Court Opinion

ID: 9472104
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:49:29.650377+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:44.823147
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge, concurring.
In my opinion, the result reached by the majority may conflict with that reached by the Tenth Circuit in Manzanares v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 593 F.2d 968 (10th Cir. 1979). In Manzanares, the complaint apparently alleged only that the plaintiff was of “Mexican-American descent” or words to that effect. I cannot readily distinguish the allegation in Manzanares from the one before us, which invokes “Iraqi origin” or “background.” See also Gonzalez v. Stanford Applied Engineering, Inc., 597 F.2d 1298 (9th Cir.1979). One available approach here would be to accept the allegation before us and leave to summary judgment the question whether “race” (in either the popular or the anthropological sense) or color was involved. I think on balance, however, that it would be better to require that the complaint allege some facts from which it can be reasonably inferred that the plaintiff belongs to a group that is distinct from “white citizens” as a matter of race or color.1 Differences of race and color *51are, of course, physical and are presumably apparent to the casual observer. Groups so distinguishable were, I believe, within the legislative purpose of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Therefore, allegations which raise inferences of some basis in race or color should be acceptable. Since the present allegations of “Iraqi origin” apparently raise no such inference, I agree with the majority that they are inadequate.

. It is difficult to say that Iraqis are either “scientifically” regarded or "commonly accepted” as being of a different race. Cf. Budinsky v. Corning Glass Works, 425 F.Supp. 786, 788-89 *51(W.D.Pa.1977). A reference in the allegation to skin color would, of course, change the case. See Gonzalez v. Stanford Applied Engineering, Inc., supra.