Austin v. Berryman
| Decision Date | 26 January 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-3948,88-3948 |
| Citation | 862 F.2d 1050 |
| Parties | 49 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 26, 57 USLW 2355, Unempl.Ins.Rep. CCH 21,907 Barbara AUSTIN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Sandra BERRYMAN; Patrice Johnson; Joseph Hayes; Ralph Cantrell, Defendants- Appellants, National Employment Law Project, Inc., Amicus Curiae. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
J. Steven Sheppard, III, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Mary Sue Terry, Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellants.
Martin Douglas Wegbreit, Castlewood, Va. (Hugh F. O'Donnell, Client Centered Legal Services of Southwest Virginia, Inc., St. Paul, Va., on brief), for appellee.
Elizabeth Athos, Tenafly, N.J., James Williams, Nat. Employment Law Project, Inc., Abington, Va., on brief, for amicus curiae.
Before WINTER, Chief Judge, and MURNAGHAN and SPROUSE, Circuit Judges.
Sandra Berryman, Acting Chief Appeals Examiner, Patrice Johnson, Special Examiner, Joseph Hayes, Assistant for Commission Appeals, and Ralph Cantrell, Commissioner, all of the Virginia Employment Commission of the Commonwealth of Virginia, appeal from the judgment of the district court in favor of Barbara Austin. When Austin resigned her job in Salem, Virginia, to move to Castlewood, Virginia, with her husband, she applied for unemployment benefits. The Commission decided that she was ineligible for benefits, basing its decision on a provision of the Virginia unemployment compensation statute that singles out employees who voluntarily quit work to follow a spouse to a new locality. 1 Austin then brought the underlying action in the district court. She claimed, among other things, that the Virginia statute violated her first amendment right to the free exercise of religion and her fundamental marriage rights protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment.
The district court held that the statute infringed upon incidents of marriage protected by the fourteenth amendment and was facially unconstitutional. Pursuant to that holding, it enjoined the Commission from enforcing the statute against any married person solely because he or she resigned a position to follow a spouse. It also held that, as applied to Austin, the statute violated her first amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Austin v. Berryman, 670 F.Supp. 672 (W.D.Va.1987). Believing itself bound to do so by our decision in Brown v. Porcher, 660 F.2d 1001 (4th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1150, 103 S.Ct. 796, 74 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1983), overruled on other grounds, Wimberly v. Labor & Industrial Relations Commission, 479 U.S. 511, 107 S.Ct. 821, 93 L.Ed.2d 909 (1987), it later amended its judgment and ordered the Commission to pay Austin retroactive benefits. The district court's ruling on these issues is now before us on appeal.
We do not agree that the statute is facially unconstitutional. In our view, the statute's denial of benefits to employees who resign to follow their spouses does not so fundamentally affect marriage relationships that it must be examined under heightened judicial scrutiny. Gauging the statute under the rational-basis test, we conclude that a reasonable and rational connection exists between the legislation and the legitimate purpose motivating its enactment. Therefore, we reverse that portion of the district court's judgment enjoining the enforcement of the statute. We agree with the district court, however, that the Virginia statute as applied to Austin violates her first amendment right to the free exercise of religion. We think that Brown does not control the outcome of this issue and that the eleventh amendment prohibits the award of retroactive benefits. Therefore, we reverse that part of the district court's judgment awarding those benefits.
Austin was employed by McVitty House, Inc., in Salem, Virginia, from May 14, 1984 through June 3, 1985. In the spring of 1985, her husband decided to move approximately 150 miles away to Castlewood, Virginia, to care for his 81-year-old mother who lived there. Austin quit her job with McVitty House to accompany her husband to Castlewood and, unable to find employment, she applied for state unemployment benefits on July 2, 1985. At the time of her benefits application, Virginia Code Sec. 60.1-58(a) 2 provided that an employee was disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits if he or she "left work voluntarily without good cause." Interpreting "good cause" in section 60.1-58(a), the Commission had established a practice of granting unemployment compensation to employees who left work voluntarily for purely personal reasons of a compelling nature. In 1979, however, the Virginia legislature amended section 60.1-58(a) to provide that "the voluntary leaving of work with an employer to accompany or to join his or her spouse in a new locality" is not "good cause."
