Court Opinion

ID: 9456512
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:55:14.263713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:00.210638
License: Public Domain

BOREMAN, Circuit Judge (dissenting) :
I. THE INVESTIGATORY POWERS OF THE EEOC
The investigatory powers of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are granted by §§ 709 and 710 of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 42 U.S..C. §§ 2000e et seq.:
Section 709(a). In connection with any investigation of a charge filed under section 2000e-5 of this title, the Commission or its designated representative shall at all reasonable times have access to, for the purposes of examination, and the right to copy any evidence of any person being investigated or proceeded against that relates to unlawful employment practices covered by this subchapter and is relevant to the charge under investigation. [42 U.S.C. § 2000e-8(a).]
Section 710(a). For the purposes of any investigation of a charge filed under the authority contained in section 2000e-5 of this title, the Commission shall have authority to examine witnesses under oath and to require the production of documentary evidence relevant or material to the charge under investigation. [42 U.S. C. § 2000e-9(a).]
The majority apparently holds that Congress intended that these sections give the EEOC investigatory powers equal in scope to those granted the National Labor Relations Board under the *43Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151 et seq., 161. As evidence of such asserted intent, the majority opinion refers to legislative history showing that the House version of 709(a) conformed to the language of the Taft-Hartley Act giving the EEOC power to examine and copy evidence “that relates to any matter under investigation or in question.” The majority merely notes, in passing, that the Senate substituted language for this clause which limits the Commission’s right to require disclosure of evidence that is “relevant to the charge under investigation” and simply recognizes, without comment, that it was the Senate version which was finally passed by Congress.
The majority further shows that Section 710, as originally passed by the House, would have incorporated the provisions of Sections 9 and 10 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 49 and 50, but that the Senate spelled out in subsections 710(b) through 710(d) the means of enforcement of demands for evidence by the Commission, with the result that these powers were narrowed.1 With respect to the substantive scope of the Commission’s investigatory powers, the majority once again merely notes in passing that the “Senate substituted language as subsection 710(a) parallel to subsection 709(a).” The language which the Senate substituted in subsection 710(a) limits the Commission’s power to require the production of documentary evidence to that which is “relevant or material to the charge under investigation,” and it was this language which was incorporated into the Act.
Legislative history regarding . the House version of these subsections does not persuade me that 709(a) and 710(a) give the EEOC any more power to conduct investigations than the language of these subsections plainly states; the intentions of the House are of minimal significance since it was the Senate version of both subsections which finally became law. Subsection 709(a) was revised by the Senate to require that evidence demanded be relevant to the charge under investigation, and subsection 710(a) was revised to require that evidence demanded be relevant or material to the charge under investigation. The language is plain and is clearly restrictive of the scope of the Commission’s investigatory powers. It has been noted that “the statute leaves much to be desired in clarity and precision.”2 but the Senate amendments to 709(a) and 710(a), if they have meaning at all, reflect the concern of Congress that demands for evidence by overzealous investigators would at times be unreasonable, and the amendments were obviously designed as a check upon such investigations. Cf. Georgia Power Co. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 412. F.2d 462, 467-468 (5 Cir. 1969). To me, §§ 709(a) and 710(a) mean what they say, i.e., that the Commission may demand and obtain only evidence which is relevant to the charge, and thus represent a significant restriction on the powers of the EEOC, as opposed to the powers of the NLRB. The majority’s attempt to show that the language does not mean what it says, but “was simply designed to emphasize the inability of the EEOC to undertake an investigation in the absence of a previously filed charge” is unpersuasive since the filing of a charge as a prerequisite to an investigation is not only established in subsection 706(a) [42 U.S. C. § 2000e-5(a)], but is emphasized in *44the opening clauses of both 709(a) and 710(a).
II. THE PROPRIETY OF A HEARING
Taking into consideration the existence of this restriction on the scope of the investigatory powers of the EEOC as opposed to the powers of the NLRB, it becomes necessary to look to the posture of the case before the district court. The Commission had served Graniteville with a demand for (1) the key to a number code indicating the department and job classification assignments of all employees of the Sibley Mill as used in a computer list which already had been supplied; (2) a list showing the date of hire of all employees on the computer list hired subsequent to July 1, 1965; and (3) a list showing the job in which each employee on the list had been initially hired. Graniteville had given the Commission similar information with regard to the department in which Price had worked, but the Commission wanted this evidence with respect to all the departments at the Sib-ley Mill. Graniteville balked at this request, filed a Petition to Set Aside the Demand, and the EEOC cross-petitioned for enforcement. Thus, it was incumbent upon the district court to determine whether the information sought was within the scope of the Commission’s investigatory power. To do so, it was necessary to refer to the charge because the statute expressly requires information sought to be relevant to the charge. The district court properly stated in its order:
Congress explicitly gave those upon whom a demand for access to evidence has been served the right to petition to have the demand set aside. The question raised by that petition is whether the Commission has exceeded its statutory authority by the scope of its investigation. Since the Commission’s sphere of permissible investigation is controlled by the relevancy of the information sought to the charge which has been lodged, the court must at least look to the charge to determine that which is relevant. The charge is the frame of reference which circumscribes the Commission’s investigatory activities. Upon petition the court is obliged to determine what is charged and what is relevant. The charge in this case was, however,
