Opinion ID: 2286987
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Conflicting precedent from Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky

Text: 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.