Amato v. Suffolk County

• Decision Date: 10 September 1987
• Docket Number: No. CV 87-2196.,CV 87-2196.
• Citation: 668 F. Supp. 151
• Parties: Lorraine AMATO, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The COUNTY OF SUFFOLK, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

668 F. Supp. 151

Lorraine AMATO, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The COUNTY OF SUFFOLK, et al., Defendants.

No. CV 87-2196.

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

September 10, 1987.

Hunton & Williams by David R. Davies, New York City, David E. Nagle, Richmond, Va., for plaintiffs.

Martin Bradley Ashare, Suffolk Co. Atty. by Edith C. Rysdyk, Hauppauge, N.Y., for defendants.

WEXLER, District Judge.

On December 23, 1986, the Suffolk County Legislature adopted Local Law No. 4-1987, designated the Teenager Protection Act of 1986 ("the Law"), which prohibited the administration of certain polygraph examinations to minors. The Suffolk County Executive approved the Law on January 22, 1987, and it was scheduled to take effect on July 1, 1987. On June 30, 1987, plaintiffs Lorraine Amato, Joseph Hofmann, Newmark & Lewis, Inc., James Mongan, and Suffolk County Polygraph Association, Inc. ("the Association") filed a complaint seeking both declaratory and permanent injunctive relief and an order to show cause seeking that defendants Suffolk County, Suffolk County District Attorney Patrick Henry, and Suffolk County Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Harold J. Withers be preliminarily enjoined from implementing and enforcing the Law. After an adjournment of the hearing upon defendants' order to show cause, the parties requested at a conference before the Court that the Court dispense with a definitive ruling upon plaintiffs' application for preliminary relief and instead turn its attention directly to the ultimate merits of plaintiffs' action. The Court indicated that it would comply with the parties' request, and defendants agreed not to enforce the Law pending the Court's final decision on the merits. Upon consideration of the papers the parties have filed in support of their respective positions, the arguments they have put forth at the various conferences with the Court, and the Court's own independent research of relevant case law, the Court now finds, for the reasons set forth below, that plaintiffs' complaint must be dismissed.

I.

Local Law No. 4-1987 stems from the Suffolk County Legislature's perception that the existing state of the law fails adequately to protect minors seeking employment from potential abuses in the administration of polygraph examinations. As § 1 of the Law makes clear, the Legislature is of the opinion that, because of their inexperience and youth, minors are particularly susceptible to abusive polygraph examinations, and that polygraph examinations "intimidate, degrade, coerce, frighten and violate the privacy of minors who are subjected to such examinations as a condition of employment or during the course of their employment." Local Law No. 4-1987, § 1. The Law attempts to protect minors by prohibiting the performance of any polygraph examinations "by a polygraph examiner within the County of Suffolk by or on behalf of any public or private employer located and/or doing business within the County of Suffolk for employment purposes upon an applicant or an employee either as a condition of employment or as a condition of continued employment." Id., § 3. The Law defines "applicant" as "a minor offering services for compensation to any public or private employer located and/or doing business within the County of Suffolk," and "employee" as "a minor rendering services for compensation" to any such employer. A "minor" is declared to be "an unemancipated individual under the age of twenty-one (21) years old." Id., § 2.

Violation of the Law constitutes a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $500.00 or imprisonment for up to one year, or both. Additionally, the Law directs the Commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Consumer Affairs immediately to withdraw the registration and license of any polygraph examiner convicted of violating the Law. Id., § 4. The Law's prohibitions and penalties, however, do not apply to polygraph examinations conducted in the course of a criminal investigation, administered to persons seeking employment as Suffolk County, town, or village police officers or as deputy sheriffs or correction officers, or performed by a federal agency or department for national security reasons as established by federal statute or executive order of the President of the United States. Id., § 6.

