Court Opinion

ID: 8910426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 02:45:09.610994+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:08:28.903461
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge:
In these consolidated cases, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sought to enforce its administrative subpoena duces tecum to obtain information about the employment practices of Joseph Horne Company (Horne), a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated Dry Goods Company (Associated), with regard to race and sex, and Associated sought to challenge the validity of certain practices of EEOC relating to disclosure of EEOC investigative files to charging parties both by a suit for declaratory and injunctive relief and by resistance to the subpoena. The district court held that the EEOC procedural regulations set forth in 29 C.F.R. §§ 1601.20 and 1601.-17(d) and the special disclosure rules contained in § 83 of the EEOC Compliance Manual were void, invalid and unenforceable to the extent that they authorize EEOC to disclose to charging parties any information in EEOC investigative files. It therefore enjoined such disclosures and it granted enforcement of the subpoena subject to this registration on the use of the data to be obtained. Finally, Associated’s request for attorneys’ fees was denied.
Both parties appeal, and we affirm.
I.
From November 1971 through June 1973, several employees and former employees of Horne filed race and sex discrimination charges with EEOC. The latter undertook to investigate the charges and it served interrogatories on Horne, seeking relevant information. Horne, however, refused to answer the interrogatories without assurances from EEOC that the answers would not be disclosed to the charging parties, their attorneys, or others. EEOC’s view of its authority and its policy is directly to the contrary, see 29 C.F.R. §§ 1601.20 (current version at 29 C.F.R. § 1601.22) and 1601.-17(d); § 83 of EEOC Compliance Manual, and it declined to give the requested assurances. EEOC therefore issued a subpoena duces tecum to obtain the information. Horne petitioned EEOC to revoke the subpoena. At the time, EEOC had three commission members, two of whom affirmatively approved the decision not to revoke it. When Horne’s petition was denied, Horne did not comply with the subpoena; but Associated filed an action challenging the Commission’s disclosure policies and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. EEOC in turn instituted suit to enforce compliance with its subpoena and the cases were consolidated and decided together.
II.
The first issue that we must address is Associated’s argument that the subpoena was invalidly issued because EEOC lacked a quorum when it denied Horne’s petition to revoke the subpoena. Its argument is premised upon the fact that the Commission has a statutory size of five members, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e—4(a), with a direction that three shall constitute a quorum, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e—4(c), and the record shows that only two commissioners voted in writing to deny the petition to revoke the subpoena, notwithstanding that 29 C.F.R. § 1601.15(b) (1975) in effect at the time provided that a petition to revoke a subpoena shall be reviewed by the Commission. The district court was of the view that since the two votes approving denial of the petition would likely have prevailed in any event, any absence of the third member was immaterial and only a de minimis deviation from EEOC’s then regulation.
We are in essential agreement with the district court. We have heretofore approved the validity of the regulation which *1077permits the Compliance Director’s determination of whether to permit a subpoena to issue to prevail unless the Commission decides otherwise. EEOC v. South Carolina National Bank, 562 F.2d 329, 333 (4 Cir. 1977). Under the regulation, the members of the Commission need take affirmative action only if they conclude to reverse the Compliance Director’s determination. Here the record shows that a majority of the then Commission voted to sustain issuance of the subpoena so that the subpoena would have issued regardless of the vote of the third member. Since we view a vote on the correctness of the Compliance Director’s determination not a consultive act requiring an exchange of views, we think it makes no difference to the validity of the subpoena that the record does not show a vote by the third member.
III.
The Commission appeals from the determination that the disclosure to charging parties and their attorneys of investigative materials prior to suit is in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b) and 2000e-8(e), and therefore 29 C.F.R. §§ 1601. 20 (current version at 29 C.F.R. § 1601.22) and 1601.-17(d) and the special disclosure rules of § 83 of EEOC Compliance Manual are void to the extent that they provide otherwise.
The restrictions upon disclosure by EEOC of investigative information contained in §§ 2000e-5(b) and 2000e-8(e) and their effect upon the validity of EEOC’s regulations and Compliance Manual have been thoroughly considered by three Courts of Appeals with conflicting conclusions. The Fifth Circuit in H. Kessler & Co. v. EEOC, 472 F.2d 1147 (5 Cir. 1973) (in banc), a case on which EEOC heavily relies, held that charging parties and their attorneys are not members of the “public” within the meaning of the restrictive statutory language and consequently the regulations and the Compliance Manual do not exceed the statute and thus are valid and enforceable. The District of Columbia Circuit in Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. EEOC, 189 U.S.App.D.C. 163, 581 F.2d 941 (D.C. Cir. 1978), a case on which the district court in the instant case relied, and the Seventh Circuit in Burlington Northern, Inc. v. EEOC, 582 F.2d 1097 (7 Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 930, 99 S.Ct. 1267, 59 L.Ed.2d 486 (1979), reached the opposite conclusion. While Sears and Burlington attempted to distinguish Kessler (unpersuasively, we think), they also declined to follow it if it were indistinguishable.
The analysis of the legal arguments, the legislative history and the policy considerations on both sides of the question are so fully developed in Kessler, Sears and Burlington that we see little purpose in repeating them here, except to comment on two arguments of EEOC which are made to us. First, EEOC contends that a decision prohibiting EEOC from disclosure will unduly restrict it in conducting an investigation as, for example, when EEOC seeks corroboration from the individuals concerned of information supplied by their employer that their qualifications for the position to which they were promoted or for which they were hired were superior to those of the charging party who was not promoted or hired. We think that such corroboration may easily be obtained without violating the statutory restrictions by interrogating those employees on the basis that “it has been said” or “it has been reported” without providing them with letter and verse of the employer’s contentions or the specific identity of the representative of the employer advancing the contention. Second, we do not view our decision in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority v. Perry, 571 F.2d 195 (4 Cir. 1978), as supporting EEOC’s position in the instant case. That case arose under the Freedom of Information Act and the parties did not dispute the then judicial and administrative construction of Title VII permitting disclosure of investigative files to the party charged and the charging party. The instant case presents the dispute and we resolve it by following the District of Columbia and the Seventh Circuits.
We therefore hold that §§ 2000-5(b) and 2000e-8(e) prohibit EEOC from disclosing investigative materials to the parties prior *1078to suit. The provisions of the regulations and the Compliance Manual purporting to authorize such disclosures are invalid and unenforceable.
IV.
For the reasons assigned by the district court, we see no merit in Associated’s contentions that enforcement of the subpoena should be forbidden because of EEOC’s delay or misconduct in causing it to be issued, or because a charging party (Alice M. Corvino) filed suit to redress the discrimination allegedly practiced by Horne against her. Manifestly, in the view that we take of the case, the district court was correct in denying Associated counsel fees.

AFFIRMED.