When Austin filed her claim for unemployment benefits, a deputy of the Commission determined that she was ineligible for benefits because she voluntarily left her employment without good cause. Austin appealed that denial within the Commission, and, on August 22, 1985, an appeals examiner conducted a hearing. Austin testified that her husband moved from Salem to Castlewood to care for his elderly mother. She testified that she and her husband are members of the Holiness church, that her husband had been a member of the religion since he was an infant, and that she joined the church when she married him eighteen years prior to the time of her resignation from the McVitty House employment. She explained the tenets of her faith during the hearing:
[W]e, uh, abide by what the Bible tells us and we live what is wrote in God's Word, His Bible.
....
... [O]ur belief is that we honor our husband. It tells you in the Bible that you honor your husband and his decisions on things. And, uh, [we] feel like that if you go against a decision like this pertaining to his mother, which it says in the Commandments that you honor your father and your mother. And in this case his mother needed him and he felt like that he would be going against what the, that our religion is, that he would be going against God's Word if he did not go and, and take care of his mother when she was in need. And therefore [we] also believe[ ] that you honor your husband's decision and that you go where your husband says go, because [we] feel like that that's breaking up a home ... if you don't.
....
It is been taught to us and in the Bible it, it tells you [that the Commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother," applies to one's in-laws]. It's not that, uh, it's, it's his mother and, and it, and, respect it is my mother too in our belief. It is, um ... She's just like, it would be my own mother in our belief because she's part of our family. It's her, it's his mother, but just like, um, my mother and father, we do and, and honor what they think.... And what they need.
....
... I ... didn't feel like there was any other choice to be made.... [B]ecause of our religion I felt ... it was the right thing to do because his mother needed help and she's part of the family and we abide by our religion that part of the fam[ily]. You take care....
The appeals examiner nevertheless decided that she was not entitled to unemployment benefits, and she appealed to the Commission itself.
On March 5, 1986, the Commission issued an opinion affirming the decision of the appeals examiner. It held that Austin's primary reason for quitting her job was a desire to move with her husband to a new locality and that she therefore voluntarily left her employment without good cause. The Commission also rejected Austin's first amendment free exercise claim:
[Austin's] decision to terminate employment was not because of any religious objection to the job held or work requirements expected of her. [She] was, at all times, consistent with her claimed religious belief, able to be employed but for the decision of her husband to relocate. In this case, [her] decision to quit her employment had nothing to do with any religious objection to the job itself or to a requirement of the employer.
Austin then filed suit in district court challenging the constitutionality of section 60.1-58(a) based on, inter alia, the first amendment free exercise clause and the fourteenth amendment due process clause.
In our view, the district court correctly analyzed United States Supreme Court precedent as requiring its finding that the Commission violated Austin's first amendment free exercise rights. In Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963), the Supreme Court held that a South Carolina statute abridged the appellant's first amendment right to free exercise of religion by disqualifying her from receipt of unemployment compensation benefits because of her refusal to work on Saturday. She was a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist church whose tenets prohibited Saturday labor. The Court stated:
The [denial] forces her to choose between following the precepts of her religion and forfeiting benefits, on the one hand, and abandoning one of the precepts of her religion in order to accept work, on the other hand. Governmental imposition of such a choice puts the same kind of burden upon the free exercise of religion as would a fine imposed against appellant for her Saturday worship.
....
... [T]o condition the availability of benefits upon this appellant's willingness to violate a cardinal principle of her religious faith effectively penalizes the free exercise of her constitutional liberties.
Id. at 404, 406, 83 S.Ct. at 1794, 1795. The Court went on to hold, of course, that only a compelling state interest could justify such a burden on first amendment rights. Responding to an argument that South Carolina had a compelling interest to prevent the possibility of fraudulent claims, the Court explained that "even if the possibility of...
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