The individual plaintiffs named in the complaint filed in this action claim that the Law subjects them to varying forms of harm. Amato is a nineteen year old who alleges that she is being harmed by the Law because she will not be able to meet her employer's polygraph requirements, which are a prerequisite to advancement and reassignment, as well as a condition of employment. Hofmann is a fifty two year old who asserts that he is being subjected to discriminatory conditions of employment that younger people do not have to face. Newmark & Lewis, a company that has a polygraph program, states that the Law presents it with the choice of either discriminating or abandoning its lawful polygraph system. James Mongan is a polygraph examiner who alleges that the Law threatens him with criminal prosecution, imprisonment, fines, and loss of his license. The Association is an association of polygraph examiners, some of whom are themselves employers, that argues that its members are, like Mongan, being threatened with criminal prosecution and sanctions and loss of licenses.

The complaint itself contains eight counts, each setting forth ways in which the Law purportedly aggrieves certain of the individual plaintiffs. In Count I, Hofmann, Newmark & Lewis, and the Association assert that the Law violates the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-34, in that it grants an exemption to a younger age group that is not available to older workers. In Count II, Hofmann, Newmark & Lewis, and the Association allege that the ADEA preempts the Law. Count III claims on behalf of Amato, Hofmann, Newmark & Lewis, and the Association that the Law runs afoul of the New York Human Rights Law's prohibition against discrimination in employment of individuals age eighteen and over. N.Y.Exec.Law §§ 290-301. Count IV states on behalf of these same plaintiffs that the effect of the New York Human Rights Law is to preempt the Law.

Counts V-VIII relate solely to claims of Mongan and the Association. In Count V, Mongan and the Association allege that the Law is void for vagueness under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because of certain language discrepancies between §§ 1 and 3 of the Law. Count VI sets forth an equivalent claim under Article 1, § 6 of the New York constitution, which contains the state constitution's due process provision. In Count VII, Mongan and the Association assert that the Law is also violative of the Fourteenth Amendment as unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious because it only proscribes polygraph examiners' conduct even though it is employers who set the conditions of employment, it protects only minors, and it excepts various police- and other governmentally-related tests from coverage. Count VIII is a parallel claim brought under the New York constitution.

II.

The Court will first address Mongan and the Association's claims in Counts V and VII that the Law violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, since these contentions can quite readily be seen to lack merit. In Count V, Mongan and the Association assert that the Law is unduly vague because of an apparent inconsistency between the language used in §§ 1 and 3 of the Law. § 1, entitled "Legislative Intent," states, in relevant part:

The purpose of this legislation is to protect .... minors by imposing a ban on the use of polygraph examinations within the County of Suffolk on individuals under the age of twenty-one (21) by any public or private employer for any employment purposes, except in instances of criminal law enforcement, pre-employment screening by the Suffolk County Police Department, or when such examination is conducted by a federal agency or department for reasons of national security as established by federal statute and/or executive order of the President of the United States.

§ 3, as the Court indicated above, supra p. 3, reads:

No polygraph examination shall be performed by a polygraph examiner within the County of Suffolk by or on behalf of any public or private employer located and/or doing business within the County of Suffolk for employment purposes upon an applicant or an employee either as a condition of employment or as a condition of continued employment.

Plaintiffs argue that the Law should be struck down as void for vagueness because it is unclear whether the Law prohibits the administering of polygraph examinations to minors "for any employment purposes," the phrase used in § 1, or only the performance of such tests "as a condition of employment .... or continued employment," the language set forth in § 3.

The Supreme Court has established two basic factors that a court must consider in adjudicating challenges to statutes or ordinances on vagueness grounds. First, the court must determine whether the law at issue is sufficiently definite that it gives a "person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly." Second, the Court must ascertain whether the law provides standards that are adequately explicit to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement by those charged with the task of applying the law. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2298-99, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972). In other words, in order to satisfy the requirements of the due process doctrine of vagueness, a law must give fair notice and warning of the scope of its prohibitions or commands and must contain reasonably clear guidelines for law enforcement officials and triers of fact to follow. Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 572-73, 94 S.Ct. 1242, 1247, 39 L.Ed.2d 605 (...