Court Opinion

ID: 9494081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:28:49.216683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:12.619849
License: Public Domain

HANSEN, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I respectfully dissent from that portion of subpart 11(B) of the court’s opinion wherein the court concludes that the statutory term “employees” in 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3) really means “members” when a labor organization’s liability is determined. I readily concur in the balance of the court’s opinion.
As outrageously egregious as the evidence supporting the jury’s verdict shows the racially motivated conduct of some of the union members and union stewards to have been, and irrespective of how strongly I believe the plaintiffs should be compensated for their emotional distress as an abstract matter of public policy, I believe our inquiry begins, and must end, with the plain language of the damages statute, even though I dislike the result that language compels in this case. As the court notes, “[i]f the plain language of the statute is unambiguous, that language is conclusive absent clear legislative intent to the contrary. Therefore, if the intent of Congress can be clearly discerned from the statute’s language, the judicial inquiry must end.” United States v. McAllister, 225 F.3d 982, 986 (8th Cir.2000) (emphasis added). See also Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co. v. Union Planters Bank, N.A., 530 U.S. 1, 6, 120 S.Ct. 1942, 147 L.Ed.2d 1 (2000) (“[Wjhen the statute’s language is plain, the sole function of the courts — at least where the disposition required by the text is not absurd — is to enforce it according to its terms.”). From this, our court concludes that the term “employees” really means “members” when the damages statute is applied to labor organizations. The court fails, however, to delineate any congressional intent contrary to the plain language of the statute to support its strained construction, let alone any clear intent. In my view, Congress’s use of the term “employees” to determine which “respondents” are subject to damages could not be any more clear or unambiguous. Because “the statute is unambiguous on its face, the language of the statute is conclusive as to legislative intent, and we thus [can not] abandon the ordinary ... meaning” of the term “employees” and replace it with the term “members.” United States v. Smith, 35 F.3d 344, 347 (8th Cir.1994). With all due respect to my brothers’ views, the court’s “construction ... defeat[s] the plain language of the statute and [does] not foster any clearly articulated legislative intent to the contrary.” Id.
I' also respectfully disagree with the court’s attempt to define “respondent” as used in § 1981a(b) differently than it is defined by Title VII, § 2000e(n), which defines it to mean “an employer, employment agency, [or] labor organization.” “ ‘The interrelationship and close proximity of these provisions of the statute, [§ 1981a(b) and § 2000e,] present[ ] a classic case for application of the normal rule of statutory construction that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same mean*1105ing.’ ” Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe v. United States, 197 F.3d 949, 952 (8th Cir.1999) (quoting Comm’r v. Lundy, 516 U.S. 235, 250, 116 S.Ct. 647, 133 L.Ed.2d 611 (1996)), cert. denied, 530 U.S. 1231, 120 S.Ct. 2662, 147 L.Ed.2d 276 (2000). Section 1981a(b) clearly caps damages based on the number of the respondent’s — the labor organization’s — employees, not the number of its members.
Congress enacted Title VII in 1964, making labor organizations with at least 100 members liable for discrimination in employment practices. In 1972, Congress amended Title VII to include labor organizations with at least fifteen members within Title VU’s reach. See Pub.L. No. 92-261, § 2(4), codified at 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(e). Well aware of how it had defined those labor organizations it had made subject to Title VII as respondents, Congress later enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1991, authorizing the awarding of compensatory damages and placing caps on those damages based on the number of employees employed by a respondent. See Pub.L. No. 102-166, § 102, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3). Irrespective of how much we dislike the outcome, or how we see the equities of the case, we are not at liberty to rewrite the statute. United States v. McIntosh, 236 F.3d 968, 972 (8th Cir.2001) (‘“Courts are obligated to refrain from embellishing statutes by inserting language that Congress has opted to omit.’” (quoting Root v. New Liberty Hosp. Dist., 209 F.3d 1068, 1070 (8th Cir.2000))), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 121 S.Ct. 1964, 149 L.Ed.2d 759 (2001). “Achieving a better policy outcome — if what petitioner urges is that — is a task for Congress, not the courts.” Hartford Underwriters, 530 U.S. at 13-14, 120 S.Ct. 1942. Congress knew which labor organizations it had previously made subject to Title VII and how it had done so, as well as Title VIPs then existing remedies, when it later opted to define the damages caps based on the number of employees a respondent has, not the number of union members in a labor organization already subject to Title VII. It is “natural for Congress to write in like terms” when it intends the same consequences. Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694, 704, 120 S.Ct. 1795, 1803, 146 L.Ed.2d 727 (2000). Here it did not write in like terms and, in my view, did not intend the same consequences.
Nor does the plain language of the statute create either an absurd result or an anomalous result. Unions with fewer than fifteen employees (but with more than fifteen members) are not the only entity otherwise covered by Title VII exempt from any compensatory damages liability under the statute’s plain language. An “employment agency” with fewer than fifteen employees is also exempt from compensatory damages, even though such an employment agency (say a sole proprietorship agency with no employees) is otherwise fully subject to Title VII’s requirements and its other remedies. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e(c), (n); 2000e-2(b); 2000e-5(g).
The plaintiffs do not dispute that United Steelworkers of America Local No. 286 had less than fifteen employees. As such, the plain language of the statute mandates that the union’s liability for compensatory damages is capped at zero. I would reverse the district court’s denial of the motion to conform the verdict and order the judgment to be amended to reflect a zero damages award.5
I respectfully dissent.

. I note in passing that a recent decision of our court, Daggitt v. United Food and Com*1106mercial Workers Int'l Union, Local 304A, 245 F.3d 981 (8th Cir.2001), held that in the circumstances of that case, union stewards were employees of the union for the purpose of applying the definition of “employer” in § 2000e(b).