Court Opinion

ID: 9482925
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:05:07.152196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:17.513475
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority has done a thorough, but, in my view, abstract and mechanical, job in analyzing the impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The specific facts of the real-life case before us seem to me to cry out for a different solution. The joint presumptions that court decisions operate retroactively while legislation operates prospectively have combined here to produce a result that is neither rational nor just.
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 (insofar as it is relevant here) overrules a key Supreme Court decision—Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U.S. 164, 109 S.Ct. 2363, 105 L.Ed.2d 132 (1989). But all the events giving rise to liability in the case before us — acts of intentional racial discrimination allegedly pervading the employment relationship — occurred many years before Patterson was rendered. Even the lawsuit was brought long before Patterson was decided.
*941Patterson became the law for a short time as this case was inching through a thicket of litigation, and the opinion in this case as presently written assumes that it is still in effect. Now, however, Congress has chosen to erase Patterson from the books. So, as I write, the law is the same as that prevailing at the time the discriminatory events took place and at the time the lawsuit was filed. In other words, Patterson was the effective law of the land at no time that is relevant to the disposition of this case. No one relied on it when liability was incurred in this case, nor can we rely on it now that it has been overruled by Congress.
In addition to the anomalous result it produces in this unusual case, the majority’s opinion has a number of defects on its own terms. For example, the majority admits that the explicitly prospective language of sections 402(b) and 109(c) suggests retroactivity for the rest of the Act, but finds that language “not sufficiently probative of congressional intent.” Ante at 933. At the same time, the majority also admits that the legislative history is generally opaque. Ante at 934. Although I agree that section 402(b) is clearly surplusage, there is no reason to treat section 109(c) similarly. Given the general lack of information, we should give effect to the only direction Congress has provided: if section 109 is to apply prospectively, the rest of the Act is retroactive. See Stender v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 780 F.Supp. 1302, 1303 (N.D.Cal.1992) (plain language of Act supports retroactivity).
I also believe that the majority errs when it asserts that, among the provisions relevant to this litigation, only section 102, which provides for compensatory and punitive damages under Title VII, “is even arguably applicable under Bradley.” Ante at 938. Although section 101 is phrased as a substantive ban on discrimination, its effect is to make the damage provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 applicable to conduct that Title VII has always prohibited. Section 101 merely provides new remedies for old wrongs. Insofar as these new remedies include compensatory damages, section 101 appears to be the kind of “damage provision[] that do[es] not affect substantive rights” that may be presumed to be retroactive under Bradley. Ante at 938. Arguably, even under the majority’s analysis, we should apply section 101 of the Act and reinstate the plaintiffs’ claims under section 1981. See Mozee II, 940 F.2d at 1051-55. And these points certainly do not exhaust the catalog of exceptions that may be taken to the majority’s approach. See generally Mojica v. Gannett Co., 779 F.Supp. 94 (N.D.Ill.1991).
Whether we consider the facts of this case or the language of the Act, Patterson should not apply here, and the opinion in Mozee II should be revised in accordance with the law applied before Patterson was decided. Through a mechanical application of principles that are ill-fitting here, the majority has succeeded in applying rules of law not relied upon at the time of the discriminatory acts, not recognized when the lawsuit was brought and not in force now. This is substantially unjust to the plaintiffs and I respectfully dissent.