Coffey v. Braddy

• Decision Date: 23 August 2016
• Docket Number: No. 15–11112,15–11112
• Citation: 834 F.3d 1184
• Parties: Olivette Coffey, Jr., Harry J. Johnson, Nancy J. Brackett, Jacksonville Brotherhood of Firefighters, Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. Dwight Braddy, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, J.C. Dekle, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, William Hallowes, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, Warren E. Thomas, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, Boyd Jolly, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

834 F.3d 1184

Olivette Coffey, Jr., Harry J. Johnson, Nancy J. Brackett, Jacksonville Brotherhood of Firefighters, Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v.Dwight Braddy, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, J.C. Dekle, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, William Hallowes, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, Warren E. Thomas, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, Boyd Jolly, in his capacity as a member of the civil service board of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 15–11112

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Date Filed: August 23, 2016

Christy B. Bishop, Dennis R. Thompson, Thompson & Bishop, Akron, OH, Helen Heim Albee, Heather Moore Collins, Neil L. Henrichsen, Henrichsen Siegel, Shands Wulbern, Law Office of Shands M Wulbern, PA, Jacksonville, FL, Bruce B. Elfvin, Elfvin Besser Royer Torch, Independence, OH, for Plaintiffs–Appellants.

Craig Dennis Feiser, Attorney General's Office, Tallahassee, FL, Mary W. Jarrett, Coffman Coleman Andrews & Grogan, Adina Teodorescu, Office of General Counsel, City of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before TJOFLAT, MARCUS, and ROGERS,^* Circuit Judges.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge:

Thirty-four years ago, in 1982, the district court entered a consent decree requiring the City of Jacksonville to hire in its fire department “an equal number of blacks and whites until the ratio of black fire fighters to white fire fighters reflects the ratio of black citizens to white citizens in the City of Jacksonville.” The City complied for ten years, until it unilaterally and without the district court's approval stopped following the decree in 1992. In the years following, employees moved away or died, documents were lost or destroyed, and public debate over the once-again falling numbers of African–American firefighters sparked the City in 1999 to institute new hiring protocols—but the plaintiffs did not try to enforce the decree. It was not until 2007, some fifteen years after the City had stopped complying with the decree, that the plaintiffs brought a motion to show cause as to why the City should not be held in contempt of the 1982 consent decree. The district court denied the plaintiffs' motion on grounds of laches, and dissolved the decree. Because the plaintiffs' fifteen-year delay prejudiced the City's ability to defend itself and because a new lawsuit had taken up the cause of fighting racial discrimination in the City's firefighting department, neither the district court's application of laches nor its dissolution of the 1982 consent decree was an abuse of discretion.

This lawsuit dates back to 1971, when a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of all past, present, and future black employees and employment applicants of the Fire Department of the City of Jacksonville claimed that the department's hiring practices violated the class members' civil rights. In August of that year, United States District Judge Charles Scott, now deceased, issued a consent decree requiring the City to follow certain hiring practices, including that the City “take whatever action is necessary to hire fifty (50%) percent black and fifty (50%) percent white individuals to fill funded positions of Fire Private from the appropriate eligible list until the ratio in the Fire Department of black firemen to white firemen equals the ratio of black citizens to white citizens in the City of Jacksonville.” Appointments from such eligibility lists were to be governed by the “rule of three” as provided by the civil service rules at the time.¹ In 1982, with the consent of the parties, Judge Scott modified the decree by removing the eligibility-list procedure and imposing an “absolute requirement” that the fire department “hire an equal number of blacks and whites until the ratio of black fire fighters to white fire fighters reflects the ratio of black citizens to white citizens in the City of Jacksonville.” The City abided by the one-to-one hiring requirement until 1992, when it stopped complying (by its own admission) with the decree without first petitioning the district court for release.

After the parties finished litigating attorneys' fees and costs in 1984, there was no further activity in the case until the plaintiffs filed the instant motion to show cause in 2007. In their motion, the plaintiffs claim that the City has been in contempt of the decree's one-to-one hiring requirement from the time that the City admittedly ended compliance with the decree in 1992. The City responded by claiming that the decree's terms permitted the City to stop hiring one-to-one once the ratio of African-Americans to whites in the fire department matched the ratio of African–Americans to whites in the City's population (which it claimed occurred in 1992) and by arguing that, in any event, the equitable defense of laches bars the plaintiffs' motion. The City also moved to dissolve the decree.

