Court Opinion

ID: 9472420
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:59:41.096467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:55.520992
License: Public Domain

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority opinion finds an express waiver of sovereign immunity by the State of Texas under the Texas Tort Claims Act and the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act as they apply to an injured maritime employee of the State of Texas. To reach this result the opinion engages in a strained and unjustified interpretation of the statutes. I, therefore, must dissent from the conclusion that the State of Texas has waived its sovereign immunity in this case.
*1044Briefly the argument is that in waiving sovereign immunity under the Texas Tort Claims Act, the state defines such a waiver as to state agencies carrying workers’ compensation in the words of Section 19 of the Tort Claims Act that the governmental unit is entitled to the “privileges and immunities” granted by the Compensation Act. Then, the opinion concludes that since the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act cannot protect private maritime employers from employees suing under the Jones Act, Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn, 346 U.S. 406, 74 S.Ct. 202, 98 L.Ed. 143 (1953), the giving of the “privileges and immunities” of the Workers’ Compensation Act to the state government units also takes away the sovereign immunities of the state government units from being sued by the government employees under the federal statute.
It is a peculiar interpretation, and to me an obvious thwarting of legislative policy, to find that granting “privileges and immunities” to a state governmental unit also includes placing upon the state units what must be called exceptions, disabilities and obligations of fhe Compensation Act. To see in this an express and intentional waiver of sovereign immunity by the State of Texas is a tortured interpretation contrary to any common understanding of the words.
The obvious purpose of Section 19 of the Texas Tort Claims Act is to give to the governmental unit as much protection from lawsuits by injured workers as the State of Texas gives private corporations. It is obviously not intended to go on and say that the governmental unit is subjected to additional federally imposed obligations as are private corporations. If that is what the Legislature had had in mind, it could very easily have said so. How a state grant of “privileges and immunities” to a state governmental unit can constitute an express waiver by the state of the important principle of sovereign immunity is simply beyond my comprehension. It is not the state that grants the Jones Act suit to injured maritime workers of private employers; it is federal law which controls. But if the maritime employee is a state employee, the state must grant the right through a waiver of sovereign immunity if there can be suit against the state under the Jones Act.
It is also of critical importance to realize that the issue of whether the state has enacted an express waiver of sovereign immunity is a matter of the interpretation of state law. If the state has spoken in interpreting its law, it is not within the authority of this Court to reinterpret that law. We have the authoritative state interpretation of these very provisions. In Lyons v. Texas A & M University, 545 S.W.2d 56 (Tex.Civ.App.1976), the precise issue of the case before us was decided by the Texas Court. That case involved the injury of a seaman on a vessel owned and operated by Texas A & M University, a governmental unit of Texas. Again, the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act had been adopted by the University and was applicable to the injury. Lyons, however, brought suit to recover damages for unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure, and negligence under the Jones Act. The Texas Court of Civil Appeals in an opinion by Justice Cire held that the state district court had been correct in dismissing the claim, finding the Texas Workers’ Compensation remedy the exclusive remedy under the Texas Tort Claims Act and the applicable Texas Workers’ Compensation Statute. The Court held that Section 19 of the Texas Tort Claims Act gave the University “all the privileges and immunities granted” by the Workers’ Compensation laws and made its remedy exclusive. The Supreme Court of Texas denied review, finding no reversible error. Tex.Writs of Error Table, 134 (1982).
We are bound by this interpretation of the Texas law by the Texas Court of Civil Appeals with writ of error refused. The state has interpreted these statutes as not constituting a waiver of sovereign immunity. It is significant to note that Justice Cire, who with his colleagues established this interpretation of the Texas laws as a member of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals, is now United States District Judge Cire who rendered decision in the case *1045which is before us. In his decision he properly gave the same interpretation. It surely strengthens the application of the state law for the district judge who applied it to have been the judge who created the authoritative state interpretation when he was a Justice of the state court. Judge Cire knew what the law of the State of Texas was with respect to express waiver. We have no authority to overrule him.
As a matter of analysis I cannot accept a magic that creates disabilities and obligations out of a grant of “privileges and immunities”. But even if I am wrong in that respect, the issue is one of state law, we have the authoritative state interpretation, and the majority opinion does not follow it. Need more be said? There is no express waiver.
Since I take the position there is no express waiver, I must face the additional issue of whether there is an implied waiver by the State of Texas. Here I also think it is clear that there is not. Parden v. Terminal R.R. Co., 377 U.S. 184, 84 S.Ct. 1207, 12 L.Ed.2d 233 (1964), constitutes the high water mark of the Supreme Court finding a forced implied state waiver of sovereign immunity in Federal Employers’ Liability Act and Jones Act claims. In that ease the Court took the position that merely by operating an interstate railroad, a federally regulated business, the state waived its sovereign immunity.
