Leeper v. Hamilton Cnty. Coal, LLC

Decision Date26 September 2019
Docket NumberNo. 19-1109,19-1109
Citation939 F.3d 866
Parties Carl LEEPER, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HAMILTON COUNTY COAL, LLC, and Alliance Resource Partners, L.P., Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Kevin P. Green, Thomas C. Horscroft, Thomas Paul Rosenfeld, Attorneys, GOLDENBERG, HELLER & ANTOGNOLI, P.C., Edwardsville, IL, for Plaintiff - Appellant.

Allison Crutcher Cooke, Richard Garrett Griffith, Elizabeth Smith Muyskens, Kif H. Skidmore, Attorneys, STOLL KEENON OGDEN PLLC, Lexington, KY, for Defendants - Appellees.

Before Ripple, Manion, and Sykes, Circuit Judges.

Sykes, Circuit Judge.

A group of workers at an Illinois coal mine received some unwelcome news on February 5, 2016. Their employer, Hamilton County Coal, LLC, announced a "temporary layoff" with an expected end date of August 1, 2016. Carl Leeper, a full-time maintenance worker at the mine, responded with this class action under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (the "WARN Act" or "the Act"), which requires employers to give affected employees 60 days’ notice before imposing a "mass layoff." 29 U.S.C. § 2102(a)(1). The Act defines a mass layoff as an event in which at least 33% of a site’s full-time workforce suffers an "employment loss." Id. § 2101(a)(3)(B). The district court entered summary judgment for Hamilton because the work site did not experience a "mass layoff" as defined in the Act.

We affirm. The record contains no evidence of a mass layoff. The term "employment loss" is defined as a permanent termination, a layoff exceeding six months, or an extended reduction of work hours. None of those events occurred here. Instead, Hamilton initiated a temporary layoff of under six months.

I. Background

Hamilton operates a coal mine near Dahlgren, Illinois.1 On February 5, 2016, Leeper and 157 other full-time employees received a hand-delivered "Temporary Layoff Notice" on Hamilton letterhead. The notice announced that "due to operational considerations," Hamilton was placing the workers "on temporary layoff for the period commencing on February 6, 2016 and ending on August 1, 2016." The notice invited them to return on that end date: "On August 1, 2016, you may return to your at-will employment with Hamilton County Coal." In the meantime, however, the laid-off workers would "not be employed by Hamilton County Coal" and were "free to pursue other endeavors."

The employees also received a document entitled "Frequently Asked Questions Concerning the Temporary Layoffs," which explained that "[a] temporary layoff is treated as a termination of employment for purposes of wages and benefits." It also provided information about health insurance, retirement accounts, and other benefits. Not long after Leeper and his coworkers received the notice, some mine workers began returning to work. Of the 158 notice recipients, 56 resumed their employment with full pay within six months.

About a month after receiving the notice, Leeper filed this class-action suit alleging that Hamilton violated the WARN Act by failing to provide 60 days’ notice before imposing a "mass layoff." § 2102(a)(1). The Act defines a "mass layoff" as "a reduction in force" that "results in an employment loss at the single site of employment during any 30-day period for ... at least 33 percent of the [full-time] employees ... ; and at least 50 employees." § 2101(a)(3)(B). The Act lists three categories of "employment loss": "(A) an employment termination, other than a discharge for cause, voluntary departure, or retirement, (B) a layoff exceeding 6 months, or (C) a reduction in hours of work of more than 50 percent during each month of any 6-month period." 29 U.S.C. § 2101(a)(6).

Leeper alleged two forms of employment loss. He first asserted that more than 33% of the mine’s full-time workers suffered an "employment termination" within the meaning of § 2101(a)(6)(A). He later added an allegation that Hamilton reduced the "hours of work [by] more than 50 percent during each month of any 6-month period." § 2101(a)(6)(C).

Ruling on cross-motions for summary judgment, the district judge rejected Leeper’s first theory that the mine workers experienced an employment termination within the meaning of the Act. Relying on regulatory guidance distinguishing an employment termination from a layoff, the judge placed this work stoppage in the latter category. And because the layoff did not exceed six months and 56 workers returned to full-time employment within that time, the workers hadn’t suffered an employment loss and the WARN Act’s 33% threshold was not met. See § 2101(a)(6)(B) (categorizing "a layoff exceeding 6 months" as an "employment loss") (emphasis added).

