Court Opinion

ID: 9476751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:04:27.640701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:29.351258
License: Public Domain

REAVLEY, Circuit Judge,
with whom POLITZ, RANDALL, JOHNSON, JERRE S. WILLIAMS, and W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting:
The majority today overrules Guerra v. Manchester Terminal Corp., 498 F.2d 641 (5th Cir.1974), and holds that 42 U.S.C. § 1981 does not reach private discrimination based on alienage. I respectfully insist that this holding is foreclosed to us by the decisions of the Supreme Court.
As early as Takahashi v. Fish and Game Commission, 334 U.S. 410, 419, 68 S.Ct. 1138, 1142-43, 92 L.Ed. 1478 (1948), the Court, after quoting the predecessor of section 1981, stated: “[t]he protection of this section has been held to extend to aliens as well as to citizens.” The Court reiterated its commitment to this principle in Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 377, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 1855, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1971). In Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 168, 96 S.Ct. 2586, 2593, 49 L.Ed.2d 415 (1976), the Court stated: “[i]t is now well established that ... 42 U.S.C. § 1981 prohibits racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of private contracts.” Thus, under Takahashi, section 1981 bans discrimination based on alienage, and, under Runyon, it bans discrimination in the making and enforcement of private contracts. From these two premises the holding of Guerra necessarily follows: section 1981 forbids private discrimination based on alienage. By what lights can we construe this statute giving “full and equal benefits of all laws” to benefit unequally the persons it protects?
The root and trunk of the majority’s holding is the conviction that the legislative history of section 1981 as outlined by the Court in Runyon is erroneous. The author of a law review article is quoted in footnote 6 to say that the Court has misread the legislative history of the statute. Then we are told that the Supreme Court’s reasoning is “severely flawed.” Suffice it to say that while authors of law review articles enjoy the luxury of finding Supreme Court reasoning “severely flawed,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is not at liberty to decide a case on this ground. Incidentally, this court has followed the dictate of that “flawed” reasoning for a long time. Our leading case in this area is Sanders v. Dobbs Houses, Inc., 431 F.2d 1097 (5th Cir.1970). As we said in Guerra, “[w]e held in Sanders ... that § 1981 extends to private discrimination in employment, and we have reaffirmed Judge Clark’s cogent Sanders opinion many times since.” 498 F.2d at 654 (citations omitted).
With due respect for Aristotle’s injunction which constricts the majority, I take the law from the Supreme Court. But perhaps we should recall that Aristotle also said: “by nature some are free, others slaves,” Politics 1254b32, and “the best state will not make the mechanic a citizen.” Politics 1277b33. Personally, I prefer the familiar maxim that “all men are created equal.” It seems likely that the latter sentiment, rather than the Aristotlean one, imbued the intent of Congress when section 1981 was enacted.