Court Opinion

ID: 9780653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 02:19:15.268745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:09.773350
License: Public Domain

KING, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
It has been just short of fifteen years since Justice Thomas delivered the opinion on behalf of a unanimous Supreme Court in Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 117 S.Ct. 843, 136 L.Ed.2d 808 (1997), a decision that has since stood as the definitive authority on statutory construction. Then, as now, a plaintiff having no active employment relationship with the defendant employer had commenced a lawsuit alleging unlawful retaliation pursuant to a federal remedial statute that, on its face, provides redress solely to “employees.” Prior to the Court’s reversal of our en banc judgment in Robinson, few imagined that a former employee could successfully sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In like fashion here, Natalie Del-linger, a prospective employee of Science Applications International Corporation, has brought suit against the company pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (the “FLSA” or “Act”). Dellinger’s Complaint alleges that Science Applications agreed to hire her but wrongly refused to follow through notwithstanding that she had fulfilled each disclosed condition of employment.
It appears, however, that Ms. Dellinger failed to meet one additional, undisclosed condition: that she not have demonstrated an inclination to hold her bosses accountable under the law. Science Applications terminated the hiring process upon being informed that Dellinger had recently filed suit against her previous employer pursuant to the FLSA. According to the Complaint, the allegations and reasonable in*232ferences of which we are bound to take as true, Science Applications jettisoned Del-linger’s paperwork in retaliation for her having exercised her lawful rights. The district court nonetheless ruled that Del-linger had failed to state a viable FLSA claim against Science Applications and dismissed her case. The majority affirms with no discussion of Robinson or its established methodology, giving its thumbs-up to the company’s conduct and paving the way for other employers to adopt similar practices. Because I cannot escape the conclusion that Robinson mandates the opposite result from that reached by the majority today, I respectfully dissent.
I.
A.
In Robinson, the Court instructed that the “first step in interpreting a statute is to determine whether the language at issue has a plain and unambiguous meaning with regard to the particular dispute in the case. Our inquiry must cease if the statutory language is unambiguous and the statutory scheme is coherent and consistent.” 519 U.S. at 340, 117 S.Ct. 843 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). To determine whether a statutory provision is ambiguous, a court looks “to the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole.” Id. at 341, 117 S.Ct. 843 (citations omitted).
The Robinson Court concluded that the word “employee” in Title VII was ambiguous because (1) there was no temporal qualifier in the statute to indicate that it applied either to current or former employees, i.e., neither the term “current employee” nor the term “former employee” appeared anywhere in Title VII; (2) the statute’s prescribed definition of employee also contained no temporal qualifier, meaning that it could include either current or former employees; and (3) the statute referred to “reinstatement” and “hiring” of employees, both of which indicate an expansion of the definition beyond current employees. See 519 U.S. at 341-43, 117 S.Ct. 843. The Court continued: “Once it is established that the term ‘employees’ includes former employees in some sections, but not in others, the term standing alone is necessarily ambiguous and each section must be analyzed to determine whether the context gives the term a further meaning that would resolve the issue in dispute.” Id. at 343-44, 117 S.Ct. 843 (emphasis added).
Finding it necessary, in light of Title VII’s ambiguity, to embark on a contextual analysis, the Supreme Court observed that “several sections of the statute plainly contemplate that former employees will make use of the remedial mechanisms of Title VII.” 519 U.S. at 345, 117 S.Ct. 843. The Court endorsed the government’s position, as amicus curiae, that a restrictive interpretation “would undermine the effectiveness of Title VII by allowing the threat of postemployment retaliation to deter victims of discrimination from complaining to the EEOC, and would provide a perverse incentive for employers to fire employees who might bring Title VII claims.” Id. at 346, 117 S.Ct. 843. The Court thus ordered reinstatement of the plaintiffs retaliation action, “[i]t being more consistent with the broader context of Title VII and the primary purpose of [the antiretaliation provision].” Id.
Robinson, of course, did not arise under the FLSA, but its analytical framework readily admits of a more widely reaching application, and it should therefore powerfully inform our analysis of Dellinger’s appeal. Indeed, we have acknowledged “the almost uniform practice of courts in considering the authoritative body of Title VII *233case law when interpreting the comparable provisions of other federal statutes.” Darveau v. Detecon, Inc., 515 F.3d 334, 342 (4th Cir.2008) (citations omitted). The FLSA’s designation of an “employee” as “any individual employed by an employer,” 29 U.S.C. § 203(e)(1), is more than “comparable” to that of Title VII, which defines the same term as “an individual employed by an employer,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(f). We have, in fact, called the two definitions “identical.” Darveau, 515 F.3d at 342.
