Court Opinion

ID: 9468179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:07:25.464755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:44.374766
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I have long recognized that dissenting opinions are generally useless and, for that reason, have not always filed a dissent when disagreeing with a majority opinion or some part of it. Here, I choose to record my disagreement with the views of my distinguished Brethren of the majority.
The gravamen of my concern is found in the concession of the majority opinion p. 1138 that “The Fifth Circuit has not heretofore directly addressed the issue whether proof of an actual unlawful employment practice is necessary under the opposition clause, or whether an employee is protected from retaliation under the opposition clause if the employee reasonably believes that the employer is engaged in unlawful employment practices”.
The majority then proceeds to hold that reasonable belief is enough.
However, the statute, 2000e-3(a), stripped of its inapplicable verbiage, reads:
It shall be an unlawful practice for an employer to discriminate against . . . because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice by this subehapter.
The statute speaks in terms of practices — not what someone “reasonably believes” to have been a practice when, in fact, the practice did not exist. I cannot believe that Congress intended (since it did not say so) to penalize employers for what an employee or applicant “believes” when, in fact, the employer is innocent. To hold otherwise is to deprive employers of their property rights in violation of the due process clause.
Finally, I dissent because, as the majority concedes on pages 1140, 1141, the District Court made no finding [the majority adds the word “explicit”] that the plaintiff’s option was based upon “reasonable belief”. In proceeding to make its own, inferential, findings of fact the majority cites not a single specific fact that would support a finding of reasonable belief.
In the finish, I do not wish to be cast in the role of even appearing to approve boycotts against a whole community, the innocent and the guilty alike, as the kind of activity which Congress intended to protect by this statute.
I respectfully dissent.