Court Opinion

ID: 9719372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:50:02.214638+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:05.988579
License: Public Domain

RUCKER, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur with the majority's decision upholding the Commission's cease and desist order against Washburn Realtors for its unlawful discrimination against Sharon Johnson. However, I must respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority's decision reversing the Commission's award of emotional distress damages and punitive damages.
The majority correctly cites decisions of this court holding that the Commission has no power to award emotional distress damages or punitive damages. The leading case and primary authority for this rule is Indiana Civil Rights Com'n v. Holman (1978), 177 Ind.App. 648, 380 N.E.2d 1281. Because I believe Holman was wrongly decided, it is my opinion the majority's decision is based on precedent which is funda*298mentally flawed. The present rule should be reconsidered and abandoned.1
In Holman, the First District of this court held that the Commission exceeded its statutory authority by awarding compensatory damages for a racial insult. In so holding the court construed Ind.Code § 22-9-1-6(k)(1), which empowers the Commission as follows:
[I]f the commission finds a person has engaged in an unlawful discriminatory practice, [it] shall cause to be served on this person an order requiring the person to cease and desist from the unlawful discriminatory practice and requiring such person to take further affirmative action as will effectuate the purposes of this chapter, including but not limited to the power:
(A) to restore complainant's losses incurred as a result of discriminatory treatment, as the commission may deem necessary to assure justice; however, this specific provision when applied to orders pertaining to employment shall include only wages, salary, or commissions([.]
The Holman court offers a two-pronged rationale for its conclusion that Ind.Code § 22-9-1-6(k)(1) does not permit a compensatory award for a racial insult. First, the Legislature intended "losses" to mean only actual pecuniary losses. Second, the statute does not specifically empower the Commission to make such awards.
The court's conclusion that the Legislature intended "losses" to mean only pecuniary losses was offered without any analysis or citation to authority. In my view, absent a precise legislative definition for the word "losses", the General Assembly intended it to be used in its plain, everyday, and common meaning. Indiana Dept. of Human Services v. Firth (1992), Ind.App. 590 N.E.2d 154, trons, denied. "Losses" has been interpreted to be synonymous with or equivalent to "damages." Black's Law Dictionary (1990, 6th Ed.). In turn, our federal courts have routinely construed the term "actual damages" in 42 U.S.C. § 3612(g)(8), a provision of the Fair Housing Act, analogous to 1.C. § 22-9-1-6, to include recovery for humiliation and mental anguish suffered as a result of civil rights violations. See e.g., Crumble v. Blumthal (7th Cir.1977) 549 F.2d 462. Given the Commission's mandate to assure justice, I fail to see any principled difference between the term "losses" in our statute and the term "actual damages" in the federal one.
I agree wholeheartedly with Judge Chezem's dissents in Crutcher v. Dabis (1991) Ind.App., 582 N.E.2d 449, trans. denied and Indiana Civil Rights Com'n v. Union Twp. Trustee (1992), Ind.App., 590 N.E.2d 1119, 1121, trans. denied:
It cannot logically be maintained that the emotional distress suffered by a victim of discrimination is not a compensable "loss" under the statute. Assuring justice necessarily requires the making whole of an injured person, and a person found to have suffered emotional distress certainly is not whole.
Crutcher, supra, 582 N.E.2d at 452 (Chez-em, J., dissenting). Judge Chezem's perspective on the meaning of the term "losses" is far more consistent with traditional concepts of compensation than that of Holman.
Indiana Code § 22-9-1-2(f) specifically directs that this state's Civil Rights Act "shall be construed broadly to effectuate its purpose." Holman does not acknowledge this directive and I believe the analytical errors of the opinion stem directly from that omission. The legislative mandate permits the Commission to require "further affirmative action as will effectuate the purposes of this chapter ... as the Commission may deem necessary to assure justice." 1.0. § 22-9-1-6(k)(1). This is expansive language, indicating a plenary grant of discretionary remedial power. Construed *299broadly, this statute expresses a clear intent to provide the Commission with the discretion to fashion relief calculated to remedy the pernicious effects of unlawful discrimination.
My research reveals that the appellate courts in other jurisdictions have come to widely varying conclusions concerning the power of civil rights commissions to make compensatory awards to alleviate the effects of racial humiliation.2 I believe the better view is that such awards represent a necessary component of the statutory mandate to enforce the remedial policies expressed in civil rights legislation. Here, we should construe 1.C. § 22-9-1-6(k)(1) in a manner that gives the Commission the authority to make the expenditure of money the price of unlawful discriminatory conduct. Such construction is consistent with the manifest purpose of the statute-investing the Commission with a meaningful social role in ensuring compliance with civil rights law.
The alternative view, as expressed in Hoiman, leads to an ineffective Commission, unable to carry out its remedial task. I cannot believe it was the intent of the Legislature to establish a remedial policy, ereate an agency to enforce that policy, endow that agency with the discretionary mandate to achieve substantive justice, and yet fail to give that agency the most basic of tools to exercise its discretion.
For the foregoing reasons, I would refuse to follow Holman and its progeny and uphold the Commission's award of emotional distress damages and punitive damages.

. I am aware of the rule of statutory construction which provides that the legislature's failure to change a statute after a line of decisions of a court "of last resort" giving the statute a certain construction amounts to acquiescence by the legislature in that judicial construction. Miller v. Mayberry (1987) Ind., 506 N.E.2d 7. Our supreme court has not addressed the issue here today. Therefore it remains a proper subject for reconsideration. Id.

. For a review of relevant case law and an especially thoughtful analysis, see State Human Rights Comm'n v. Pearlman Realty Agency (1977), 161 W.Va. 1, 239 S.E.2d 145.