Court Opinion

ID: 9496743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:34:25.046559+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:46.506795
License: Public Domain

*1067LOKEN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the opinion of the court. I write separately to address an additional issue relevant to the proceedings on remand. Judge Bye in dissent observes, “the record shows Sellers’s reinstatement was impractical due to other circumstances (i.e., the hostile environment she would have faced working for an employer who still employed the man who sexually harassed her).” Ante at 1072. If Judge Bye means to suggest that reinstatement is not potentially an issue on remand, I disagree. In my view, the issue of reinstatement will be very much alive if the FAA fails to establish that Sellers’s post-termination misconduct made her ineligible for reinstatement.
Sellers’s post-verdict motion for equitable relief properly sought the preferred remedy of reinstatement and included an alternative request for front pay if reinstatement was impractical. Because Joseph continued to be employed at Lambert Airport, Sellers requested reinstatement at another FAA facility, specifying three that would be convenient or suitable for her. Thus, while Judge Bye is correct that Joseph continued to be an FAA employee, the reinstatement Sellers requested would not have required her to work at the facility where Joseph was employed, and where her relations with other staff had significantly deteriorated prior to her termination. The FAAs response opposed front pay relief and advised that the agency was considering the feasibility of reinstatement. After learning of Sellers’s termination by Bank of America, the FAA decided in April 2001 not to reinstate her and argued to the district court that she was ineligible for reinstatement as an air traffic controller because of “misconduct which resulted in her termination from [Bank of America].” Mem. & Order of Dec. 13, 2001, at p.6.
The district court denied reinstatement, but not because of Sellers’s Bank of America misconduct. Rather, the court concluded that reinstatement “is impracticable in the circumstances” because the FAA expressed a continuing “unfavorable disposition” and “hostility” toward Sellers’s reemployment. Mem. & Order of Dec. 13, 2001, at p.9. For this conclusion, the court cited our decision in Cowan v. Strafford RVI School Dist., 140 F.3d 1153, 1160 (8th Cir.1998). But in Cowan, reinstatement would have reunited a terminated teacher with her antagonist, the school principal, at the same facility. Thus, the “hostility” issue in Cowan was comparable to the question whether Sellers should be reinstated at Lambert Airport with Joseph and other antagonistic co-workers, equitable relief Sellers did not seek. In Cowan, as in our earlier decision in Standley v. Chilhowee R-IV Sch. Dist., 5 F.3d 319, 322 (8th Cir.1993), we were unwilling to order a reinstatement that would threaten the proper functioning of a school by re-establishing admittedly hostile day-to-day working relationships between a teacher and her principal (Cowan), or between a number of teachers (Standley).
As the district court acknowledged earlier in its memorandum and order, Corvan and Standley “presented extraordinary circumstances which warrant denial of reinstatement.” 140 F.3d at 1160. On the other hand, “hostility engendered from litigation” is not extraordinary and does not bar this preferred remedy. Taylor v. Teletype Corp., 648 F.2d 1129, 1139 (8th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 969, 102 S.Ct. 515, 70 L.Ed.2d 386 (1981); accord Dickerson v. Deluxe Check Printers, Inc., 703 F.2d 276, 281 (8th Cir.1983). Therefore, only “[sjubstantial hostility, above that normally incident to litigation, is a sound basis for denying reinstatement.” United Paperworkers Int’l Union v. Champion Int’l Corp., 81 F.3d 798, 805 (8th Cir.1996), quoted in Hammond v. Northland Counseling Ctr., Inc. 218 F.3d 886, 892 (8th *1068Cir.2000). Yet the district court never analyzed whether, assuming Sellers was eligible for reinstatement despite her termination by Bank of America, the FAA demonstrated that its opposition to reinstatement was anything more than the lingering ill-will or hostility normally incident to this type of Title VII litigation.
In these circumstances, the district court on remand must first explore, in accordance with this court’s opinion, whether Sellers’s post-termination conduct renders her ineligible for reinstatement. If the FAA meets its burden of proof on that issue, presumably neither reinstatement nor front pay will be appropriate equitable relief. On the other hand, if Sellers prevails on this issue, then I think the district court should next revisit the issue of reinstatement, bearing in mind that “the passage of time may soften the most acrimonious of relationships,” United Paperworkers, 81 F.3d at 805, and determining whether there are terms of reinstatement reasonably comparable to those proposed by Sellers that are not impracti-cál because of either hostility above that normally incident to litigation or other sufficient reasons. In this regard, the parties must remember that reinstatement is the preferred equitable remedy. Therefore, the FAA, having violated Title VII, must have strong reasons to avoid reinstatement, and Sellers may not abandon hex-former willingness to accept reinstatement because she might now prefer a substantial front pay award. If the district court determines that equitable relief is appropriate despite the Bank of America termination, and that reinstatement is impractical under these rigorous standards, the court should then return to the question of front pay, including the issues of the length and dollar amount of front pay discussed in the court’s opinion.