Court Opinion

ID: 9462680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:47:14.906639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:43.022661
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
Today’s decision is necessarily narrow. I concur because it cannot be construed to approve nonjudicial settlements of wage and hour claims in situations removed from the unique facts of this case. As Judge Gee demonstrates, these plaintiffs entered into a fair compromise agreement at a time when no viable forum existed to enforce their rights. Each side was correctly apprised of the law as it then existed and intelligently assessed the impact of the Supreme Court opinion. The short-lived Employees decision had the effect of rendering the district court’s award a nullity, because it enucleated the court’s jurisdiction. The 1974 amendments, though designed to legislatively overrule Employees, did not address the specific question of the validity of compromise made during this jurisdictional gap. In this limited sphere, Schulte is not controlling since it only outlaws nonjudicial agreements executed to terminate bona fide disputes as to coverage and leaves open the possibility of settling other legal controversies out of court.
The singular posture of this case is unlikely to reoccur. By amending the Portal-to-Portal Act to toll the statute of limitations, Congress insured that public employees who were ousted from federal courts on jurisdictional grounds during the Employees era are given a second chance to enforce their rights in that forum. 29 U.S.C. § 255(d) (1974). I deem this concurrence necessary to emphasize that Schulte continues to raise a barrier to even fair bargaining between employee and employer where there is a dispute as to existing law.
It also seems apropos to specify the limited significance of the Eleventh Amendment issue presented. Employees did necessarily imply that citizen employees of a state hospital were not barred from federal court to assert wage and hour claims against their state employer. However, the subsequent 1974 amendments to FLSA purported to confer the right to sue in a federal forum on all nonsupervisory state employees. The constitutional right of Congress to regulate commerce must coexist with the bar of the Eleventh Amendment. Employees did not undertake to balance the interests of the Eleventh Amendment and the Commerce Clause in the context of the issues and *616interests there present. This would be necessary if the suing citizen employee were engaged by a state institution which was essential to the conduct of state government, e. g., police protection or tax collection. In the comparable Twenty-first Amendment vs. Commerce Clause situation, the Court set this standard:
Both the Twenty-first Amendment and the Commerce Clause are parts of the same Constitution. Like other provisions of the Constitution, each must be considered in the light of the other, and in the context of the issues and interests at stake in any concrete case.
Hostetter v. Idelwild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp., 377 U.S. 324, 332, 84 S.Ct. 1293, 1298, 12 L.Ed.2d 350 (1964).
Clearly, this would be the test where Parden’s waiver theory should not apply. Such a case is not theoretical. See National League of Cities v. Dunlop (3-judge court) prob. jurisd. noted, 420 U.S. 906, 95 S.Ct. 823, 42 L.Ed.2d 835, 43 U.S.L.W. (1975). We do not face it here.