Court Opinion

ID: 9488869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:57:49.843149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:09.161883
License: Public Domain

MILTON POLLACK, Senior District Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
This case involves the discharge for insubordination, lying and obstreperous conduct of a Village policeman (“appellant”), who was also a Reservist in the United States Air Force. The discharge was based on the recommendation of an impartial Hearing Officer who, after a two day hearing, found the policeman guilty of three current violations of the Department’s Rules of Conduct and a history of improprieties as a police officer, involving reprimands and a suspension for misconduct. The Hearing Officer found that (i) the policeman had been disciplined for violations of the Department’s rules on several prior occasions 1; (ii) rehabilitation was no longer a reasonable prospect and (iii) the policeman had demonstrated an unwillingness and inability to work under the authority of his superior officer. The Village Board thereupon unanimously voted to adopt the Hearing Officer’s recommendation and terminated the plaintiff. There is no evidence that the parties who authorized the discharge, the Hearing Officer and the Village Board, harbored or acted upon any animus with respect to the policeman’s status as a Reservist.
Following his discharge, the appellant instituted a suit for state court relief. That challenge was not perfected and was then abandoned. Three years later, in 1993, he commenced this suit alleging herein that his disciplinary history, suspensions and departmental altercations were motivated by his “status and duty as a member of the armed forces”. He principally sought reinstatement and compensation for lost wages and other lost benefits.
The Village responded that it had terminated his employment only because of his insubordination and demonstrated repetitive misconduct as a police officer.
Appellant sued herein under the Veterans’ Reemployment Rights Act, 38 U.S.C. § 2021, et seq., a statute enacted in 1968 which the Supreme Court interpreted in Monroe v. Standard Oil Company, 452 U.S. 549, 101 S.Ct. 2510, 69 L.Ed.2d 226 (1981), to require that the plaintiff prove he was discriminatorily discharged by an employer “motivated solely by [his] Reserve status”. Id. at 559, 101 S.Ct. at 2516. This interpretation, according to the 1994 Reports of the Congressional Veterans’ Committees, misconstrued the intent of the 1968 Congress in enacting the law.2 Citing these Reports, the majority *110opinion of this Court concludes that the Monroe test does not apply to this case and substitutes in its place the new and supposedly retroactive “but for” standard enunciated in the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (“USERRA”) [38 U.S.C. § 4301, et seq. (1994) ]. This “but for” standard means that it is for the employer to establish that the discharge would have occurred even if the employee were not a member of the Reserves.
In support of the theory of a “mistaken” interpretation, the majority’s Opinion cites the Report of the 1994 House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs accompanying the 1994 House Bill that eventually became USERRA. In this Report, the House Committee contended that the original intent of the 1968 Congress was not the imposition of a sole motivation test to be established prima facie by the veteran. The majority Opinion further cites the Report of the 1994 Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, which included a statement, contrary to Monroe, that the 1994 version was merely a “reaffirmation” of the original intent of the 1968 Congress (not so expressed by the then Veterans’ Committees or included in the statute itself) placing the burden of proof with respect to the affirmative defense on the employer.
In order for the 1994 revised statute to have been made applicable to pending cases such as this, the new statute would have to have said so; a congressional committee’s expression of intent in these reports does not suffice to add what does not appear in the enactment:
A judicial construction of a statute is an authoritative statement of what the statute meant before as well as after the decision of the case giving- rise to that construction ... Congress, of course, has the power to amend a statute that it believes we have misconstrued____ No such change, however, has the force of law unless it is implemented through legislation. Even when Congress intends to supersede a rule of law embodied in one of our decisions with what it views as a better rule established in earlier decisions, its intent to reach conduct preceding the “corrective” amendment must clearly appear.
Rivers and Davison v. Roadway Express, Inc., — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 1510, 1519, 128 L.Ed.2d 274 (1994). No such implementation is clearly apparent within the text of USERRA. In fact, the only relevant language in the statute indicates an intent that the provisions of the new statute become effective on October 13, 1994 and makes no mention of retroactivity:
The provisions of section 4311 of title 38, United States Code, as provided in the amendments made by this Act, ... that are necessary for the implementation of such section 4311 shall become effective on the date of enactment of this Act.
Pub.L. No. 103-353, § 8(b). The majority asserts that “this provision is perhaps susceptible to differing interpretations” and offers its own interpretation: that the “codification” of the “but for” test was not one of the provisions necessary for the implementation of § 4311 and that this provision is therefore not effective on the date of enactment of the Act but at some earlier date. Although this interpretation may allow the majority narrowly to escape from the presumption that the new statute applies only from its enactment date, it certainly does not provide any clear indication of intended retroactive application.3
Furthermore, the legislative history cited by the majority does not indicate clearly that the “but for” test applies retroactively:
*111[this] standard and burden of proof is [sic ] applicable to all eases brought under this section regardless of the date of accrual of the cause of action.
H.R.Rep. No. 65, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. 18 (1994). It is not specified whether the phrase “brought under this section” applies to cases “brought” in the future or also to cases that “have been brought” in the past. Nor is it clear that this language has any relevance to a prior version of “this section,” which included significantly different language.
The existence of these questions indicates that although the 1994 Congressional Committees may have intended to overturn Monroe and to make the consequences of this change retroactive, Congress failed clearly to manifest any such intent within the statute. In Rivers, the United States Supreme Court concluded that a similar failure was fatal to the cause of retroactivity under § 101 of the Civil Rights Act of 1991:
We may assume, as petitioners argue, that § 101 reflects congressional disapproval of Patterson’s interpretation of § 1981. We may even assume that many or even most legislators believed that Patterson [v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U.S. 164, 109 S.Ct. 2363, 105 L.Ed.2d 132 (1989)] was not only incorrectly decided but also represented a departure from the previously prevailing understanding of the reach of § 1981. Those assumptions would readily explain why Congress might have wanted to legislate retroactively, thereby providing relief for the persons it believed had been wrongfully denied a § 1981 remedy. Even on those assumptions, however, we cannot find in the 1991 Act any clear expression of congressional intent to reach cases that arose before its enactment____ The text of the Act does not support the argument that § 101 of the 1991 Act was intended to “restore” prior understandings of § 1981 as to cases arising before the 1991 Act’s passage.
Rivers, — U.S. at-, 114 S.Ct. at 1516 (emphasis added). Thus, Congress’s failure unequivocally to state that USERRA applies to cases brought before the law’s effective date signifies that a “sole motivation” test should be applied to eases, such as the present one, which were brought prior to October 13,1994.
Under this “sole motivation” test, it is the plaintiff who is required to provide sufficient admissible, relevant evidence permitting the court below to conclude that his discharge was not motivated by insubordination or dishonesty, but instead solely because he was a Reservist. See Clayton v. Blachowske Truck Lines, Inc., 640 F.Supp. 172, 174 (D.Minn. 1986), aff'd, 815 F.2d 1203 (8th Cir.1987) (to avoid summary judgment, plaintiff must provide “evidence which raises an inference that his reserve status was the sole motivation behind his termination”).
Summary judgment is appropriate in this case because there is no evidence before the Court that the plaintiffs Reservist status was a determinative factor in the decision to terminate his employment, much less the sole factor. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2553, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). In the majority’s unavailing search for such evidence, the majority contends that the Department provided no satisfactory response as to why the policeman’s previously submitted military orders did not meet the requirements of the Department’s, notification policy. However, the dispute over orders, which directly preceded the discharge, was based not only on the officer’s failure to submit an order permitting the travel day, but also on the officer’s delay in actually requesting the travel day:
[e]ven though Gummo had waited until the very last moment to ask for the day off, the Chief did not deny his request and, according to ZolnowsM, when Gummo advised the Chief, the afternoon of June 8th, that he had contacted the base that morning to arrange for a letter granting him the day off but he didn’t know when it would arrive, the Chief replied that he would abide by it and accept it even if it came in after Officer Gummo had left (T.253), certainly not the reaction one would expect of someone who was out to “get” the officer. I cannot find one instance during the events which transpired in [sic] regard to the instant situation, in which the Chief *112could be viewed as provoking Officer Gum-mo.4
(Hearing Officer’s Recommendation at 52; A. 77) (emphasis added). Furthermore, the Department’s request for additional proof of the necessity of a travel day does not excuse the officer’s subsequent intemperate insubordination and lack of honesty. The police officer’s unprofessional response was certainly sufficient “straw to break the camel’s back”, given the officer’s past record of insubordination and his earlier undisputed violation of the Department’s leave policy, for which he was suspended thirty days.
Given the substantial evidence supporting the existence of a non-pretextual reason for discharge, the entire absence of any evidence that the Village Board and the impartial Hearing Officer were motivated by hostility towards Reservists, qua Reservists, and the absence of evidence indicating Reservist discrimination at any time, we ought not interfere with the right of the Village to discipline its police officers for personal misconduct. The Village openly gave the appellant an unbiased independent review of all of his official conduct before an impartial Hearing Officer who conducted the administrative proceeding. Due process was all that was required. It is indisputable on this record that appellant’s Reservist status was not the cause of his discharge, whichever statute applies. Neither statute permits an employee to exploit his status as a Reservist in order to shield himself from the consequences of his misconduct. See Britt v. Georgia Power Company, 677 F.Supp. 1169 (N.D.Ga.1987); McCormick v. Carnett-Partsnett Systems, Inc., 396 F.Supp. 251, 256 (M.D.Fla.1975).
I would affirm.

