Court Opinion

ID: 9489196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:08:49.90779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:23.592603
License: Public Domain

PLAGER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The removal of Newton from federal employment cannot be sustained under the charge brought. Newton, a Caucasian, the supervisor in the aircraft engine repair unit, permitted an employee, Lewis, an African-American, to engage him in a highly inappropriate joking relationship. The joking relationship included the use by Lewis (but not by Newton) of racially charged language. Specifically, Lewis would address Newton as a “white hillbilly mother fucker,” and as a “Klan mother fucker,” and would comment openly to others, with reference to supervisor Newton, that “I’ll bet that hillbilly mother fucker is running the KKK.” Newton would not respond in kind, but at the same time did not take appropriate action to discipline Lewis for his improper behavior toward his supervisor; indeed, for whatever reasons, Newton seemed to condone if not encourage Lewis’ improper behavior.
The inevitable happened. Consistent with the joking relationship, Newton played the role of “Klan mother fucker” graphically, and pulled the stunt of burning in front of Lewis two popsicle-like chemical mixing sticks shaped in the form of a cross. It was not until several days later, perhaps after Lewis described the event to others, that Lewis decided he was offended and initiated a complaint.
The evidence is undisputed that Newton, in his eighteen years of federal service, including six years as a supervisor, had an unblemished record. He had been given training about the evils of discrimination in the workplace. There is not the slightest taint of prior racially-discriminatory conduct on his part. One cannot help but wonder if Newton suddenly, without explanation, appeared in front of a Black employee with a burning cross, would the Air Force have simply fired him without further thought, or might they have undertaken to determine whether he was having some kind of mental breakdown, or to seek some other explanation for such aberrant behavior.
Here there is an obvious explanation for his behavior. Newton permitted himself to be in an improper relationship with an employee, and in a misguided effort to participate in that relationship he acted in a highly inappropriate manner for a person in a supervisory position. The obvious response by the Air Force to this situation would have been to discipline Lewis for unacceptable behavior toward a supervisor, and to discipline Newton for failure to effectively supervise, perhaps removing him from his supervisory position.1
The AJ, though recognizing the circumstances in which this burning of the sticks occurred, nevertheless upheld the dismissal of Newton on the charge brought by the Air Force of engaging in deliberate racial discrimination under Item 29b of the Air Force’s “Guide to Disciplinary Actions.” The preceding Item, Item 29a, describes various kinds of proscribed discriminatory conduct by an employee, including sexual harassment and making racial or ethnic slurs. The penalty provided for a first offense is reprimand to 5-day suspension. Item 29b implicitly *601incorporates the proscriptions in 29a, and applies if the discrimination was “deliberate.” Then the penalty may include removal.
The language of 29b creates a puzzle. If 29b requires “deliberate” discrimination, what kind of discriminatory conduct is proscribed by 29a? Presumably it must be non-deliberate, that is, accidental or unintentional conduct. But how does one engage in accidental discriminatory conduct? The Government, with the AJ’s acquiescence, solves this verbal dilemma by arguing that “deliberate” means “not inadvertent.” The panel majority sees no error in that construct. Indeed, to prove the point, the panel majority hypothesizes the case of an employee who brings a magazine into the workplace. The magazine, unbeknownst to the employee who has not read it, contains offensive material, perhaps an ethnic slur. The employee, we are advised, thereby violates the prohibition of Item 29a.
I cannot accept that proposition. I do not believe that is what the Air Force Guidelines are intended to say, and if it is, I do not believe this could possibly be upheld. Under that reading of the law, the mail clerk who works in the Pentagon and delivers to a subscriber’s office in the building, along with the other mail, a copy in the proverbial plain brown wrapper of a magazine containing a story using explicit “street” language, could be fired without delay.2 This not only defies common sense, but raises the most profound questions of Due Process and First Amendment liberties. See e.g. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971) (a person who knowingly wore to court a jacket that said on the back, “Fuck the Draft,” was Constitutionally protected from punishment). See also, Kent Greenawalt, Insults and Epithets: Are They Protected Speech ?, 42 Rutgers L.Rev. 287 (1990).
Furthermore, plain English stands in the way of the Government’s effort to re-interpret the meaning of “deliberate.” Black’s Law Dictionary defines the adjective “deliberate” as “[w]ell advised; carefully considered; not sudden or rash; circumspect; slow in determining. Willful rather than merely intentional.” Black’s Law Dictionary 426 (6th ed. 1990). Webster’s, likewise defines “deliberate” as “characterized by or resulting from slow careful thorough calculation and consideration of effects and consequences: not hasty, rash, or thoughtless.” Webster’s Third Int’l Dictionary, Unabridged 596 (1968). However inappropriate the various interactions between Lewis and Newton were, and however salted with racially charged language, the facts leave no doubt that neither was engaged in “deliberate racial discrimination” toward the other. To misapply the prohibition against racial discrimination in the workplace to a case involving a breakdown in supervisory authority, but in which no racial discrimination as such is involved, is to demean the importance of the prohibition, just as describing non-comparable events as a “holocaust” denigrates from the meaning and significance of that term.
Nor is the charge here that of a violation of Title VII, with its concept of a hostile work environment. Whether Newton, or Lewis for that matter, could be successfully prosecuted for a violation of that Act is not before us.
The AJ in his opinion made clear what was really at stake in this case. The Air Force was sorely embarrassed by the media attention given to this event, and decided that removal of Newton on discrimination grounds would placate its critics. As the AJ put it, “while the public’s perception of the cross burning is only one factor to be considered in determining the propriety of the agency’s penalty, I find it a critical and dis-positive factor under the circumstances of this case.” (My emphasis.)
One can abhor a deliberate act of cross-burning and all that it connotes, without condoning a misapplication of the law. The judicial decision whether there was such an act, and whether there was a violation of law, cannot be influenced by public notoriety or even by public demand for retribution. Being perceived as politically-eorrect may be an appropriate goal for political institutions, and it may be that the Air Force considers itself a political institution. Courts are not politi*602cal institutions, and it is our responsibility to apply the law as it is written. However poorly Newton may have behaved as a supervisor, on the undisputed facts of the case he did not engage in an act of “deliberate racial discrimination” against Lewis, by any understood meaning of that term. The contrary decision by the Board, upholding the Agency, is without substantial evidence in the record to support it, and is contrary to law. I would reverse the decision of the Board.

. It is interesting to note that the Air Force Guidelines admonish the reviewing officer to consider, even in the case of 'deliberate' discrimination by a supervisor, "whether [the offending supervisor] should be reassigned or changed to a lower grade to a position of a different character." Item 29b NOTE.

. Item 29a refers to "Discrimination based on ... sex."