Court Opinion

ID: 9483492
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:21:59.217734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:39.366984
License: Public Domain

SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the majority in parts I, II, and III. As to part IV, however, I would affirm the grant of summary judgment on Gomes’s retaliation claim. 29 U.S.C. § 215(a)(3) does not. prohibit employers from taking adverse employment action, that is, retaliating, against employees generally. Rather, section 215(a)(3) protects from retaliation only those employees who engage in three expressly enumerated types of conduct. Specifically, those who have (1) filed a Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”)1 complaint, (2) instituted an FLSA proceeding, or (3) testified in an FLSA proceeding. It is undisputed that Romeo Community Schools “adversely affected” Gomes’s employment before she engaged in any of these three forms of protected conduct. Thus, Romeo cannot be said to have been motivated by Gomes’s participation in protected activity, and section 215(a)(3), by its express terms, simply does not apply.
The majority recognizes that Romeo’s action was not taken in response to any of the three expressly protected activities. Nevertheless, reasons the majority, Gomes did protest to Romeo that its conduct “br[oke] some sort of law.” If Romeo is held to have adversely affected Gomes’s employment because she opposed its unlawful employment practice, the argument continues, then Romeo has unlawfully retaliated against Gomes. Were this a Title VII action, I might agree. In addition to the types of conduct specified in section 215(a)(3), Title VII expressly includes an opposition clause, which protects employees who protest unlawful employment practices to their employers. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). Section 215(a)(3) contains no such provision and I cannot join the majority in reading one in.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s opinion as it relates to Gomes’s section 215(a)(3) retaliatory discharge claim and concur in the remainder.

. This includes lawsuits brought under the Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1).