Court Opinion

ID: 9457743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:32:05.96754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:29.758853
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
I concur with Judge Goldberg in the result that the District Court must allow access by EEOC to items 6 and 7 of the Demand for Access to Evidence. My concurrence is restricted to that result.
I accept a construction of Mrs. Chavez’s charge which EEOC has urged upon this court as an alternative to the construction preferred (and accepted as being within the statute) by Judge Goldberg, and preferred (but considered as outside the statute) by Judge Roney. It is that Mrs. Chavez’s charge could be considered as describing discrimination practiced against her in that she, because of her ethnic status as a Spanish surnamed American, was permitted or required by her employers to attend or to have contact with only segregated patients, and that this would be an unlawful employment practice under subsections (a) (1) and (2). EEOC’s brief (p. 19) says this:
The instant charge may also be interpreted as alleging that Rogers’ minority group employees are not permitted to have contact with Anglo-Saxon patients. This clearly constitutes an unlawful term or condition of employment which the Commission has authority to investigate, one which could not be justified under any set of facts, even if Rogers were to claim that the assignment of employees was the result of customer preference.
I agree with EEOC that this is a possible and rational construction. Thus read, and independently of the assertion of discriminatory discharge, the claim refers to unlawful employment practices consisting, under § 2000e-2(a) (1), of discrimination against Mrs. Chavez because of her race, color (etc), and, under § 2000e-2(a) (2), of classification of her because of her race, color (etc.).
On this appeal EEOC has given primary emphasis to the construction that the charge of employer segregation of patients (or clients), even if such a practice vis-a-vis the patients (or clients) themselves is not otherwise forbidden by law, is a charge that there exists a policy which so “infects the total environment” of employment that it constitutes an unlawful employment practice against any employee who works in that environment. This interpretation was given primary, if not sole, emphasis by EEOC in the District Court. The District Judge adopted it and, considering the charge as so construed, rejected the charge as a basis for access to items 6 and 7.
The hearing before District Judge Fisher consisted only of discussion with counsel, including that for EEOC. At that level EEOC eschewed the construction which it now asserts on appeal as an alternative meaning.
We must emphasize the failure of Mrs. Chavez’s complaint in this regard *242to show that she is aggrieved in a manner contemplated by Title VII. As it has been explained to the Court, Mrs. Chavez claims that Petitioners afford their patients different treatment according to their ethnic origins. It is not alleged that, for instance, Mrs. Chavez is required or permitted to attend only to patients of a certain ethnic origin and not to others. Such a complaint might indicate a classification of employees such as is prohibited by § 703. That is not our ease. Mrs. Chavez claims only that she is offended by the manner in which her former employers treated their customers.
Rogers v. EEOC, 316 F.Supp. 422, 425 (E.D.Texas, 1970). Thus, it appears to me that the District Judge understood that there was presented to him for consideration a construction of the claim which would embrace a broad and important extension of what previously had been judicially considered to be within the statute, an extension which he rejected, and that there was excluded from his consideration a possible narrower construction which he recognized might well be within the statute. His understanding came not from evidence or from statements made to him by Mrs. Chavez but from explanations given to him by EEOC of what it was that Mrs. Chavez was claiming. Now, at the appellate level, the narrower construction is asserted by EEOC as an alternative construction on the basis of which it should obtain the discovery it desires. This shifting position, as I point out below, is one. of the reasons why I would grant relief only on the narrower ground.
I adopt EEOC’s alternative construction for several reasons. It falls within the liberal principles of construction which we apply to lay-drawn charges filed with EEOC, often written by persons not well educated and usually by persons unschooled in the niceties of legal draftsmanship. Parliament House Motor Hotel v. EEOC, 444 F.2d 1335 (5th Cir., 1971); Sanchez v. Standard Brands, Inc., 431 F.2d 455 (5th Cir. 1970); Jenkins v. United Gas Corp., 400 F.2d 28 (5th Cir. 1968). The charge need only “give sufficient information to enable EEOC to see what the grievance is all about.” Parliament House, supra, 444 F.2d at 1339-1340, quoting from Jenkins v. United Gas, supra. We know from the charge that Mrs. Chavez complained, inter alia, that: “The above company has discriminated against me because of my national origin Spanish surnamed American by . segregating the patients.”
The construction which I adopt falls within well established boundaries of the statute — it is in terms of discrimination against Mrs. Chavez because of “such individual’s” race, national origin, etc., 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a) (1), or is a limitation, segregation or classification of Mrs. Chavez, adversely affecting her status as an employee, because of “such individual's” race, national origin, etc., 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2'(a) (2). With the “charge under investigation” given the construction which I accept, it is one made “by a person claiming to be aggrieved,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5, and items 6 and 7 meet the requirements of relevance and materiality to the charge. This strikes me as a much sounder judicial approach than construing the charge as asserting a type of discrimination indirect and collateral, pursuant to which Mrs. Chavez was offended by segregation practices directed against others who are of another ethnic group, and who are not employees, and directed at such others because of their race, national origin, etc.
The rule of liberal construction of lay-drawn charges prevents technicalities from closing the courthouse door to the unsophisticated. The purpose of the rule is fully vindicated by resting decision on a single allowable interpretation of the charge. Also, just as any other litigant, the agencies of the government should be encouraged, or even required, to advance at the earliest possible stage the contentions which they propose to make. Whether in this case the course of events has been ingenious or ingenuous, we have been presented at the appellate level with *243a problem consuming many hours of judicial labor, producing three differing views and no opinion of the court, concerning a question of discovery arising from an administrative proceeding where facility should be a watchword, and all in an appeal that possibly might have been avoided. Not only is it unnecessary for us to reach the primary construction asserted by EEOC, but in the circumstances of this case as a matter of judicial administration of our own affairs, it is inappropriate that we do so.