It is hardly surprising, then, that in Darveau we determined that the FLSA, just like Title VTI as applied in Robinson, protects former employees from retaliation. In so concluding, we discerned “no significant differences in either the language or intent of the two statutes regarding the type of adverse action their retaliation provisions prohibit.” 515 F.3d at 342. Judge Motz explained, somewhat prophetically, that it is necessary to afford such protection to former employees “because they often need references from past employers, they may face retaliation from new employers who learn they have challenged the labor practices of previous employers, and they sometimes must return to past employers for a variety of reasons, putting them once more at risk of retaliation.” Id. at 343 (emphasis added) (citation omitted).
B.
1.
We could not have ruled as we did in Darveau without acknowledging, though tacitly, that the word “employee,” as used in the FLSA, is as necessarily ambiguous there as it is in Title VII. To that extent, at least, Darveau binds the majority, but it nonetheless appears to have reached the same conclusion on its own that this is not a “plain language” case. Although it purports to rule “[biased on the statutory text,” ante at 227, the majority also relies on its divination of the purpose of the Act, together with an assessment of the statutory context, to circumscribe who may be considered an employee thereunder. See ante at 228-30.
As the majority correctly notes, the FLSA primarily concerns itself with establishing minimum wages and maximum hours for current employees. That notwithstanding, the Act also prohibits the movement in commerce of goods with respect to “the production of which any employee ivas employed” in violation of the wage and hour requirements. 29 U.S.C. § 215(a)(1) (emphasis added). The word “employee” in that sense can refer to former employees, as made clear by the subsection following, which provides that the government may establish a prima facie case of an employer’s violation by showing that the overworked or underpaid employee was employed “within ninety days prior to the removal of the goods from” the employee’s place of employment. § 215(b).
It is, of course, scarcely remarkable that the FLSA applies to former employees; that was, after all, our plain holding in Darveau. The more salient point for our purposes is that the Act’s ascription of more than one meaning to the word “employee” establishes, for Robinson purposes, that the statutory term is “necessarily ambiguous.” I therefore agree with the majority that we must examine contextual clues to ascertain the breadth of the FLSA’s antiretaliation provision.
2.
It is unlawful under the FLSA “for any person,” not just employers, “to discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee because such employee has filed any complaint or instituted ... any proceeding under or related to *234this chapter[.]” 29 U.S.C. § 215(a), -(a)(3). The Act criminalizes willful violations of § 215, and it also provides civil recourse to “employees affected” by the retaliatory acts described in subsection (a)(3). See § 216(a), -(b). Affected employees are entitled to “legal or equitable relief as may be appropriate to effectuate the purposes of’ the antiretaliation provision, “including without limitation employment, reinstatement, promotion, and the payment of wages lost and an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” § 216(b). Liability attaches to “[a]ny employer,” id., which “includes any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee.” § 203(d).
A plain reading of these several sections of the Act, taken together, indicates that Congress was concerned enough with retaliatory conduct to impose criminal penalties on actual decisionmakers (“any person”), regardless of whether that person could also be considered the employing entity or was acting at the entity’s behest. Civil liability for retaliation, on the other hand, is reserved for employers and their agents who are sued by an “employee,” which generally means “any individual employed by an employer.” § 203(e)(1). Science Applications is undoubtedly an employer subject to the Act, and Ms. Del-linger broadly qualifies as an employee, having once sued her former employer for allegedly violating the FLSA. It does not follow perforce, however, that “Dellinger could only sue Science Applications if she could show ... that Science Applications was her employer.” Ante at 229 (emphasis added).