Turning to Leeper’s second argument, the judge framed the issue as whether a "layoff" under the Act "can simultaneously be considered a ‘reduction in hours of work of more than 50 percent in each month of any 6-month period.’ " If so, § 2101(a)(6)(B) would be superfluous because every layoff exceeding six months would already constitute a "reduction in hours" under § 2101(a)(6)(C). The judge concluded that subsections (B) and (C) describe distinct categories of work stoppages. This case involved a layoff, she held, and because it did not exceed six months, it was not covered by the Act. The judge entered final judgment for Hamilton. This appeal followed.

II. Discussion

We review a summary judgment de novo, reading the record in the light most favorable to Leeper and drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor. Tolliver v. City of Chicago , 820 F.3d 237, 241 (7th Cir. 2016).

The sole question is whether the evidence establishes that a mass layoff occurred. Leeper maintains that more than 33% of the mine’s full-time workforce experienced an employment termination within the meaning of § 2101(a)(6)(A). Alternatively, he argues that a sufficient number of workers suffered a "reduction in hours of work of more than 50 percent during each month of any 6-month period" under § 2101(a)(6)(C).

A. Employment Termination

We begin by distinguishing an "employment termination" from a "layoff." Department of Labor guidance ex-plains that "for the purposes of defining ‘employment loss,’ the term ‘termination’ means the permanent cessation of the employment relationship and the term ‘layoff’ means the temporary cessation of that relationship." Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, 54 Fed. Reg. 16,042, 16,047 (Apr. 20, 1989). Other circuits have embraced this distinction. See, e.g. , Morton v. Vanderbilt Univ. , 809 F.3d 294, 296 (6th Cir. 2016) ; Long v. Dunlop Sports Grp. Americas, Inc. , 506 F.3d 299, 302 (4th Cir. 2007). The presence of temporal language in § 2101(a)(6)(B)"exceeding 6 months"—and its absence from § 2101(a)(6)(A) supports the Department’s interpretation.

This distinction raises a follow-up question: How do we evaluate whether a cessation of the employment relationship is permanent or temporary? It’s always possible for a worker to be rehired in the future, so one can never know for sure whether a termination is permanent. Do we evaluate permanence from the ex-ante perspective of a worker who just received a dismissal notice, from the ex-post perspective of a court presented with evidence that workers were rehired, or something in between?

Consider this hypothetical: On January 1 Steve’s employer informs him, quite unequivocally, that he is fired. Five months later the employer calls Steve and offers to rehire him. He accepts. For WARN Act purposes, what happened to Steve? With the benefit of hindsight, it might seem obvious that Steve experienced a "temporary cessation" of his employment—that is, a layoff. And because the layoff did not exceed six months, Steve didn’t suffer an "employment loss" under § 2101(a)(6)(B). So he doesn’t count toward the Act’s 33% threshold. The judge here basically took that approach, reasoning that the 56 workers who "were fully restored to pre-layoff wages within six months" did not experience a permanent termination of employment. Hamilton of course prefers this analysis.

Leeper urges us to reject this hindsight-based reasoning. Instead he proposes a test based on an employee’s objective expectation of recall. If a reasonable employee would interpret the firing as permanent, then Leeper would say that a § 2101(a)(6)(A) employment termination occurred. So in the example above, Steve suffered an employment termination on January 1. His eventual rehiring is irrelevant to that categorization.

Leeper has the better argument. Congress specified three separate and distinct categories of employment action in § 2101(a)(6). We must respect the choice embodied by that statutory structure. To that end, we avoid giving a provision "an interpretation that causes it to duplicate another." Nielsen v. Preap , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 954, 969, 203 L.Ed.2d 333 (2019) (quoting ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW : THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 174 (2012)). The judge’s retrospective analysis makes § 2101(a)(6)(A) duplicative. If a period of unemployment must exceed six months to constitute an employment termination, then that category is functionally indistinguishable from § 2101(a)(6)(B).

That reading condemns prospective WARN Act plaintiffs to statutory limbo. An aggrieved worker might think that evidence of an unambiguous firing clearly satisfies § 2101(a)(6)(A). But under Hamilton’s reasoning, this would-be plaintiff cannot know whether an employment termination occurred until the event also qualifies as a "layoff exceeding six months." That disregards our decision in Phason v. Meridian Rail Corp. , 479 F.3d 527 (7th Cir. 2007). There we explained that "[a]n ‘employment loss’ occurs when any one of the subsections applies." Id . at 529. Hamilton’s proposed interpretation effectively appends a six-month waiting period to § 2101(a)...

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