The Supreme Court has backed away from that extreme holding as its full implications have surfaced. Thus in Employers of the Dept. of Public Health & Welfare v. Dept. of Public Health & Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 286, 93 S.Ct. 1614, 1618, 36 L.Ed.2d 251 (1973), the Supreme Court modified Parden by holding that it is not enough to show that the state itself is operating within a federally regulated sphere. A plaintiff must also show that Congress expressly provided that the private remedy would be applicable to the states.
Relying upon Employers, we held in Intracoastal Transportation, Inc. v. Decatur County, Georgia, 482 F.2d 361 (5th Cir.1973), that the state had not impliedly waived its immunity against claims brought under the Bridge Act of 1906 simply by operating in a federal regulated sphere. “[T]he private litigant must show that Congress expressly provided that the private remedy is applicable to the states.” Id. at 365. There is no such express provision in the Jones Act. And in Freimanis v. Sea-Land Service, Inc., 654 F.2d 1155, 1160 (5th Cir.1981), we extended our decision in Intracoastal to find no implied waiver of sovereign immunity when the cause of action was brought under the River and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, 33 U.S.C. § 401.
But the Supreme Court has now gone even further in protecting the states in their own governmental activities from the regulatory intrusion by the United States. In 1974, Congress broadened the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq., specifically to include ‘.‘public agencies”, including “the government of a state or political subdivision thereof.” 29 U.S.C. § 203(d)(x). This opened the states to liability under the FLSA to its own governmental employees with enforcement of the law by the United States Government and also by private suits brought by the employees.
The Supreme Court had earlier upheld a much narrower extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act applying it to “state hospitals, institutions and schools.” Maryland y. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 88 S.Ct. 2017, 20 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1968). But after carefully considering the serious intrusion upon the ability of a. state to carry out its own governmental activities when the federal government dictates state employment policies, the Supreme Court just eight years later specifically overruled Maryland v. Wirtz. The Court held unconstitutional Congress’ intrusion of the Fair Labor Standards Act into state governmental activities. National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976).
We no longer find that the “plenary power” of Congress to regulate in the delegat*1046ed areas of federal regulation overrides the critical importance of recognizing the states as governmental entities in a federal system. The states must be left to carry out their own governmental functions in ways which they decide are best. The Court in Usery concluded:
Congress may not exercise that power so as to force directly upon the states its choices as to how essential decisions' regarding the conduct of integral governmental functions are to be made. We agree that such assertions of power if unchecked, would indeed, as Mr. Justice Douglas cautioned in his dissent in Wirtz, allow “the National Government [to] devour the essentials of state sovereignty,” 392 U.S. at 205, 88 S.Ct. at 2028,
It is not necessary at this time to decide if Congress has the power to force the application of the Jones Act on the various states by affording that remedy to maritime employees of the state government itself as it carries out its governmental functions. I am willing to assume for purposes of this decision that the traditionally strong policy of the federal government in dealing with maritime matters would justify such a conclusion, even though the Usery, case can be said to raise considerable doubt. But what is of critical importance is that before that issue arises, Congress, in spite of state sovereignty considerations, must undertake specifically to force the states to be subservient to federal regulation with respect to their own employees engaging in these governmental activities. Congress has not done this. It cannot be said that there is an implied waiver by the State of Texas. There is no activity by the State of Texas which can possibly implicate a waiver. And the silence of Congress cannot be taken as driving the state into a waiver by implication.
With regard to Judge Brown’s scholarly and thorough concurring opinion, I make only this one pertinent observation. The injury to Welch in this case took place in connection with the operation of a state owned ferry boat. This ferry boat was operated by the Texas Highway Department as part of its highway system. It operated in lieu of a bridge. This overriding fact removes it substantially from comparison to the railroad involved in Parden v. Terminal By. of Alabama State Docks Dept., 377 U.S. 184, 84 S.Ct. 1207, 12 L.Ed.2d 233 (1964). That case involved a terminal railroad serving docks. By law of the State of Alabama it was specifically a “common carrier” and was operating for profit. It is clear in Parden that the State had moved out of its governmental functions into commercial and proprietary activity in the operation of the railroad. In contrast, in this case, the State of Texas was operating the ferry as part of a well recognized thoroughly governmental nonprofit function — the building and maintaining of an effective highway system for its citizens. In spite of the weakening of Par-den in later cases as described above, if Parden needs to be distinguished, it is easily distinguishable as a proprietary, for profit, business operation of a common carrier by the State.
I conclude, therefore, that Judge Cire was fully correct in applying the state law in interpreting the state statutes to find that there is no express waiver of sovereign immunity in a suit brought by a state maritime employee carrying out governmental functions. I further find no justification or authority for an implied waiver. Allowing the federal government to intrude upon the way a state government carries out its own governmental functions is a questionable and delicate business at best. We should not readily assume that the state has yielded its control over, its own employees to the federal government nor should we readily assume that the federal government is insisting that the state, regardless of its own interest, be forced to yield its control over its own employees.
Finally, this injured employee is not left without remedy. The State of Texas entitles her to full Texas Workers’ Compensation under the Texas law. Texas voluntarily has waived sovereign immunity to protect its government employees under its own law.
I dissent.