Court Opinion

ID: 9431397
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:13.264458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:28.322976
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The Court’s decision today denies respondents retroactive relief on the ground that equitable considerations prevent imposition of liability for Florida’s actions taken prior to the effective date of our decision in Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity and Deferred Compensation Plans v. Norris, 463 U. S. 1073 (1983). Because I conclude that the same equitable considerations mandate retroactive liability for Florida’s Title VII violations after this Court’s-earlier *241decision in Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power v. Manhart, 435 U. S. 702 (1978), I dissent from that part of the Court’s judgment that categorically denies relief to the post-Manhart retirees.1
I
Until its amendment in August 1983, the pension plan the State of Florida operated for its employees discriminated on the basis of sex in a manner prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq. To recapitulate briefly, the plan operated as follows: A state employee, upon retirement, could choose between two basic pension options — a single-life plan or a joint-annuitant plan. An employee selecting the single-life plan received benefits tied to the employee’s salary and length of service. Because the employee’s sex was irrelevant to the benefits paid under the single-life plan, this part of Florida’s pension plan did not run afoul of Title VII. If, however, an employee selected a joint-annuitant plan, the amount of benefits the employee received under that plan would be tied to the actuarial value of the employee’s single-life plan — a value established for this purpose by the use of sex-based actuarial tables. Because, on the average, men do not live so long as women, these tables ascribed a greater value to a female employee’s single-life plan than to a male’s, and, accordingly, the monthly benefits paid out under a female retiree’s joint-annuitant pension were greater than those paid out under a male retiree’s joint-annuitant pension. It is undisputed that Title VII prohibits this kind of sex-based distinction in the provision of retirement benefits.
The issue in this case, of course, is not whether the pension plan Florida operated is barred by Title VII, but, rather, whether retirees are entitled to retroactive relief for Flori*242da’s discrimination.2 Although retroactive relief is not mandatory in a Title VII case, see § 706(g), 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(g), the make-whole purpose of Title VII creates a “presumption in favor of retroactive liability [that] can seldom be overcome.” Manhart, 435 U. S., at 719. As the Court notes, however, in the context of pension plans that run afoul of Title VII, the presumption of retroactive liability may be defeated if the relevant law concerning Title VII was not sufficiently clear at the time of the violation. Ante, at 230. In both Manhart and Norris, we found that, although pension plans were being operated in violation of Title VII, retroactive liability was inappropriate in part because the plan administrators reasonably might have assumed that their plans were lawful.
In denying retroactive relief to the post-Manhart retirees in this case, the Court concludes that it was not until the decision in Norris in 1983 that Florida had notice that its pension plan was unlawful. It is on this point, in my view, that the Court goes astray.
In Manhart, we were faced with a plan which required female employees to make greater contributions out of their paychecks than their male counterparts in order to obtain the same monthly pension benefits upon retirement. The employer sought to justify this difference by noting that since, as a group, female employees lived longer than male employees, “[t]he cost of a pension for the average retired female is greater than for the average male retiree because more monthly payments must be made to the average woman.” 435 U. S., at 705. This difference in cost, argued, the employer, allowed the difference in contributions. The Man-hart Court accepted as true the employer’s proffered rationale for its distinction, but nonetheless concluded that the plan violated Title VII. As the Court put it: “The question ... is *243whether the existence or nonexistence of ‘discrimination’ is to be determined by comparison of class characteristics or individual characteristics.” 435 U. S., at 708. The Court’s conclusion in Manhart was that Congress intended that individual characteristics should control. See id., at 708-709. Therefore, Title VII required that the pension plan be funded through sex-neutral employee contributions.
It is difficult to see any important distinction between that case and this one. The Court today relies on the fact that the pension plan at issue in Manhart discriminated at the contribution stage, while in this case the discrimination surfaced at the payment stage. In my view, it was always clear that this was a distinction without a difference. In Manhart, one sex took home less pay than the other in order to receive the same benefits upon retirement. Here, the take-home pay was the same, but one sex received a greater benefit upon retirement than the other. Both plans violated Title VII because the employer discriminated between men and women as a class. I see no plausible theory on which we might have distinguished the latter situation from the former, and the Court today offers.none. In short, Manhart laid down a general rule that any employer-operated pension plan that relied on actuarial differences between women and men to the detriment of either group was prohibited by Title VII. Florida’s pension plan violated this rule as clearly as did the plan at issue in Manhart.
Manhart’s “open-market exception” cast no doubt on this fundamental holding. The majority focuses on the statement in Manhart that it might be lawful for “an employer to set aside equal retirement contributions for each employee and let each retiree purchase the largest benefit which his or her accumulated contributions could command in the open market,” 435 U. S., at 717-718. The Court ignores, however, the explanatory footnote to that statement, which clearly articulated its rationale: “Title VII. . . primarily governs] relations between employees and their employer, not *244between employees and third parties.” Id., at 718, n. 33. Thus, it should have been evident from the start that the open-market exception had nothing to do with a distinction between discrimination at the contribution stage and discrimination at the benefit stage. Rather, the exception involved a distinction between discrimination by an employer and discrimination by a third party, the latter being generally outside the scope of Title VII.
Our decision in Norris confirms, rather than casts doubt on, the conclusion that the unlawfulness of Florida’s pension plan was established and made manifest by our decision in Manhart. The five Justices in Norris who found the type of plan there at issue barred by Title VII considered as obvious the application of Manhart’s rationale to the payment of unequal benefits:
“We have no hesitation in holding, as have all but one of the lower courts that have considered the question, that the classification of employees on the basis of sex is no more permissible at the pay-out stage of a retirement . plan than at the pay-in stage.” 463 U. S., at 1081 (footnotes omitted).
“[I]t is just as much discrimination ‘because of. . . sex’ to pay a woman lower benefits when she has made the same contributions as a man as it is to make her pay larger contributions to obtain the same benefits.” Id., at 1086.
The Norris majority’s rejection of the contribution/benefit distinction was based almost entirely on the reasoning of Manhart, and came without mention of the open-market exception. See 463 U. S., at 1081-1086. See also id., at 1108-1109 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (“Title VII clearly does not allow an employer to offer a plan to employees under which it will collect equal contributions, hold them in a trust account, and upon retirement disburse greater monthly checks to men than women”) (emphasis added).
*245Similarly, Justice Powell’s opinion for those Members of the Court who thought that the pension plan at issue in Norris did not violate Title VII focused on the distinction not between contributions and benefits but between employer-operated pension funds and those, like the one in Norris, that were administered by third parties. See 463 U. S., at 1099, 1103. His opinion did not contest the conclusion reached by the Court, id., at 1086, that the plan at issue in Norris “plainly would have violated Title VII” if, like the plan under scrutiny here, it had been operated by the employers themselves.
Nor, finally, does the ultimate conclusion of five Justices in Norris that retroactive liability was inappropriate in that case call for a like conclusion here. The majority’s decision that Manhart did not provide notice that the plan at issue in Norris violated Title VII was based solely on the view that, because of the open-market exception, “an employer reasonably could have assumed that it would be lawful to make available to its employees annuities offered by insurance companies on the open market.” 463 U. S., at 1106 (Powell, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part) (emphasis added). See also id., at 1110 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (referring to “pension plan administrators, who may have thought until our decision today that Title VII did not extend to plans involving third-party insurers”) (emphasis added). The basis of the reasonable assumption of the lawfulness of the plan in Norris — the involvement of third-party insurers — simply has no application in this case.3
*246Because I conclude that the unlawfulness of Florida’s pension plan was “clearly foreshadowed” by our decision in Manhart, and did not depend on a “new principle of law” announced in Norris, 463 U. S., at 1109 (O’Connor, J., concurring), I naturally disagree with the Court’s conclusion that retroactive liability would be “inequitable.” To the contrary, I believe such relief is clearly appropriate. See id., at 1093. Cf. Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S. 97, 106 (1971) (“[T]he decision to be applied nonretroactively must establish a new principle of law”) (emphasis added). I note, in addition, that no special factors are presented here that would make an award of retroactive relief inequitable.
While I conclude that our decision in Manhart put Florida on notice that its pension plan violated Title VII, and that therefore retroactive relief is appropriate for post-Manhart retirees, I agree with the majority that those respondents who retired before our decision in Manhart are not entitled to retroactive relief. An award of retroactive relief to pre-Manhart retirees in effect would penalize Florida for its pre-Manhart use of sex-based annuity tables. A retroactive award of this kind would not be in accord with our decision in Manhart to deny such relief because, prior to that decision, the use of sex-based tables reasonably might have been assumed to be lawful.
*247I — I h — H
In summary: I conclude that our decision in Manhart supplies the date after which Florida should be held liable for its failure to use unisex tables in calculating retirement benefits. Accordingly, I concur in that part of the Court’s judgment that denies relief to pr e-Manhart retirees, but, for the reasons stated above, I dissent from that part of its judgment that categorically denies relief to post-Manhart retirees.

