Smith v. Angel Food Ministries, Inc.
| Decision Date | 03 February 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 3:08-CV-79 (CDL).,3:08-CV-79 (CDL). |
| Citation | 611 F.Supp.2d 1346 |
| Parties | James SMITH and Crystal Smith, Plaintiffs, v. ANGEL FOOD MINISTRIES, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Georgia |
Allan Leroy Parks, Jr., Eleanor Mixon Attwood, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs.
Richard A. Carothers, Thomas M. Mitchell, Buford, GA, for Defendant.
This action arises from alleged religious discrimination by Defendant Angel Food Ministries against Plaintiffs James and Crystal Smith. On December 4, 2008, the Court entered an Order denying Defendant's motion to dismiss the action. Presently pending before the Court is Defendant's Motion for Reconsideration of Motion to Dismiss or in the Alternative, Motion to Limit Discovery (Doc. 16). For the following reasons, the Court denies Defendant's motion for reconsideration but grants Defendant's motion to limit discovery initially.1
After further consideration, the Court confirms its conclusion that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 126 S.Ct. 1235, 163 L.Ed.2d 1097 (2006), controls its determination of whether the religious exemption is jurisdictional. Defendant mounts a two-pronged, spirited attack on the Court's reasoning. First, Defendant proclaims that the Court did the "unthinkable"-callously ignored binding legal precedent which Defendant contends unequivocally holds that application of the religious exemption is jurisdictional. Second, Defendant boldly criticizes the Court's interpretation of Arbaugh and argues that Arbaugh only applies to definitional limitations on Title VII's scope. The Court rejects Defendant's arguments. After reconsidering its previous Order, the Court is now more convinced than ever that its previous rationale was correct, notwithstanding Defendant's apparent disbelief that any court could so conclude.
Defendant argues that the former Fifth Circuit's decision in EEOC v. Mississippi College, 626 F.2d 477 (5th Cir.1980), is binding authority on the issue presently before the Court. In Mississippi College, the plaintiff filed a charge with the EEOC alleging that the college, a religious educational institution, discriminated against her on the basis of race and gender. During the course of its investigation of the plaintiff's charge, the EEOC issued a subpoena to the college requesting information on its hiring practices. When the college refused to comply voluntarily, the EEOC brought an action in a federal district court to enforce the subpoena. The district court denied enforcement. Miss. Coll., 626 F.2d at 480-81. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit concluded that
if a religious institution of the kind described in s 702 presents convincing evidence that the challenged employment practice resulted from discrimination on the basis of religion, s 702 deprives the EEOC of jurisdiction to investigate further to determine whether the religious discrimination was a pretext for some other form of discrimination.
Id. at 485. Defendant thus contends that because it has produced evidence suggesting it is a religious organization and because Plaintiff alleges that Defendant discriminated on the basis of religion, Mississippi College requires dismissal of this case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Defendant's argument, however, ignores the language in Arbaugh eviscerating the precedential value of the Mississippi College decision. In Arbaugh, the Supreme Court specifically instructed lower courts to accord no precedential effect to what it termed "unrefined," "drive-by jurisdictional rulings." Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 511, 126 S.Ct. 1235. The Supreme Court considered rulings "of this genre" to be those in which the court failed to identify whether it was dismissing the action for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction or failure to state a claim. Id. at 511-13, 126 S.Ct. 1235 (citing Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69, 104 S.Ct. 2229, 81 L.Ed.2d 59 (1984); EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 111 S.Ct. 1227, 113 L.Ed.2d 274 (1991), superseded by statute, Civil Rights Act of 1991, Pub.L. No. 102-166, 105 Stat. 1077).2
Just as in Hishon and Arabian American Oil Co., the Mississippi College court never addressed the issue of "whether subject-matter jurisdiction was the proper rubric for the District Court's decisions." Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 512, 126 S.Ct. 1235. According to the Supreme Court, "such unrefined dispositions . . . should be accorded `no precedential effect' on the question whether the federal court had authority to adjudicate the suit." Id. at 511, 126 S.Ct. 1235; see also Rajoppe v. GMAC Corp. Holding Corp., Civil Action No. 05-2097, 2007 WL 846671, at *3 (E.D.Pa. Mar.19, 2007) (). Accordingly, there appears to be no binding Eleventh Circuit authority regarding whether the religious exemption is jurisdictional, and the Court has a clean slate on which to apply Arbaugh.3
The Court also rejects Defendant's contention that Arbaugh should be narrowly interpreted to apply only to those "definitional" limitations on Title VII's scope. The Supreme Court, recognizing that courts "have been less than meticulous" in their use of the term "jurisdiction," promulgated a bright line test to assist courts in identifying whether a dismissal was for lack of jurisdiction or on the merits. Arbaugh, 546 U.S at 511, 126 S.Ct. 1235. In so doing, the Court spoke in broad terms:
If the Legislature clearly states that a threshold limitation on a statute's scope shall count as jurisdictional, then courts and litigants will be duly instructed and will not be left to wrestle with the issue. But when Congress does not rank a statutory limitation on coverage as jurisdictional, courts should treat the restriction as nonjurisdictional in character.
Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 515, 126 S.Ct. 1235. The Arbaugh test has been widely applied to various "threshold limitation[s] on a statute's scope." See, e.g., Trusted Net Media Holdings, LLC v. The Morrison Agency, Inc. (In re Trusted Net Media Holdings, LLC), 550 F.3d 1035, 1044 (11th Cir.2008) (en banc) (); Minard v. ITC Deltacom Commc'ns, Inc., 447 F.3d 352, 356-57 (5th Cir.2006) (); Partington v. Am. Int'l Specialty Lines Ins. Co., 443 F.3d 334, 339 (4th Cir.2006) ().4 Not all of these "limitation[s] on a statute's scope" are directly linked to the statute's definitional provisions. See, e.g., In re Trusted Net Media Holdings, LLC, 550 F.3d at 1044 ().5 While it is true that no other case has been located that precisely applies the Arbaugh test to section 702 of Title VII, the previously cited cases do make it clear that the decision to apply the Arbaugh test does not turn on whether the statutory limitation is found in the statute's definitions section.
Perhaps more fundamentally, Defendant's argument fails to address the jurisdictional principles which form the foundation of the Arbaugh decision. The Arbaugh Court found that the plaintiff invoked the district court's subject matter jurisdiction by pleading a colorable claim arising under Title VII. See Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 513, 126 S.Ct. 1235 (). The Arbaugh Court cited its decision in Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 682-84, 66 S.Ct. 773, 90 L.Ed. 939 (1946) for this proposition. Id. Under Bell, a district court has jurisdiction when "the right of the petitioners to recover under their complaint will be sustained if the Constitution and laws of the United States are given one construction and will be defeated if they are given another." Bell, 327 U.S. at 685, 66 S.Ct. 773. Because this is a merits-based determination, "[j]urisdiction might fail to state a cause of action on which [Plaintiffs] could actually recover." Id. at 682, 66 S.Ct. 773.
In this case, Plaintiffs invoked § 1331 jurisdiction by pleading a colorable claim arising under Title VII. If the statutory religious exemption is given one construction, Plaintiffs' claims will be defeated; if it is given another, Plaintiffs' claims will be sustained. Accordingly, this Court has subject matter jurisdiction over Plaintiffs' claims, and it would be inappropriate to dismiss the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. "If the court does later exercise its jurisdiction to determine that the allegations in the complaint do not state a ground for relief," i.e., that Defendant is entitled to the religious exemption, "then dismissal of the case would be on the merits, not for want of jurisdiction." Bell, 327 U.S. at 682, 66 S.Ct. 773.
The Court's ruling comports not only with the instructions of the Supreme Court but also with well-established Eleventh Circuit precedent which directly addresses the distinction between a dismissal for failure to state a claim and a dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The Eleventh Circuit has explained that
[w]hen a party claims a right that arises under the laws of the United States, a federal court has jurisdiction over the controversy. If the court concludes that the federal statute...
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