does not fit. Despite the City's lack of control of judicial decision-making, these facts, taken as a whole, support a legal determination that municipal judges are employees of the City.
Courts in three other states have previously been called on to construe their respective state's human rights laws to determine whether a public official is an employee. They have split on the issue. A Texas Court of Appeals and the Tennessee Supreme Court have held that a judge, as a public official, is not an employee, while the Kentucky Court of Appeals has found that public officials are employees. In Thompson v. City of Austin, two municipal court judges who were not reappointed by the Austin city council upon expiration of their initial two-year terms brought suit under the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (TCHRA) claiming they were discriminated against because of their respective disabilities. 979 S.W.2d 676, 679 (Tex.App.1998). The Texas appellate court held that judges were public officials and therefore were not protected as employees under the TCHRA. [10] Id. at 682. That conclusion stemmed primarily from the court's application of a federal common law test that suggested a lack of control by the city council over the means and manner of municipal judges' performance of their duties. Id. However, the Texas legislature expressly intended for the TCHRA to provide for the execution of the policies of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. TEX. LAB. CODE ANN. § 21.001(1). As such, the Texas court in Thompson felt inclined to examine federal case law for guidance and apply federal common law agency doctrine. 979 S.W.2d at 681 n. 5. The federal common law test applied by the court in Thompson originated from cases construing Title VII, which explicitly defines employee and includes within that definition an exception for various public officials. Under the federal Civil Rights Act (Title VII), public officials clearly are not employees because 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(f) states: The term employee means an individual employed by an employer, except that the term employee shall not include any person elected to public office in any State or political subdivision of any State by the qualified voters thereof, or any person chosen by such officer to be on such officer's personal staff, or an appointee on the policy making level or an immediate adviser with respect to the exercise of the constitutional or legal powers of the office. The Tennessee Supreme Court in Bredesen v. Tenn. Judicial Selection Comm'n adopted the reasoning of Thompson and applied a similar common law factor test [11] to find that nominees to fill a judicial vacancy were not employees for purposes of the Tennessee Human Rights Act (THRA). [12] 214 S.W.3d 419, 432 (Tenn. 2007). The THRA, however, unlike the MHRA, but similar to the Texas Act, includes an express provision explaining its purpose and intent is to [p]rovide for execution within Tennessee of the policies embodied in the federal Civil Rights Act.... TENN.CODE ANN. § 4-21-101(a)(1). The Bredesen court, therefore, also found it necessary to interpret the THRA consistently with Title VII and relied heavily on the definition of employee found in Title VII and its exclusion of certain public officials. 214 S.W.3d at 430. In a related case, the Kentucky Court of Appeals reached a contrary holding. It held that an elected mayor and elected commissioners were employees for purposes of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act (KCRA) despite being public officials. Kearney v. City of Simpsonville, 209 S.W.3d 483 (Ky.App.2006). In reaching its conclusion, the court noted that the KCRA did not exclude public officials from the definition of employee [13] and found it important that the KCRA is meant to be interpreted broadly to best achieve its anti-discriminatory goals. Id. at 485-86. The Missouri General Assembly chose not to include a definition for employee, as provided by Title VII, and expressed no purpose of the MHRA to embody Title VII as did the legislatures in Texas and Tennessee. The Missouri language is more like that of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act, making Kearney v. City of Simpsonville the more persuasive precedent. In fact, this Court previously has acknowledged that Missouri's discrimination safeguards under the MHRA, ... are not identical to the federal standards and can offer greater discrimination protection. Daugherty v. City of Maryland Heights, 231 S.W.3d 814, 818-19 (Mo. banc 2007). By not defining employee, our legislature chose to omit the public official exception. For that reason, the rationale underlying the decisions in Thompson and Bredesen is not persuasive in this case.
A Kansas City municipal judge is an employee or an employment applicant under the MHRA. Because the City did not challenge submissibility, the question of whether Howard was actually deprived of an employment opportunity because of her race is not before us. This Court would note that diversity is an honorable goal. In fact, Rule 10.32(f), governing Missouri's judicial commissions provides: The commission shall actively seek out and encourage qualified individuals, including women and minorities, to apply for judicial office. The commission shall further take into consideration the desirability of the bench reflecting the racial and gender composition of the community. Each commission member, however, shall cast his or her votes solely in accordance with the relative merits of the applicants so as to select the three best qualified nominees. This rule requires that the commissions actively seek out and encourage ... women and minorities to apply for judicial office. The commissions are further charged to take into consideration the desirability of the bench reflecting the racial and gender composition of the community. This is to be distinguished from the provisions of § 213.055.1(1)(b) of the MHRA, which prohibit deprivation of any employment opportunity because of an individual's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age or disability[.]