Court Opinion

ID: 9495675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:08:13.626071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:08.942850
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
My colleagues lay too heavy a burden of production on Paschall Electric. Mr. Smart has established a prima facie case that the Union has violated 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(c)(3) by attempting to cause Mr. Smart to discriminate against his employee, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Smart, moreover, has rebutted the Union’s explanation. He has come forward with evidence that his dues were raised in January 1999. He was initially told that his dues were raised because he was not working enough hours, but the Union later explained that in raising his dues it merely was applying the rate applicable “for contractors, like Mr. Smart, who worked with the tools in the field as electricians.” App. 61, ¶ 18 (affidavit of James Nolen). In reply, Mr. Smart has produced specific evidence of one other contractor, Daniel Wilke, who works with the tools in the field as an electrician, is charged the lower dues rate and has no African-American employees. Mr. Wilke, in fact, had no employees in January 1999, which is why we may assume that he worked in the field as an electrician.1
The Union has not explained why it charged Mr. Wilke the lower dues rate *729that it charged Mr. Smart before it became evident that he had an African-American employee. It claims that it charges all owner-workers the higher rate, but the only evidence of this is Mr. Nolen’s statement in his affidavit that it does so; it has not come forward with evidence of any other owner-worker, like Mr. Smart and Mr. Wilke, who is charged the higher rate.2 In fact, it has not come forward with evidence that it has charged any other contractor the higher rate. Mr. Smart, however, has come forward with evidence of two other contractors who are charged the lower rate, Mr. Wilke and Harold Fitts, though Mr. Smart has not shown that Mr. Fitts works in the field.3 Uneven application of union rules, when coupled with the other instances of mistreatment, raise sufficient circumstantial evidence of discriminatory intent to make summary judgment inappropriate.
The court ought to conclude, therefore, that Mr. Smart has provided enough evidence to make out a prima facie case and that the Union has failed to carry its burden of demonstrating that, despite these differences, it applies the requirement of higher dues for owner-workers in an evenhanded manner.
Because I believe that Mr. Smart has produced facts that would survive summary judgment, I would be required, were I in the majority, to reach the question of whether Title VII provides an employer in this situation a cause of action. Because the court declines to answer this question definitively, I believe the prudent course is to refrain from stating a definitive view on the matter until the issue necessarily must be decided. I simply note that Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Transport Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, 451 U.S. 77, 101 S.Ct. 1571, 67 L.Ed.2d.750 (1981), in reserving the question, certainly does not support the skepticism of my colleagues that Title VII provides such protection. I am also constrained to point out that, unlike the situation presented in Northwest Airlines, we are not faced with teasing an implied right of action out of a text that does not address the situation; rather the situation before us involves, as my colleagues acknowledge, whether we would be justified in denying coverage by going beyond the plain text of the statute that traditionally has been interpreted broadly. Cf. Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 93 S.Ct. 364, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972). Perhaps, before the issue again makes its way to an appellate court, new scholarship in the field will shed more light on the appropriate approach to this question.

. The fact that Mr. Wilke had no employees does not distinguish his case from Mr. Smart's. The relevant traits for purposes of determining whether Mr. Wilke is similarly situated are that Mr. Wilke was an electrical contractor who worked in the field as an electrician.

. The Union points to a dues schedule that it produced, but the schedule does not distinguish between contractors who do not work in the field and contractors who do; it distinguishes between "wireman” contractors and “residential” contractors. App. 67.

. Mr. Smart only produced two photographs taken from a distance of a person he claims to be Mr. Fitts standing in the back of a pick-up truck.