It would hardly be a stretch to interpret the FLSA to permit Ms. Dellinger’s action, particularly considering that other, similar remedial statutes already apply to employees in her situation. For example, the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) defines the term “employee” to “include any employee, and shall not be limited to the employees of a particular employer.” 29 U.S.C. § 152(3). Moreover, as the majority sets forth, regulations implementing the Occupational Safety and Health Act (“OSHA”) have construed that statute to afford court access to prospective employees. See ante at 231 (citing 29 C.F.R. § 1977.5(b)). This has occurred notwithstanding that OSHA defines “employee” arguably more narrowly than does the FLSA as “an employee of an employer who is employed in a business of his employer which affects commerce.” 29 U.S.C. § 652(6) (emphasis added).
The majority finds these analogs unpersuasive, observing unremarkably that the NLRA’s particularized definition of “employee” more readily lends itself to an expansive reading of who may sue. See ante at 231. The majority’s point appears to be that the absence of similarly detailed language in the FLSA demands the conclusion that Congress intended the eligibility for bringing a retaliation suit under that statute to be more restrictive. But Robinson counsels against just that sort of negative inference:
[Tjhat other statutes have been more specific in their coverage of “employees” and “former employees,” see, e.g., 2 U.S.C. § 1301(4) (1994 ed., Supp. I) (defining “employee” to include “former employee”); 5 U.S.C. § 1212(a)(1) (including “employees, former employees, and applicants for employment” in the operative provision), proves only that Congress can use the unqualified term “employees” to refer only to current employees, not that it did so in this particular statute.
519 U.S. at 341-42, 117 S.Ct. 843 (emphasis in original). Likewise, Congress can certainly use the word “employee” in a manner that excludes prospective employ*235ees or applicants for employment, but that it declined in this case to expressly include them is not, under Robinson, reliable evidence of legislative intent to the contrary.
The majority sloughs off the approach taken in administering OSHA, noting simply that “[t]he Secretary of Labor has not ... promulgated a similar regulation for the FLSA.” Ante at 231. True enough, we have not been specifically tasked with deciding whether the Secretary could reasonably construe the Act in the manner that Ms. Dellinger seeks. But in dismissing outright her arguments, even in this non-deferential context, are we not implicitly passing upon the objective reasonableness of the construction for which she advocates? I suppose the majority would be constrained to rejoin that permitting retaliation suits absent some sort of employment privity is indeed unreasonable if one accords significance to the FLSA having been fashioned in the crucible of that privity, a proposition enthusiastically endorsed by the majority, ante at 230-31. Following that logic, and mindful of OSHA’s similarly discrete mandate that an employer “furnish to each of his employees ... a place of employment ... free from recognized hazards,” 29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1) (emphasis added), the Secretary should be grateful that her occupational safety and health regulations are not before us today, for they would surely wither under the majority’s unforgiving gaze.
The majority thus ignores Robinson and resorts to its unsanctioned “original intent” methodology, presumably because it cannot adequately square the result it reaches with the Act’s substantive context, that is, the literal words of § 216(b) affording victims of retaliation the alternative remedies of “reinstatement” and “employment.” Obviously, only former employees can be reinstated, leaving the remedy of employment to those who cannot be reinstated, i.e., those, like Dellinger, who have yet to be employed. See Robinson, 519 U.S. at 342, 117 S.Ct. 843 (illustrating intended breadth of term “employee” in Title VII through alternative remedies of reinstatement and hiring, observing that “because one does not reinstate current employees, that language necessarily refers to former employees”) (internal brackets and quotation marks omitted); see also Broughman v. Carver, 624 F.3d 670, 677 (4th Cir.2010) (reiterating “our duty to give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute”) (citation omitted). Informed by the context of § 216(b), Ms. Dellinger’s construction of the word “employee” in § 215(a) is, in my opinion, compelled by Robinson. At the very least, her construction seems eminently reasonable.
I am therefore left to wonder why, in the face of a statute’s relative silence as to a material enforcement term, we must presume that a particular avenue is foreclosed because it is not explicitly mentioned, rather than permitted because it is not specifically prohibited. See Healy Tibbitts Builders, Inc. v. Dir., Office of Workers’ Comp. Programs, 444 F.3d 1095, 1100 (9th Cir.2006) (“[Fjaced with two reasonable and conflicting interpretations, [an act] should be interpreted to further its remedial purpose.”). The majority’s decision today bucks the trend begun by Robinson, which is indisputably toward an expansive interpretation of protective statutes like Title VII and the FLSA to thwart employer retaliation. See, e.g., Gomez-Perez v. Potter, 553 U.S. 474, 491, 128 S.Ct. 1931, 170 L.Ed.2d 887 (2008) (concluding that, under applicable provision of ADEA, federal employee may state claim for retaliation as form of discrimination); CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, 553 U.S. 442, 457, 128 S.Ct. 1951, 170 L.Ed.2d 864 (2008) (ruling that anti-discrimination provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 encompass action for retaliation); Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. *236of Educ., 544 U.S. 167, 178, 125 S.Ct. 1497, 161 L.Ed.2d 361 (2005) (same with respect to Title IX).
