Court Opinion

ID: 9705683
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:16:17.139711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:13.568330
License: Public Domain

CURLEY, J.
(dissenting). The majority has determined that the trial court erred in finding that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) imposes no per*12sonal liability against an agent/employee who violates the ADA. I respectfully dissent and would affirm the trial court.
Although the United States Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue presented by this case and this issue is one of first impression for this court, the issue has been addressed by numerous federal courts. The overwhelming majority of the federal circuit courts have decided that agent/employees are not individually liable for violations of the ADA. See Wathen v. General Elec. Co., 115 F.3d 400, 404 (6th Cir. 1997) (collecting cases). While appellate courts are not bound by federal court decisions interpreting federal law, except those of the United States Supreme Court, see State v. Mechtel, 176 Wis. 2d 87, 94-95, 499 N.W.2d 662, 666 (1993), these decisions do constitute persuasive authority, see Streff v. Town of Delafield, 190 Wis. 2d 348, 356-57, 526 N.W.2d 822, 825 (Ct. App. 1994).
The majority dismisses Wathen and the other federal courts' interpretation of the ADA, claiming that "[t]hose courts, however, generally recognize that they are disregarding the literal statutory language in favor of what they see as either a contrary congressional intent or a contrary public policy." See Majority op. at 5-6. Wathen, however, merely conceded that the statute can be read in "a narrow, literal" way, and that such a reading produces an odd result, not faithful to the true meaning of the statute. See Wathen, 115 F.3d at 405. In my opinion, the court's concern in Wathen, that the statute would be read in "a narrow literal" way, is exactly what occurred here. The majority has seized upon a literal reading of the statute and, as a consequence, ignores the intent of the law, the history of the remedial schemes available under the ADA, Title *13VII, and the ADEA, and produces an unjust result.1 Instead of putting emphasis on the single clause "and any agent of such person," the better method of statutory construction would have been to heed the advice given by the United States Supreme Court in Pilot Life Insurance Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U.S. 41 (1987): "[I]n expounding a statute, we must not be guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy." Id. at 51 (citations and quotation marks omitted). By failing to "look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy," Wathen, 115 F.3d at 405, the majority has produced a result clearly at odds with the express intent of Congress.
A review of the entire law leads to the inescapable conclusion that Congress did not intend for agent/employees to be held personally liable in ADA litigation. Although the bill's definition of "employer" includes the problematic language "and any agent of such person," as noted in Wathen, 115 F.3d at 405-06 (quoting Miller v. Maxwell's Int'l Inc., 991 F.2d 583, 587 (9th Cir. 1993) (alteration in original)), most "courts addressing this issue have concluded that '[t]he obvious purpose of this agent provision was to incorporate respondeat superior liability into the statute.'" Here the majority's decision disregards the weight of authority on this issue and, instead, substitutes its *14own analysis. I would adhere to the view of the majority of courts that the inclusion of the phrase "and any agent of such person" was done for reasons other than exposing agent/employees to personal liability.
Further, both the history of the law and the policy behind it indicate that Congress did not intend agent/employees to be personally liable under the ADA. Notably, the bill exempts employers with less than fifteen employees from exposure. In United States EEOC v. AIC Security Investigation, Ltd., 55 F.3d 1276, 1279-81 (7th Cir. 1995), the court remarked that the fifteen employees rule is inconsistent with holding agent/employees personally liable. The court explained that this fifteen-employee minimum in the ADA's definition of "employer" was done because Congress was intentionally protecting small entities with limited resources from liability and "[t]hat limitation struck a balance between the goal of stamping out all discrimination and the goal of protecting small entities from the hardship of litigating discrimination claims." Id. at 1281 (citing Miller v. Maxwell's Int'l Inc., 991 F.2d at 587). Given this goal, the AIC Security court then concluded that Congress could not reasonably have intended to create personal liability against agent/employees because, as individuals, they would experience even greater hardship litigating discrimination claims. The majority decision dismisses this thoughtful analysis by remarking," [t]his is reading tea leaves," and then, relying solely on the dissent in Tomka v. Seiler Corp., 66 F.3d 1295, 1322 (2d Cir. 1995), suggests the limitation was added simply to survive commerce clause scrutiny. I disagree. Common sense dictates that Congress could not have intended to impose personal liability on all agent/employees while at the same time imposing a fifteen-employee mini*15mum on employers because of its concern about the hardship of litigation on small entities.
