Court Opinion

ID: 9485990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:35:27.304219+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:28.952428
License: Public Domain

*570RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
with whom ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting.
The Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari in two eases that will address the retroactivity of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. It is highly likely that the Court will address the fundamental dichotomy presented by the conflicting holdings in Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U.S. 204, 208, 109 S.Ct. 468, 471-72, 102 L.Ed.2d 493 (1988) and Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 416 U.S. 696, 711, 94 S.Ct. 2006, 2016, 40 L.Ed.2d 476 (1974). Once that basic issue is resolved, the more particular issues of retroactivity will be subject to relatively easy judicial resolution. Therefore, I believe it is a significant judicial diseconomy for this court to proceed to judgment in this en banc proceeding until that basic issue is resolved. I believe that the most appropriate course would have been to hold this case until after the Supreme Court renders its opinion.
If, despite the presently existing ambiguous precedent on retroactivity, we must deal with the merits at this time, I would hold that the Act is retroactive. Consequently, the prior panel holdings in Luddington v. Indiana Bell Telephone Co., 966 F.2d 225 (7th Cir.1992), and Mozee v. American Commercial Marine Service Co., 963 F.2d 929 (7th Cir.1992), ought to be overruled. In my view, even if we indulge in the general presumption that statutes are to be applied in a prospective fashion, that presumption is nullified in this case by the explicit language of the statute. Whatever the motivations of Congress in casting the statute in these terms, we must accept its manifest intent.