Court Opinion

ID: 9612848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:11:40.682134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:51:55.539647
License: Public Domain

CONCUR
STAPLETON, Circuit Judge,

concurring.

In my view, resolution of the issue before us requires only a straightforward application of Supreme Court precedent. Francis’s argument is foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. General Services Administration, 425 U.S. 820, 96 S. Ct. 1961, 48 L. Ed. 2d 402 (1976). By its terms, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(c) would seem to provide Mr. Francis with a cause of action. That statute, however, is in tension with § 717 of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16, which imposes several procedural requirements on a federal employee raising claims of employment discrimination that must be met before the employee can sue in federal district court. In Brown, 425 U.S. at 829, the Supreme Court *1156held that Title VII provides “the exclusive, pre-emptive administrative and judicial scheme for the redress of federal employment discrimination,” and, accordingly, Brown (the plaintiff in that case) could not enforce his right under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 to be free from racial employment discrimination without resort to that exclusive administrative and judicial scheme.
The Court gave two reasons for its holding in Brown. First, given the detail and comprehensiveness of the remedial scheme in § 717 of Title VII, the Court held that § 717 should supersede more general statutes under the canon of statutory interpretation that resolves tension between specific statutes and general statutes in favor of specific statutes. Id. at 834-35. (“The balance, completeness, and structural integrity of § 717 are inconsistent with the petitioner’s contention that § 717(c) was designed merely to supplement other putative judicial relief.”). Second, the Court explained that as a practical matter the entire Title VII remedial scheme for federal employees would be undermined if a plaintiff could circumvent its procedural requirements by “the simple expedient of putting a different label on the pleadings.” Id. at 833. Twice this term, the Supreme Court has cited Brown for both of the general principles explained therein. See Hinck v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 2011, 2015, 167 L. Ed. 2d 888 (2007); EC Term of Years Trust v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 1763, 1767, 167 L. Ed. 2d 729 (2007).
Both principles applied in Brown are equally applicable here, and they compel us to hold that Francis can enforce his religious discrimination claim only through resort to the administrative and judicial scheme created by Title VII. First, RFRA’s remedial statute is general, while Title VII’s is comprehensive and specific. Although it does not appear that any court of appeals has yet addressed the effect of Title VII on RFRA, our court and others have applied Brown in other similar contexts, holding that Title VII requires compliance with its remedial scheme whenever a government employee seeks to enforce a right created by another statute that is secured by Title VII as well. See, e.g., Ford v. West, 222 F.3d 767, 772-73 (10th Cir. 2000) (“Plaintiff’s [42 U.S.C.] § 1985(3) Fifth Amendment equal protection claim fails, however, because the Supreme Court has clearly held that Title VII provides the exclusive judicial remedy for discrimination claims in federal employment”); Rivera-Rosario v. United States Dep’t of Agric., 151 F.3d 34, 38 (1st Cir. 1998) (rejecting plaintiff’s claim under the Back Pay Act because “The Supreme *1157Court has indicated that where the gravamen of the claim is Title VII discrimination, the only remedy available is under Title VII.”); Owens v. United States, 822 F.2d 408, 410 (3d Cir. 1987) (“Interpretation of Title VII has shown that Title VII provides federal employees a remedy that ‘precludes actions against federal officials for alleged constitutional violations as well as actions under other federal legislation.’”); Gissen v. Tackman, 537 F.2d 784, 786 (3d Cir. 1976) (en banc) (applying Brown to foreclose a plaintiff’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1985).8 Second, as was the case in Brown, if we allow Francis’s claim to go forward, it would undermine the Title VII administrative and judicial scheme for federal employees claiming religious discrimination. Federal employees like Francis, who allege religious discrimination, would have no need to exhaust their administrative remedies under Title VII if they could go directly to federal court with identical claims framed as RFRA claims. Brown, 425 U.S. at 833 (“Under the petitioners theory, by perverse operation of a type of Gresham’s law, § 717, with its rigorous administrative exhaustion requirements and time limitations, would be driven out of currency were immediate access to the courts under other, less demanding statutes permissible.”).
The language in RFRA providing that it applies to “all Federal law” and the implementation of that law, “whether statutory or otherwise,” adopted before or after the passage of RFRA, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-3(a), is not inconsistent with this conclusion. While “all Federal law” must include Title VII, to say that RFRA “applies” to Title VII does not mean that RFRA must be interpreted to create an exception to the procedural requirements of Title VII, such that it would effectively supplant § 717 of Title VII whenever a federal employee alleges religious discrimination and could otherwise proceed under Title VII. Precisely how RFRA may “apply” to Title VII is not now before us, and it is enough to hold that it does not absolve Francis from complying with the requirements of Title VII’s “exclusive, preemptive administrative and judicial scheme for the redress of federal employment discrimination.” Brown, 425 U.S. at 829.
*1158Following Brown, I would hold, as the majority does, that Francis’s claim was properly dismissed under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

 As the Supreme Court noted in Brown, the canon of statutory interpretation that favors specific statutes over general statutes when the two are in tension applies regardless of the order of enactment of the statutes. Brown, 425 U.S. at 834-35 (citing cases). In Owens, we applied Brown to hold that Title VII foreclosed remedies otherwise available under § 1983, which was enacted after Title VE. It is therefore of no consequence that RFRA was enacted in 1993, while § 717 of Title VE was enacted in 1972.