. Within the two years preceding his discharge, the police officer had received reprimands for misconduct towards his Shift Lieutenant and for disseminating information to the public without proper authorization. He had also been found guilty of seven counts of misconduct and suspended for 30 days following an argument with his superior officer.

. The “mistaken” interpretation of the applicable statute by the Supreme Court was followed by *110identical interpretations by the 6th, 8th and 10th Circuits.

. In fact, the only other discussion of an effective date in the statute confirms that no retroactive application was intended:
(a) Reemployment — (1) ... the amendments made by this Act shall be effective with respect to employments initiated on or after the first day after the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act [Oct. 13, 1994]. (2) The provisions of chapter 43 of title 38, United States Code, in effect on the day before such date of enactment, shall continue to apply to reemployments initiated before the end of such 60-day period.
See Historical and Statutory Notes, 43 U.S.C. § 4301 (citing § 8 of Pub.L. 103-353) (emphasis added) (citations omitted).

. The lengthy analysis in the majority opinion indirectly impugning the bona fides of the Village’s stated rationale for the so-called "denial'' of requests that Gummo be relieved of submitting an order permitting the travel day is at odds with the explicit finding of the report of the Hearing Officer. Counsel's responses to questions regarding this “denial" at our oral hearing appear to have overlooked the content of the administrative record.