couched in broad and general terms. The evidence demanded could well have appeared to the court below as possibly relevant to three of the four substantive allegations made: (1) that Negroes were discriminated against in promotion policies; (2) that Negroes were harassed, placed in fear of job loss, and subjected to conditions different from those of white employees; and (3) that Negroes were hired for traditionally Negro jobs. However, no specific facts upon which these charges were based were alleged, and Graniteville challenged the relevance of the demands for information with respect to these allegations. A hearing was ordered to determine these facts.3 The majority holds that this hearing was improper and disregards the information there elicited. I conclude, however, that a hearing at this point would be perfectly proper as it would assure fairness to both parties 4 and permit a knowledgea*45ble determination of the relevancy of the information demanded.
My brothers assert that the hearing below involved a “general inquiry into the sufficiency of the evidence” supporting the charge and that it required the EEOC to make a premature showing of reasonable cause to believe that the charge was true. I disagree. The majority’s conclusion results from a failure to distinguish between an allegation of fact and a conclusion, and to analyze properly the contents of a charge.
Allegations of fact may be of two types — -specific or general. The statement, “I was refused a promotion” is an allegation of fact in specific terms. The claim that “Negroes are refused promotions” is also an allegation of fact, but in the broadest form; it implies more than one specific occurrence, all of which may vary widely in nature and context.5 The statement “Negroes are discriminated against because of race” is, on the other hand, a conclusion. Its truth depends upon judgment and reasoning and the application of law to given facts or allegations thereof.
A charge filed with the EEOC is, of necessity, a combination of allegations of fact, general and/or specific, and a conclusion drawn therefrom. The complaining party may allege certain facts which were manifestations of an unlawful (discriminatory) policy. Where, as here, the facts alleged are of a general and unspecified nature and are properly challenged as having no specific components to which the evidence demanded is relevant, a hearing to determine more precisely the basis of the charge would not infringe upon the authority of the Commission to determine whether the allegations of fact were supported and whether there was reasonable cause to believe that the specific occurrences were the result of an unlawful and discriminatory employment policy.
The majority prudently states, “[Sophisticated general policies and practices of discrimination are not susceptible to * * precise delineation by a layman who is in no position to carry out a full-fledged investigation himself. * * * Charging parties * * * should not be called upon to specify the dates when raises should have been granted or when promotions were offered to whites but not to equally qualified blacks.” However, fairness indicates, and the statutory language demands, that when challenged to do so the complaining party must show a reasonably specific basis in fact sufficient to establish the relevance of the information demanded. I am not persuaded that a hearing held for this purpose was error.
III. THE HEARING BELOW
Price’s testimony at the hearing in the district court does not support granting the Commission’s demand for evidence in this case. Price had charged that Negroes were hired for traditionally Negro jobs. It would seem that this can be a charge of disciminatory hiring practices only in the implication that Negroes were not hired for traditionally “white” jobs, but Price had apparently *46been hired for the only job for which he had applied and he did not allege any instances in which other Negroes were denied employment at Graniteville. Price also had charged that Negroes were harassed, placed in fear of job loss, and subjected to conditions different from those of white employees. However, the specifics to which he testified revealed the only harassment of which he was complaining was that company officials did not come to him to offer him a better job, his fear of losing his job arose because his supervisor would talk to him whenever he overslept and was late for work, and the only relevant “different condition” to which he could point was that Negroes were not promoted to supervisory positions at the plant. When questioned closely about his charge concerning Graniteville’s promotional policies, Price’s dissatisfaction appeared to more accurately involve alleged discriminatory practices in the vocational training programs offered by Graniteville6 (therefore possibly supporting a demand for evidence concerning these programs had such evidence been demanded) rather than any denials of promotions to Negroes because of their race. On the basis of this testimony alone, I would be disposed to affirm the district court’s granting of Graniteville’s petition to set aside the Commission’s demand. Other testimony given by Price, however, considered together with his affidavit submitted prior thereto,7 indicates that there may have been additional specific facts by which he had been aggrieved which were not fully explored at the hearing. Counsel for the Commission, *47although given an opportunity to cross-examine Price, did not question him in depth because the district court had erroneously stated the purpose of the hearing to be to determine whether Price personally was “claiming to be aggrieved” within the meaning of the Act (see footnote 3). Yielding to substantial authority, I would agree with the majority that “a charging party may even be aggrieved by employment practices to which he is not immediately subject.” It is clear that due to the confusion in the lower court regarding the purpose of the hearing, Price was not given adequate opportunity to testify to possibly discriminatory employment practices to which he was not immediately subject.
For the reasons stated above, I would remand to the district court with instructions to further investigate the precise nature of the factual basis of Price’s charge.
I, therefore, respectfully submit' a statement of my views and the points of my disagreement with the majority.