Behind this impressive array of authority is the Supreme Court’s acknowledgment of the vital role that antiretaliation provisions play in regulating a vast range of undesirable behaviors on the part of employers. See, e.g., Crawford v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson Cnty., Tenn., 555 U.S. 271, 129 S.Ct. 846, 852, 172 L.Ed.2d 650 (2009) (observing that fear of retaliation is primary motivation behind employees’ failure to voice concerns about bias and discrimination and reversing Sixth Circuit’s judgment in employer’s favor as inconsistent with primary objective of Title VII to avoid harm to employees) (citations omitted); Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 57, 126 S.Ct. 2405, 165 L.Ed.2d 345 (2006) (explaining that liability for Title VII retaliation extends well beyond those actions affecting terms and conditions of employment to include employer’s acts outside workplace that are “materially adverse to a reasonable employee or job applicant”). There is no reason to doubt that similar concerns obtain in the FLSA context, as expressed in Reyes-Fuentes v. Shannon Produce Farm, 671 F.Supp.2d 1365, 1368 (S.D.Ga.2009) (“Congress chose to rely upon information and complaints from employees seeking to vindicate their rights. Plainly, effective enforcement could thus only be expected if employees felt free to approach officials with their grievances”) (citations omitted).
In Robinson itself, Justice Thomas took note of the plaintiffs and the government’s arguments that the essence and continued vitality of Title VII’s enforcement scheme depended on a beneficent view of its scope.
These arguments carry persuasive force given their coherence and their consistency with a primary purpose of antiretaliation provisions: Maintaining unfettered access to statutory remedial mechanisms.... [I]t would be destructive of this purpose of the anti-retaliation provision for an employer to be able to retaliate with impunity against an entire class of acts.... We agree with these contentions and find that they support the inclusive interpretation of “employees” ... that is already suggested by the broader context of Title VII.
519 U.S. at 346, 117 S.Ct. 843 (citations omitted). Indeed, the conduct in which Science Applications is alleged to have engaged in this very case is especially troubling, vividly demonstrating through Dellinger’s example of how easily it can identify “litigious” applicants and resolve to exclude the entire class from its payroll. It is beyond my comprehension that the majority can shrug its shoulders and countenance this sort of behavior when the Supreme Court has provided the means and encouragement to do something about it.
II.
Finally, the majority overlooks our decision in McLaughlin v. Ensley, 877 F.2d 1207 (4th Cir.1989), in which we opened the door to a less restrictive interpretation of “employee” in the FLSA context. In Ensley, we ruled that the employer’s unpaid trainees must be considered employees and entitled to minimum wage payments even though the culmination of the hiring process was made contingent upon the successful completion of the training. Id. at 1210. In so concluding, the Ensley majority rejected the dissent’s view that the trainees did not fit within § 203(e)(l)’s definition of “employee.” See 877 F.2d at 1210 (Wilkins, J., dissenting) (characterizing “the true legal issue” as being the *237classification of the trainees as employees under the FTCA).
At Science Applications, Ms. Dellinger found herself in the same position as the trainees in Ensley. There was no legitimate impediment between her and the imminent assumption of her job duties. Cf. Ensley, 877 F.2d at 1208 (reciting that the trainees could, in theory, have demonstrated themselves unqualified, but observing that “no person, who had completed the training, was not subsequently hired”). Ensley is, of course, binding upon subsequent panels, and it requires us to recognize the validity of Ms. Dellinger’s FLSA retaliation claim, just as we recognized as valid the trainees’ claim for wage payments under the Act.
III.
For all the foregoing reasons, I am convinced that Ms. Dellinger, an employee within the meaning of the FLSA, has pleaded a legally sufficient retaliation claim against Science Applications. Inasmuch as the majority holds to the contrary, I respectfully dissent.