Court Opinion

ID: 9482735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:59:16.513381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:10.750344
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the court’s conclusion that Richard Vogel is without standing to contest the validity of the 1981 consent judgment and has suffered no deprivation of any right under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution as a result of Cincinnati’s affirmative action hiring policy. I also concur, therefore, in the court’s judgment of affirmance.
I decline, however, to join the court’s holding that the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, “does not apply retroactively to Vogel’s claim for damages resulting from the hiring policy the City’s Police Division adopted pursuant to the consent decree.” The basis for the court’s ruling does not rest upon any consideration peculiar to Vogel’s claim, but rather upon a more universally applicable analysis of the statute’s retroactivity under general principles of statutory construction.
It may be that the court is correct in its conclusion that the Act is not retroactively applicable to Vogel’s claims, but the issue of the retroactivity of the Act in general, or, if retroactive, its applicability to this case in particular, has not been raised, briefed, or fully argued by the parties.
I would not pass upon that very significant question without full briefing and proper submission of the issue.