. In footnote 9, the majority sets out certain language of Senator Humphrey and asserts that the district court used it improperly to demonstrate that the Senate amendment narrowed the substantive scope of the Commission’s investigatory powers. The majority suggests that the Senator’s remarks referred to these changes in the means of enforcement. Assuming this interpretation to be correct, it does not follow that these powers were the only ones narrowed by the Senate.

. Cunningham v. Litton Indus., 413 F.2d 887, 889 (9 Cir. 1969).

. The district court justified the hearing in the instant case as necessary to determine whether Price was “claiming to be aggrieved” within the meaning of the Act. I would agree with the majority that, from the charge alone, Price is clearly “claiming to be aggrieved.” The nature of the hearing, however, was to determine specific instances, if any, of unlawful employment practices about which Price was complaining, which is the type of hearing which would be necessary to ascertain whether the information demanded was relevant to the charge.

. Section 706(a), [42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(a)] requires that a charge “[set] forth the facts upon which it is based.” As the majority properly notes, however, a charge should not be held deficient because it lacks specificity. A lay complainant in an administrative proceeding should not *45be held to strict pleading niceties (even though aided here by a Commission agent in preparing the charge). Nevertheless, this principle should not be used to destroy Graniteville’s right, granted by Congress, to contest a demand for evidence on the ground that the information demanded is not related to violations with which' it has been charged. When the demand is thus contested, and the allegations lack specificity, a hearing to determine precisely what is complained about would seem to be required.

. In the instant case, there was merely a general factual allegation that Negroes were denied promotions. Such denials could, of course, take place in many different contexts. For example, it is conceivable that all the denials of which Price was complaining had occurred in one department and were the result of discrimination by the head of that department, not the result of, or indicative of, plant-wide policy. If this were the case, the information demanded by the Commission with respect to the promotion records of other departments would not be relevant to the charge.

. Q. Two more questions, Mr. Price. What specific job did you feel you liad some kind of right to even though you didn't ask, and were qualified to hold?
A. Well, I would like to have have [sic] the training well enough to have been a loom fixer, or I would like to have had the training well enough to have been a foreman. This hard-duty work I was doing, I would like to have had something else.
Q. This work you were doing, are you saying you already had the proper training at that time, or you would like to have had it?
A. I would liked to have had the training. That is where most of the whites get their’s. They come in on a training job. They don’t come in and do the type work I was doing, and I felt I was more qualified for being promoted with knowing the job than pulling a man out of the streets for the job.
Q. Do you know of your own knowledge, Mr. Price, whether or not those whites asked for the training?
A. I have no way of knowing whether they asked.
Q. You know there were vocational training programs available?
A. I didn’t know that. Hi * * * *
THE COURT: * * * You said men were hired off the streets to better jobs than you had. What jobs are you talking about?
THE WITNESS: Well, jobs like loom fixers. Jobs that had different pay, higher salaried jobs, and it seems as if the whites had the better paying jobs than the Negroes.
THE COURT: Well, did you investigate to see whether or not they had more skill to do the job?
THE COURT [sic]: No, I didn’t. I felt this way about it, I felt that they had to go through a process of training, and I was capable of learning how to fix just as well as they were.
THE COURT: But you didn’t go through any training?
THE WITNESS : I did not.
THE COURT: Did you ask for any training?
THE WITNESS: I did not ask for any training.

. In addition to Price’s testimony at the hearing, the evidence before the district judge included the original letter sent by Price (in conjunction with an individual not a party here) to the EEOC, Price’s sworn affidavit, and the formal charge prepared on an EEOC form. The Commission chose to support its demand for evidence on the formal charge alone. Clearly, however, if the hearing was proper .in this case, the testimony of Price, and his affidavit, which was written by an agent of the Commission but signed and sworn to by Price, should be considered. The original letter, being unsworn, should not be considered for the purposes of this case. This is true despite case law to the effect that an original letter, not under oath, is sufficient to meet the statutory requirement [42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(d)] *47that a complainant file the charge within 90 days after the alleged discriminatory practice has occurred. Blue Bell Boots, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 418 F.2d 355 (6 Cir. 1969) ; Weeks v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 408 F.2d 228 (5 Cir. 1969) ; see Choate v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 402 F.2d 357 (7 Cir. 1968). The sufficiency of an un-sworn charge with respect to this procedural requirement is unrelated to the instant case where the substance of the charge is at issue.