 The parties raise other issues regarding the scope of Florida’s retroactive liability. See ante, at 229-230, n. 3. Like the Court, I take no position on these issues.

 1 agree with the Court’s conclusion that all the relief approved by the Court of Appeals properly is characterized as retroactive.

 The majority also places some reliance on a Department of Labor study dated nearly five years after our decision in Manhart, which estimated: “In the defined benefit plan sector, 45 percent of participants are in plans using sex-based tables. In the defined contribution plan sector, 74 percent of participants are in plans using sex-based tables.” United States Dept, of Labor, Cost Study of the Impact of an Equal Benefits Rule on Pension Benefits 2 (Jan. 1983). See ante, at 233-234. As Florida concedes, however, the Department of Labor’s survey made no distinction between employer-operated plans, like the plan in this case, and employer-sponsored *246plans, like the plan in Nort'is. See Brief for Petitioners 33, n. 27. Yet it is only the former category of plans that Manhart established was in violation of Title VII. The study thus throws little light on the issue in this case.
Nor do I find persuasive the Court’s emphasis on the fact that Florida also offered a nondiscriminatory single-annuitant option. See ante, at 234. The Court explained in Norris: “Title VII forbids all discrimination concerning ‘compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment'.... An employer that offers one fringe benefit on a discriminatory basis cannot escape liability because he also offers other benefits on a nondiscriminatory basis.” 463 U. S., at 1081-1682, n. 10. Neither the language of Title VII nor precedents of this Court provided a basis for the contrary conclusion, even prior to the decision in Norris.