From 2007 to 2013, the parties engaged in global settlement discussions of this and other related suits, but to no avail.² In 2013, once settlement negotiations had proven unfruitful, the district court conducted a two-day evidentiary hearing. As the district court noted, although it is undisputed that the City stopped hiring one-to-one in 1992, the evidence gathered at the hearing was incomplete as to how or why the City decided to stop complying with the decree.

The evidentiary hearing revealed that in September 1991, W. Newby Kelts from the City's Department of Personnel sent a memorandum to the City's general counsel stating that the most recently hired firefighters had brought the City into compliance with the decree and asking what, if anything, must be done. In response, an October 1991 memorandum from Steven Rohan, a deputy general counsel of the City, advised that because the ratio of black-to-white firefighters had reached the ratio of black-to-white citizens in the general population, “no further taxpayers' dollars need be expended” to seek court approval of the City's decision to stop hiring one-to-one. The memo reasoned that the decree was “self-executing,” meaning that the one-to-one hiring requirement ceased to operate by its own terms once the fire-department ratio reached the general-population ratio. However, it is not clear when or if the fire department relied on the Kelts–Rohan memorandum exchange, because a year later Eugene Callahan, a personnel official in the fire department, wrote a letter to the general counsel's office again asking whether the intent of the decree had yet been satisfied.

It is thus unclear who made the final decision to end compliance with the decree without seeking court approval and when exactly that decision was made. Rohan, who insisted that he was not the ultimate decision-maker, suggested that the decision was likely made by someone at the highest level, such as the general counsel or mayor. Callahan recalled attending a meeting with the mayor during which an advisor to the mayor stated that the City need not return to court to obtain permission to stop following the decree. Callahan also testified that he did not recall any official announcement or press release detailing the City's decision to stop hiring one-to-one. However, despite the ambiguities over who made the decision to abandon the decree, it is clear that the City adopted new hiring policies in 1992 that departed from the requirements of the consent decree.

Additionally, it cannot be determined from the available evidence whether “the ratio of black fire fighters to white fire fighters” did indeed “reflect[ ] the ratio of black citizens to white citizens in the City of Jacksonville” in 1992, as the City claims. As an initial issue, it is unclear what percentage of African–American firefighters would have satisfied the decree's requirement. The parties' agreement stated that the black-to-white ratio should equal the population of “the Consolidated City of Jacksonville,” while the court's decree stated that the ratio should reflect the population of the “City of Jacksonville.” The City and Duval County merged in 1968 to create the “Consolidated City of Jacksonville,” and, confusingly, “[t]he name of the consolidated government is City of Jacksonville.” Laws of Fl. Ch. 92–341, § 1.101(a) (1992) (readopting Ch. 67–1320). It is thus unclear whether the court, in deviating from the parties' agreement by using the specific term “City of Jacksonville,” meant to refer to only the city or to the entire consolidated city. The distinction is important, as the “consolidated city” and the “city” comprise different geographic areas with different ratios of African–American and white residents. Census data from 1990 shows that 25.99% of the city was African–American and 74.02% was white, whereas 25.08% of all of Duval County (the consolidated city) was African–American and 74.92% was white. Rohan's October 1991 memo relied on a figure that 25.1% of the fire department's employees were African–American, and Callahan's 1992 letter relied on a figure that 25.3% of the fire department personnel were African–American. Both figures would have passed muster if the consolidated city were the benchmark, but both would have fallen short if the city were the operative geographic area.

Furthermore, it is not possible to verify whether the figures used by Rohan and Callahan accurately reflected the racial makeup of the fire department, as the fire department's employment records are incomplete and available witnesses could not recall exact employment figures. A witness testified that relevant employment documents were likely innocently destroyed in accordance with Florida's document retention schedule. Additionally, Callahan testified that he was not sure whether the 25.3% figure he relied on in ...