Blanton v. City of Murfreesboro
| Decision Date | 07 September 1988 |
| Docket Number | No. 87-5934,87-5934 |
| Citation | 856 F.2d 731 |
| Parties | 28 Wage & Hour Cas. (BN 1353, 57 USLW 2173, 110 Lab.Cas. P 35,116 Donald BLANTON, Jimmy Francis, Gary Ralston, Ernest Johnson, James Robert Jones, Jr., Jerry L. McCullough, and all other persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF MURFREESBORO; Joe B. Jackson; E.C. Fite, Jr.; Robert W. Scales; W. Richard Reeves; Mary F. Huhta; Roger G. Haley; John B. Pittard; and Martin McCullough, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Thomas L. Reed, Jr., Murfreesboro, Tenn., William N. Ozier (argued), Bass, Berry & Sims, Nashville, Tenn., for defendants-appellants.
Thomas A. Woodley, Mulholland and Hickey, Washington, D.C., Gregory K. McGillivary (argued), John D. Schwalb, Bolin, Ash, & Schwalb, Murfreesboro, Tenn., for plaintiffs-appellees.
Before MARTIN, WELLFORD and NELSON, Circuit Judges.
The City of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, appeals the grant of summary judgment for Donald Blanton and other similarly situated city fire fighters in this action under the provisions of section 8 of the 1985 Amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, Public Law 99-150, 29 U.S.C.A. Sec. 215. This case presents an issue of first impression: whether a municipality's downward adjustment of the base wage rates of its fire fighters so as to offset the recently imposed cost of including such employees within the benefit provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act violates section 8 of the 1985 Act.
In Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985), the Supreme Court made the Fair Labor Standards Act and its minimum-wage and overtime provisions expressly applicable to state and municipal employees. This decision effectively overruled the Court's earlier decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976). To ease the fiscal transition for state and local governments newly subject to the Act, Congress passed amendments allowing governmental entities under certain circumstances to award compensatory time in lieu of cash overtime payments; the amendments also postponed the effective date of the Act's application to April 15, 1986, one year after Garcia was decided. Most significantly of all, Congress enacted a provision, section 8 of the 1985 Act, to prohibit governmental discrimination against employees newly entitled to financial benefits,
This section 8 provides that no state agency may "discriminate[ ] ... against an employee with respect to the employee's wages or other terms or conditions of employment because ... the employee asserted coverage under section 7" (emphasis added) of the Act. 1 Section 7 establishes the number of hours above which overtime is triggered for fire fighters. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 207.
After Garcia was decided, the City of Murfreesboro adopted a series of resolutions to deal with the application of the Act. These resolutions had the effect initially of excluding meal and sleep time as compensable hours; ultimately, however, sleep time was restored as compensable hours. Fire fighters were given until June 1, 1985, to make known their objections to the resolutions, but no objections were raised by that date.
As the April 15, 1986, date for implementing the amendments approached, 85 City of Murfreesboro fire fighters officially informed the City that they had "selected Local No. 3035 of the International Association of Firefighters ... for the purpose of discussing and possibly entering into an agreement regarding ... the assignment and use of comp time in lieu of overtime pay." The fire fighters also, on the first three days of the Act's coverage, objected in writing to the exclusion of meal time from their compensable hours. In response to these objections, the City informed the fire fighters that for it "to operate within its budget," the fire fighters' election necessitated a change in the hourly rate of pay the City would pay. The City thereupon adjusted the base hourly wage rates of the fire fighters downward to take account of the fact that the inclusion of meal times as compensable hours pushed the hours worked per 21-day shift above the threshold for overtime compensation required by the Act.
In May of 1986, the fire fighters brought suit alleging that the City had reduced their wages because they had "asserted coverage" under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The district court found as a matter of law that the fire fighters had "asserted coverage" under section 7 of the Act, and that the City had "discriminated" against them in violation of section 8 by unilaterally reducing their wages, 658 F.Supp. 1540. Finding that the City had not alleged good faith, the court also awarded liquidated damages pursuant to 29 U.S.C. Sec. 216(b), thereby doubling the award to the fire fighters. The City of Murfreesboro now appeals.