The history of available remedies also supports this view. Before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, successful litigants could only expect reinstatement and back-pay, remedies not ordinarily within the control of an agent/employee to grant. When compensation and punitive damages were added to the list of remedies, they were made subject to a sliding scale of caps dependent on the size of the employer. Not only do the original two remedies of back-pay and reinstatement point to the exclusion of agents/employee liability, but also the caps imposed through the Civil Rights Act of 1991 strongly suggest that Congress intended no individual liability. See AIC Security, 55 F.3d at 1281. This is so because the sliding scale of caps manifests Congress's policy decision to punish on the basis of size. Although the AIC Security court interprets the sliding scale of caps as placing no liability on the agent/employees because "Congress enacted no cap for individuals," id., the majority argues that the AIC Security court misread the law because agent/employees are actually subject to the same caps as employers. Assuming, arguendo, that the caps do apply to agent/employees, this interpretation undercuts Congress's crafting of the penalties based upon the violator's potential resources. This is so because an agent/employee found liable will be subject to the cap based upon the size of an agent's employer rather than the individual's resources. Further, the egregiousness of the agent/employee's actions would play no part in determining the maximum penalties. See id. The majority discounts this injustice by commenting that "[presumably Congress wanted to expose those who discriminate while working for large enterprises to *16greater potential liability than those who discriminate while working for smaller entities." See Majority op. at 11. In dismissing this obvious nonsensical and unjust result, the majority merely remarks that the court has no license to ignore or rewrite the law, even if the law may yield undesirable results. Under the majority's reasoning, agent/employees whose employers instruct them to discriminate are faced with a Hobson's choice — the prospect of defying an employer's orders and risking the loss of their jobs, or following their employer's orders and exposing themselves to personal liability.
I would adopt the Ninth Circuit's remark in Miller v. Maxwell's International, Inc., 991 F.2d at 587, that it is "inconceivable" that a Congress concerned with protecting small employers with limited resources would permit civil liability to run against individual employees with even more limited resources.
Further, Maxwell teaches, "if Congress had envisioned individual liability ... it would have included individuals in this litany of limitations and discontinued the exemption for small employers." Id. at 587-88 n.2.
In sum, I am not persuaded by the majority's argument. Read as a whole, the statutory scheme supports no individual liability because congressional intent was not to hold individuals personally liable, but rather, to correct a perceived workplace evil by permitting recovery from employers who meet the minimum requirements, and even then, recovery was limited based upon the size of a company. The majority's decision results in great disparities in individual liability between individuals acting identically, but working at differently sized companies. Like the court in the AIC Security case, I find it "highly improbable" that Con*17gress intended individual agent/employees to "be liable for any amount, be that $5 or $5 billion." See AIC Security, 55 F.3d at 1281 n.6. Nor do I find it conceivable that "Congress silently intended to abruptly change its earlier vision through an amendment [the Civil Rights Act of 1991] to the remedial portions of the statute alone." See id. at 1281. Like the overwhelming majority of federal circuit courts, I believe what the majority sees as the imposition of individual liability is actually nothing more than the assurance of respon-deat superior liability against employers for the acts of their agent/employees. Thus, I respectfully dissent.

 As explained in United States EEOC v. AIC Security Investigation, 55 F.3d 1276, 1279-80 (7th Cir. 1995) (citations omitted), "The ADA's definition of'employer' mirrors the definitions of 'employer' in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Courts routinely apply arguments regarding individual liability to all three statutes interchangeably." Thus, many of the claims in the cited cases have been made under Title VII or the ADEA.