Court Opinion

ID: 9464627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:38:31.844307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:44.035160
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
If we were writing on a clean slate, my inclination would be to affirm the district court, whose opinion seems to me convincingly to demonstrate that this statute fails to contain the express authorization of attorneys’ fees awards required by Alyeska Pipeline Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975). The lacunae in this statute seem properly to be corrected by Congress, not the courts. The Government, however, has chosen to accede to the decision in Parker v. Califano, 182 U.S.App.D.C. 322, 561 F.2d 320 (1977), holding that a district court may award attorneys’ fees for work done at the administrative level once a party has successfully appealed an adverse administrative determination to that court. Although I am not fully persuaded of the correctness of that decision, the problems that would inhere in imposing conflicting determinations on the Government outweigh in my mind my reservations about that result. Accordingly, I am prepared to agree with my brethren that our court should deal with this case within the context of a now conceded power on the part of a district court to award attorneys’ fees for administrative level work to a plaintiff who is properly before that court as the result of an adverse administration action. Id.
But even taking that position, we face severe difficulty. At first blush plaintiff would not appear to have had any grounds on which to have sought relief from the *412district court, thereby availing herself of that court’s fee-awarding power. As the court here points out, her claim for interest was not meritorious. The court argues that plaintiff was “aggrieved” by the failure of the Civil Service Commission to award her back pay, but in fact she received an award in full long before the district court dismissed her suit. And unlike Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 433 F.2d 421 (8th Cir. 1970), and Drew v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 480 F.2d 69 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 417 U.S. 935, 94 S.Ct. 2650, 41 L.Ed.2d 239 (1974), the district court made no finding, and there is no record evidence that would support a finding, that this suit served as a “catalyst” for plaintiff’s recovery of back pay. As a result, unless the Civil Service Commission had the authority to award attorneys’ fees in this case and wrongfully withheld them, plaintiff received all the relief to which she was entitled and in no meaningful way to my mind can be considered “aggrieved” by action of the Commission.
It may be possible to agree with plaintiff that the Civil Service Commission does have the authority to award attorney’s fees for administrative work and that plaintiff therefore was aggrieved by the Commission’s failure to exercise this power in her favor. One might strain to interpret 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(b), which authorized the Commission to employ its enforcement powers “through appropriate remedies, including reinstatement or hiring of employees with or without back pay, as will effectuate the policies of this section,” as the “specific and explicit” provision required by Alyeska Pipeline Co., supra, 421 U.S., at 260, 95 S.Ct., at 1623, as a prerequisite for fee awards. But cf. Green County Planning Board v. FPC, 565 F.2d 807 (2d Cir. 1977). One might further argue that the failure of the Commission to exploit this rather broad remedial authority to devise a procedure for awarding attorneys’ fees in appropriate cases constitutes an abuse of discretion, inasmuch as under Parker v. Califano, supra, federal employees otherwise will have their right to a fee award turn on the fortuitous circumstance of whether an additional grievance providing a basis for appeal to the district court exists. But even if one were to forgive plaintiff here her failure to seek an attorneys’ fee award from the Commission and to treat this claim as preserved for appellate review, the appropriate disposition of this case would be a remand to the Commission, not the remand to the district court ordered by the court. Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent.