Court Opinion

ID: 9706512
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:45:21.782428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:23.292027
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
Dissenting.
The Kentucky Civil Rights Act provides both an administrative remedy and a civil remedy. The administrative remedy is initiated by a complaint filed with the Commission on Human Rights, which has the power to impose certain sanctions, including affirmative action. KRS 344.200; KRS 344.230(2), (3). The civil remedy is set forth in KRS 344.450 as follows:
344.450. Civil remedies for injunction and damages. — Any person deeming himself injured by any act in violation of the provisions of this chapter shall have a civil cause of action in Circuit Court to enjoin further violations, and to recover the actual damages sustained by him, together with the costs of the law suit, including a reasonable fee for his attorney of record, all of which shall be in addition to any other remedies contained in this chapter. (Emphasis added.)
The issue in this case is whether this statute permits an action in damages to be brought against the Commonwealth, ie., whether the language of KRS 344.450 constitutes a waiver of sovereign immunity established in Section 231 of our Constitution. The answer is found in KRS 44.072 and our recent decision in Withers v. University of Kentucky, Ky., 939 S.W.2d 340 (1997).
KRS 44.072 provides in pertinent part: The Commonwealth thereby waives the sovereign immunity defense only in the limited situations as herein set forth. It is further the intention of the General Assembly to otherwise expressly preserve the sovereign immunity of the Commonwealth, any of its cabinets, departments, bureaus or agencies or any of its officers, agents or employees while acting in the scope of their employment by the Commonwealth or any of its cabinets, departments, bureaus or agencies in all other situations except where sovereign immunity is specifically and expressly waived as set forth by statute. (Emphasis added.)
In Withers, we supposedly abandoned what the majority opinion accurately describes as the “shifting sands” of our prior decisions on the issue of waiver:
We will find waiver only where stated “by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction.”
Withers, 939 S.W.2d at 346 (quoting Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 673, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 1361, 39 L.Ed.2d 662, 678 (1974)).
Unfortunately, the majority opinion in this case has re-embraced rather than eschewed the “shifting sands” approach to the issue of waiver. Nothing in the language of KRS 344.450 “specifically and expressly” waives the defense of sovereign immunity. Nor does the text of the statute create such an overwhelming implication of waiver as to leave no room for any other reasonable construction. Recognizing that the text of KRS 344.450 “is completely silent concerning against whom a *619cause of action may be brought,” op., at 617, the majority concludes that such an action may be brought against the Commonwealth because KRS 344.030(2) defines “employer” as, inter alia, “a person,” and KRS 344.010(1) defines “person” as, inter alia, “the state.” Even so, nothing in those statutes “specifically and expressly” allows an aggrieved party to sue the state for damages.
Having defined “employer” as a “person” and a “person” as the “state,” the majority then decides that the state must thus be an employer who can be sued for damages under KRS 344.450. Unfortunately, the definitions of “employer” and “person” have no relevance at all in interpreting the language of KRS 344.450. The statute does not say that “[a]ny person in violation of the provisions of this chapter” may be sued for damages in Circuit Court. It says that “[a]ny person deeming himself injured by any act in violation of the provisions of this chapter” may sue for damages in Circuit Court. The word “person” in KRS 344.450 refers to the aggrieved party, not the employer.
As noted supra, the Civil Rights Act provides multiple remedies, only one of which is the right to sue for damages in Circuit Court. Meyers v. Chapman Printing Co., Inc., Ky., 840 S.W.2d 814, 820 (1992). The fact that state agencies might be subject to other remedies described in the Act does not create an “overwhelming implication” leaving “no room for any other reasonable construction” that KRS 344.450 constitutes a waiver of sovereign immunity. In fact, in light of the unambiguous language of KRS 44.072, a reasonable construction of the Civil Rights Act as a whole is that although private employers are subject to all of the remedies described in the Act, including monetary damages, agencies of the Commonwealth are subject only to administrative sanctions, but cannot be sued for monetary damages in Circuit Court.
Accordingly, I would reverse the Court of Appeals and reinstate the summary judgment entered by the Boyle Circuit Court.
LAMBERT, C.J.; and KELLER, J., join this dissenting opinion.