Court Opinion

ID: 9741505
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:56:47.208467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:24.412670
License: Public Domain

CHEZEM, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The provisions of IC 22-9-1-6, properly construed, permit *452the emotional distress award granted in this case by the Indiana Civil Rights Commission. To the extent Holman holds otherwise, that decision should be reconsidered.
The section of the Federal Civil Rights Act comparable to IC 22-9-1-6, provides: “If the administrative law judge finds that a respondent has engaged or is about to engage in a discriminatory housing practice, such administrative law judge shall promptly issue an order for such relief as may be appropriate, which may include actual damages suffered by the aggrieved person and injunctive of other equitable relief.” (Emphasis added.) 42 U.S.C. § 3612(G)(3). This provision has been construed by the federal courts to include emotional distress damages. See Steele v. Title Realty Co., 478 F.2d 380 (1973). (Damages in a discriminatory housing action are not limited to out-of-pocket losses but may include an award for emotional distress and humiliation.)
Under IC 22-9-1-6, the Commission has the power to “restore the complainant’s losses [as] necessary to assure justice.” It cannot logically be maintained that the emotional distress suffered by a victim of discrimination is not a compensable “loss” under the statute. Assuring justice necessarily requires the making whole of an injured person, and a person found to have suffered emotional distress certainly is not whole. We should be vigilant to conform our determination of the law to the needs of the people of Indiana. Our Supreme Court recently recognized the need to revisit the issue of negligent infliction of emotional distress. Shuamber v. Henderson (1991), Ind., 579 N.E.2d 452. We, too, should be willing to reconsider the question of recovery for damages to a complainant’s emotional well being when his civil rights have been violated, for some of the rationale in Shuamber can be applied here.
I would therefore reverse that part of the trial court’s order disallowing the Crutcher’s emotional distress damages.