The crux of the City's argument is that there are unresolved issues for trial on the issue of whether the City's action in reducing the wages was, in fact, retaliation. The City argues that its motive or intent in reducing the hourly wage rate was not in fact retaliatory and that its intent is certainly material to the resolution of this case. The district court held that while the City's intent may not have been retaliatory, such a determination was, as a matter of law, "not material to the resolution of this case."
The City argues that the word "because" in section 8 indicates that there must be a showing of causation between the fire fighters' assertion of coverage and the City's alleged discrimination. The City relies for its interpretation of section 8 upon the plain language of the statute, as well as upon an opinion letter by the then Solicitor of Labor in which he wrote that a one-time reduction of wages in response to the added overtime costs of the Act's coverage would not violate section 8 of the proposed legislation, various bits of legislative history, and the parallels between section 8 and section 15(a)(3) of the Act, where courts have foud that there must be a showing that the claimed retaliation was the "motivating" or "determinative" factor of the adverse action. Brock v. Richardson, 812 F.2d 121, 123 n. 1 (3d Cir.1987).
The City argues that the adjustment in the fire fighters' base wage rates was made not in retaliation but out of fiscal necessity to keep the City within its previously approved budget. The City also argues that it is entitled to a good faith defense pursuant to 29 U.S.C. Sec. 260, which provides that in any action "to recover unpaid minimum wages, unpaid overtime compensation, or liquidated damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act," the court "may, in its sound discretion, award no liquidated damages or award any amount thereof not to exceed the amount specified in section 216 of this title." The court's authority not to award liquidated damages is contingent upon the employer "show[ing] to the satisfaction of the court" that its actions were "in good faith" and that the employer had "reasonable grounds for believing" that it was not violating the Act. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 260. The district court concluded, however, that the defendants had not "plead[ed] and prove[d]" the defense of good faith and that in fact the City had waived its good faith defense during oral argument on the motion for summary judgment. The City argues that under section 260, they do not need to "plead and prove" the good faith defense, and, therefore, the court improperly awarded the full amount of liquidated damages to the fire fighters.
As an initial matter, we reject the argument of the City that this case can be resolved by merely looking to the language of section 8. We believe it is important to discern the legislative intent where, as here, the statutory language does not lend itself to a plain and unambiguous meaning. There is, however, "no errorless test for identifying or recognizing 'plain' or 'unambiguous' language." United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 580, 101 S.Ct. 2524, 2527, 69 L.Ed.2d 246 (1981). It is "fundamental that a section of a statute should not be read in isolation from the context of the whole Act, and that in fulfilling our responsibility in interpreting legislation, 'we must not be guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but [should] look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy.' " Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1, 11, 82 S.Ct. 585, 591-92, 7 L.Ed.2d 492 (1962) (cite omitted); see also United States v. Thompson, 669 F.2d 1143, 1145 (6th Cir.1982). While we recognize today that the use of legislative history, much of which is not recorded until after the final congressional action, in trying to understand the intent of Congress, is not as meaningful as it once was, we find ourselves with no other means of determining the intent of Congress in enacting this legislation. Reading section 8 in the context of the statutory scheme of which it is a part and in the context of the legislative history, we find ourselves unable to accept the City's interpretation of section 8.
We do recognize, however, that the City's argument that the phrase "because on or after February 19, 1985, the employee asserted coverage," justifies the position that a court must determine prior to imposing liability that the City has acted in retaliation is an argument that carries some weight. Unfortunately for the City, the language of the statute does not compel that conclusion and the legislative history rules it out.
The legislative history of section 8 defines the scope of protection provided under that section:
The antidiscrimination provision is meant to apply where one or more employees are singled out for adverse treatment in retaliation for an assertion that they are covered by the overtime provisions of the FLSA. The provision also is intended to apply where an...
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