Catlett v. Mo. Highway & Transp. Com'n
| Decision Date | 05 December 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 78-4061-CV-C-5.,78-4061-CV-C-5. |
| Parties | Jane CATLETT, Patricia Leembruggen, Grace Tuter and Adeline Kallemyn, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. MISSOURI HIGHWAY AND TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri |
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Lisa Van Amburg, Karen Plax, Raytown, Mo., for plaintiffs.
John Gladden, Asst. Counsel, Paula Lambrcht, Asst. Counsel, Missouri Highway & Transp. Com'n, Jefferson City, Mo., for defendants.
Plaintiffs have filed a class action sex discrimination suit against the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission (hereafter "Highway Commission") pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq. The representative plaintiffs, Jane Catlett, Patricia Leembruggen, Grace Tuter and Adeline Kallemyn, allege as individuals and on behalf of the class that the Highway Commission failed and refused to hire women for the position of maintenanceman on the basis of gender, established and maintained job classifications which resulted in the exclusion of women, maintained a policy and practice of recruitment which had the effect of denying job opportunities to qualified female applicants, and refused to implement objective guidelines to correct the alleged discriminatory practices.
The remedies sought by the plaintiffs include damages for back wages and lost benefits of employment, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief. On April 26, 1982, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 42(b), the Court ordered that the suit be severed into separate trials on the issues of (a) liability and (b) prospective equitable relief, monetary damages and attorneys' fees. By order dated August 9, 1982, the Court certified the class to encompass all women who applied or who might have applied for a maintenance position in District Eight of the Highway Commission between January 1, 1975 and the last day of May, 1980.
Plaintiffs' cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was brought against the Highway Commission, Robert N. Hunter in his official capacity as Chief Engineer of the Highway Commission, and V.B. Unsell in his official capacity as the District Engineer for District Eight of the Highway Commission. The trial of this case commenced on September 15, 1983 and concluded on September 23, 1983. On the § 1983 claims, the jury returned verdicts in favor of the class and against the Commission, Hunter, and Unsell, and returned verdicts for the defendants on the individual § 1983 claims of the four named plaintiffs.
On the Title VII claim, the Court, having heard the testimony at trial and having reviewed the voluminous exhibits submitted by the parties, has concluded for the reasons discussed below that the Highway Commission, through its recruitment and hiring policies, engaged in a pattern and practice of sex-based employment discrimination against the class. The Court also finds that the individual plaintiffs were denied employment opportunities by the Highway Commission because of their sex in violation of Title VII.
1. Named plaintiffs Jane Catlett, Grace Tuter, Adeline Kallemyn and Patricia Leembruggen are female citizens of the United States and resided in the Western District of Missouri at all times relevant to this suit.
2. The defendant Missouri Highway & Transportation Commission is an agency of the State of Missouri organized and existing under the laws of the State of Missouri and is an employer within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its headquarters and central personnel division are located in Jefferson City, Missouri. The Commission is the agency responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the roads in the State of Missouri. On January 1, 1980, the Missouri State Highway Commission merged with the Missouri Department of Transportation to become the Missouri Highway & Transportation Commission. The Missouri Highway & Transportation Commission is divided geographically into ten districts which are composed of counties and the City of St. Louis.
3. District Eight of the Highway Commission is headquartered in Springfield, Missouri, and consists of the Missouri counties of Christian, Dallas, Greene, Hickory, Laclede, Phelps, Polk, Pulaski, Stone, Taney and Webster.
4. Each of the ten districts of the Missouri Highway & Transportation Commission is headed by a District Engineer and each district has a Maintenance and Traffic Division which is headed by a District Maintenance and Traffic Engineer.
5. The job which is the subject matter of this action is the "maintenanceman" position, which is under the Maintenance & Traffic Division. The Maintenance & Traffic Division is responsible for the upkeep of the 32,000-mile highway system of the State of Missouri and conducts traffic studies of operational improvements to the highway system. The Maintenance & Traffic Division has the largest number of employees of any division and the maintenanceman job is the single largest job category in the Highway Commission. The Highway Commission considered the maintenanceman position to be an unskilled or semi-skilled position.
6. The maintenanceman job is the entry level position within the Maintenance and Traffic Division, requiring no prior experience with the Highway Department before initial hire. It is the largest single job category in the Missouri Highway & Transportation Commission. The basic requirements for initial hire into the maintenanceman job are that the person have at least an eighth-grade education and an ability to operate lightweight motor equipment such as pickup trucks, tractors or mowers. The maintenanceman job consists of a variety of low-skilled or semi-skilled duties such as mowing the right-of-way, plowing snow off the roads in the winter, filling potholes, maintaining buildings and rest areas, and performing minor maintenance tasks on equipment.
7. Plaintiff Jane Catlett filed a charge of discrimination with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights on July 21, 1975, and a similar charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on March 20, 1976, alleging that the Highway Commission failed to hire her for a maintenanceman position because of her sex. On December 15, 1976, the Highway Commission received a notice from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of Catlett's charge of discrimination. Catlett received a "notice of right to sue" letter from the United States Department of Justice on December 6, 1977. Plaintiff Catlett filed this lawsuit on March 3, 1978, within ninety days of the receipt of her notice of right to sue.
8. Federal jurisdiction is invoked pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202, and 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.
9. Jane Catlett was the only plaintiff to file a charge of discrimination with either a state or federal agency. Individual plaintiffs Kallemyn, Tuter and Leembruggen failed to file any discrimination charge with any state or federal agency.
10. The Highway Department in District Eight relied primarily on word-of-mouth recruitment for the maintenanceman position from January 1, 1975 through May 31, 1980. Occasionally, the Highway Commission in District Eight would notify the Missouri Division of Employment Security of job vacancies in the maintenanceman position, but most job applicants applied directly to the Highway Commission by walk-in application.
11. The Highway Commission in District Eight did not advertise in the news media for applicants for the maintenanceman position from January 1, 1975 through May 31, 1980.
12. The maintenanceman work force in District Eight was all male until December, 1976, when the first female was hired by the Commission.
13. For purposes of evaluating the impact of the Highway Commission's recruitment procedures in District Eight, a moderate definition of the applicant pool to which the actual number of applicants could be compared is that group of persons who reside within the eleven counties of District Eight and who are in the civilian labor force as defined by the United States Census for 1970 and for 1980 in the job categories of sales, blue collar, farm, service and clerical, but excluding managerial, technical and professional workers, and who are between the ages of eighteen and seventy years and who have a driver's license and an eighth-grade education.
14. A more conservative definition of the applicant pool for District Eight would be that group of persons who reside within the eleven counties of District Eight and who are in the civilian labor force as defined by the United States Census for 1970 and for 1980 in all job categories except managerial, technical, professional and clerical workers and who are between the ages of eighteen and seventy years and who have a driver's license and an eighth-grade education.
15. The available applicant pool in District Eight can be estimated for each year between 1970 and 1980 by adjusting the census data on a straight line method so as to allocate the difference in the numbers in the census data between 1970 and 1980 equally in each year. The percentages of women in the relevant labor pool under the moderate definition ranged from 42% in 1970 to 48% in 1980, and under the conservative definition the percentages ranged from 32% in 1970 to 37% in 1980.
16. In District Eight, the following numbers of males and females were hired during the relevant time period for the maintenanceman position.
Males Females
Hired Hired
1975 8 0
1976 2 1
1977 21 2
1978 21 5
1979 16 0
1980 (1/1-5/31) 2 0
17. The actual and...
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Catlett v. Missouri Highway and Transp. Com'n
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