Court Opinion

ID: 9431307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:56.334811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:27.921164
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Blackmun join, dissenting.
The Court today imports into a limitations provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) the “knowing or reckless” definition of “willful” that we previously adopted in construing a liquidated damages provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq. See Trans World *136Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U. S. 111 (1985). In doing so, the Court departs from our traditional contextual approach to the definition of the term “willful,” ignores significant differences between the relevant provisions of the two Acts, and fails to accommodate the remedial purpose of civil actions under the FLSA. For these reasons, I would accept the slightly more expansive definition of “willful” urged by the Secretary of Labor and adopted by the District of Columbia Circuit in Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 185 U. S. App. D. C. 322, 354-355, 567 F. 2d 429, 461-462 (1976), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1086 (1978). Under this latter standard, a violation of the FLSA is “willful” and therefore subjects an employer to a 3-year rather than a 2-year statute of limitations if the employer knew that there was an appreciable possibility that it was covered by the Act and failed to take steps reasonably calculated to resolve the doubt.
I have no quarrel with the opinion of the Court to the extent that it rejects the “in the picture” standard of willfulness elaborated in Coleman v. Jiffy June Farms, Inc., 458 F. 2d 1139, 1142 (CA5 1971), cert. denied, 409 U. S. 948 (1972). As the Court succinctly explains, by permitting a finding of willful violation every time an employer knew that the FLSA was “in the picture,” the Jiffy June standard “virtually obliterates any distinction between willful and nonwillful violations.” Ante, at 132-133. But the Court’s focus on the shortcomings of the Jiffy June standard is disingenuous, because neither party in the instant case urged the adoption of that standard before this Court. Rather, the dispute in this case pits the Thurston “knowing or reckless” standard, adopted by the Third Circuit in this case and urged by respondent Richland Shoe, against the Laffey standard, adopted by the D. C. Circuit in an earlier case and urged by petitioner Secretary of Labor. The Court does not address this dispute until the penultimate page of its opinion, and its reasons for embracing the former standard over the latter are not convincing.
*137The Court seems to rely in part on “common usage” of the word “willful” in adopting the “knowing or reckless” standard. Ante, at 133, citing Roget’s International Thesaurus § 622.7, p. 479; § 653.9, p. 501 (4th ed. 1977). The Court fails to acknowledge, however, that the dictionary includes a wide variety of definitions of “willful,” ranging from “malicious” to “not accidental,” and including precisely the intermediate definition urged by the Secretary — under which an act is willful if it is “done without ground for believing it is lawful.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1434 (5th ed. 1979); see United States v. Murdock, 290 U. S. 389, 394 (1933) (acknowledging all three possible meanings of “willful”). By refusing to recognize the various meanings that the term “willful” has come to bear in different legal settings, the Court today departs from our previous contextual approach to defining that term. In Spies v. United States, 317 U. S. 492, 497 (1943), this Court explained that “willful” is a word “of many meanings, its construction often being influenced by its context.” Since Spies, we consistently have looked to the statutory context in which the word appears in order to determine its proper meaning. See, e. g., Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91, 101-103 (1945); United States v. Bishop, 412 U. S. 346, 356-361 (1973). The Court’s apparent abandonment of this approach in favor of a nonexistent “plain language” definition of “willful,” ante, at 133, is unprecedented and unwise.
Had the Court properly applied the traditional contextual approach, I believe it would have adopted the willfulness standard urged by the Secretary. Such an approach would have revealed that the definition of “willful” adopted previously in the context of the ADEA in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, supra, does not transplant easily to the context of the FLSA. In Thurston, this Court explicitly acknowledged that its choice of the “knowing or reckless” definition of “willful” was influenced by the “punitive” nature of the double damages that flow from a finding of willfulness under the ADEA. Id., at 125. In the instant case, a finding *138of willfulness leads not to a punitive sanction, but merely to an extended period during which an unlawfully underpaid employee may recover compensatory damages. What is at stake here is the applicability of the remedial provisions of the FLSA in the first instance. Perhaps recognizing this crucial distinction, the Court in Thurston expressly left open the possibility that the “knowing or reckless” definition of “willful” adopted for the ADEA might not be appropriate for the FLSA statute of limitations. See id,., at 127-128, and n. 21. The answer that the Court provides today may have an attractive tidiness, but it fails to recognize the contextual differences that call for different standards of willfulness in varying provisions of the two Acts.* As a result, the Court has adopted a definition, of “willful” that is improperly narrow in light of its effect on the remedial scope of the FLSA.
Just how narrow that definition is remains to be seen. It is not entirely clear that the “knowing or reckless” definition of willfulness adopted by the Court will differ significantly in practical application from the approach that I would adopt. Employers who know that there is an appreciable possibility that the FLSA covers their operations but fail to take reasonable measures to resolve their doubts may well be deemed “reckless” in many cases under the Thurston standard. Although it is difficult to foretell, it appears to me unlikely that a large number of FLSA defendants will fall into the narrow category of employers who “unreasonably” but not “recklessly” fail to apprise themselves of the requirements of the *139Act. See ante, at 135, n. 13. Despite the potentially small significance of our different interpretations, however, I cannot agree with the Court’s approach to or resolution of the willfulness issue in this case. I therefore respectfully dissent.

The Court bases its adoption of the Thurston standard of willfulness on the fear that the Secretary’s alternative standard, like the Jiffy June standard, would undermine Congress’ two-tiered liability scheme by permitting a finding of willfulness on a showing of “nothing more than negligence.” Ante, at 135. This fear is ungrounded. In order for a violation to be “willful” under the Secretary’s standard, an employer must operate in the face of a known risk that the FLSA covers its operation, without taking reasonable steps to ensure its compliance. This state of mind is sufficiently different from mere negligence to maintain the two-tiered structure of the FLSA.