Opinion ID: 109456
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Meaning of the Phrase As Applicable

Text: The opinion of the District Court for the District of Columbia in Hackley v. Johnson , relied on by the Court of Appeals here, expressed the view that the phrase as applicable in § 717 (d) evidences a congressional intent to restrict or qualify the right to a de novo proceeding granted by § 717 (c). 360 F. Supp., at 1252 n. 9. A careful reading of § 717 (d) and the provisions to which it refers indicates, however, that the phrase was intended merely to reflect the fact that certain provisions in §§ 706 (f) through (k) pertain to aspects of the Title VII enforcement scheme that have no possible relevance to judicial proceedings involving federal employees. Section 717 (d) states that [t]he provisions of section 706 (f) through (k), as applicable, shall govern civil actions brought hereunder. Sections 706 (f) through (k) set forth specific procedures and guidelines to be followed in private-sector civil actions. Several of these procedures could not possibly apply to civil actions involving federal employees. Section 706 (f) (1), for instance, provides that in the private sector the EEOC may bring a civil action against any respondent not a government, governmental agency, or political subdivision and that the Attorney General of the United States may bring a civil action for employment discrimination against a state government, agency, or political subdivision. The individual complainant retains the right to intervene in suits brought by the EEOC or the Attorney General. In the case of a civil action maintained by an individual complainant against a private or state governmental employer, the EEOC or the Attorney General, respectively, may be permitted to intervene upon certification that the case is of general public importance. These provisions, allowing suits and permissive intervention by the EEOC or the Attorney General, could have no possible application to civil actions under § 717 (c), because the individual federal employee or job applicant is the only party who can institute and maintain a civil action under that subsection. Similarly, the provision in § 706 (f) (2) permitting the EEOC or the Attorney General to bring an action for appropriate temporary or preliminary relief pending final disposition of a charge where the EEOC has conclude[d] on the basis of a preliminary investigation that prompt judicial action is necessary to carry out the purposes of this Act could not possibly apply without modification to civil actions involving federal employees, because the EEOC is given no general responsibility for investigating or prosecuting the complaints of federal employees. The most natural reading of the phrase as applicable in § 717 (d) is that it merely reflects the inapplicability of provisions in §§ 706 (f) through (k) detailing the enforcement responsibilities of the EEOC and the Attorney General. [7] We cannot, therefore, agree with the view expressed by the District Court in Hackley v. Johnson, supra , and relied on by the Court of Appeals here, that Congress used the words as applicable to voice its intent to disallow trials de novo by aggrieved federal employees who have received prior administrative hearings. As the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in reversing Hackley v. Johnson, supra , such an interpretation of the phrase as applicable would require a strained and unnatural reading of §§ 706 (f) through (k). Hackley v. Roudebush, 171 U. S. App. D. C., at 389, 520 F. 2d, at 121. This Court pointed out in Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370, that  `the plain, obvious and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.'  To read the phrase as applicable in § 717 (d) as obliquely qualifying the federal employee's right to a trial de novo under § 717 (c) rather than as merely reflecting the inapplicability to § 717 (c) actions of provisions relating to the enforcement responsibilities of the EEOC or the Attorney General would violate this elementary canon of construction.