Brown v. Porcher
| Decision Date | 06 October 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-1077,81-1077 |
| Citation | 660 F.2d 1001 |
| Parties | Mary E. BROWN, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated; Liberia Johnson, Appellees, v. Frances E. PORCHER, in her official capacity as Claims Adjudicator of the SouthCarolina Employment Security Commission; H. C. Sloan, in his official capacityas Appeals Referee of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission; C. LenHarper,in his official capacity as Chairman of the South Carolina Employment SecurityCommission; Cecil Sandifer, in his official capacity as Vice-Chairman of theSouth Carolina Employment Security Commission; Frank E. Baldwin, Jr., in hisofficial capacityas Commissioner of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission,Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
David C. Eckstrom, Asst. Atty. Gen., Columbia, S. C. (Daniel R. McLeod, Atty. Gen., C. Tolbert Goolsby, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen.; William H. Griffin, Gen. Counsel, Columbia, S. C., on brief), for appellants.
Thomas J. Rubillo, Neighborhood Legal Assistance Program, Inc., Pawleys Island, S. C. (Armand Derfner, Jill A. Hanken, VA Poverty Law Center, Charleston, S. C., on brief), for appellees.
(Thompson, Mann & Hutson, Greenville, S. C., on brief), for amicus curiae.
Women's Rights Project and the Reproductive Freedom Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, National Center on Women and Family Law, Inc., Women's Legal Defense Fund, amici curiae.
International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America-UAW, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, National Employment Law Project, National Center on Women and Family Law, amici curiae.
Before BUTZNER, and ERVIN, Circuit Judges, and W. EARL BRITT, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.
Title 26 U.S.C. § 3304(a)(12) provides "no person shall be denied (unemployment) compensation under ... State law solely on the basis of pregnancy or termination of pregnancy." The principal issue in this appeal is whether this statute prohibits the South Carolina Employment Security Commission from denying women, who are available and able to work, unemployment compensation solely because they left work on account of pregnancy. 1 The district court held that the Commission's practices conflicted with § 3304(a) (12) and awarded injunctive and monetary relief to an appropriate class. We affirm this judgment with one exception: on remand the court should modify the computation of individual awards as directed in Part III of this opinion.
The district court's opinion, reported at 502 F.Supp. 946 (D.S.C.1980), recounts in detail the facts pertaining to this action. In summary, the record discloses that Mary E. Brown and Liberia Johnson, appellees, each left their respective employment due to the physical discomfort and illnesses occasioned by their pregnancies. After giving birth to their children, Brown and Johnson sought to return to their former jobs, but they were informed that the positions were no longer available. Each then filed a claim with the Commission for unemployment compensation.
The Commission denied both claims on the ground that the applicants had voluntarily quit their former jobs for personal reasons not constituting good cause. Section 41-35-120(1) of the South Carolina Code provides that a claimant shall be ineligible for benefits "(i)f the Commission finds that he has left voluntarily without good cause his most recent work ..." Although the South Carolina statute does not mention pregnancy, the Commission has construed it to disqualify any claimant who voluntarily left her most recent employment because of pregnancy. 2
We agree with the district court's conclusion that 26 U.S.C. § 3304(a)(12) prohibits the challenged South Carolina practice. Congress has required the states to comply with a limited number of "fundamental standards" in order to receive the advantages of federal approval. 3 Because § 3304(a)(12) is a fundamental standard, the only issue is whether the challenged practice violates this statute.
Section 3304(a)(12) was enacted in the wake of Turner v. Department of Employment Security, 423 U.S. 44, 96 S.Ct. 249, 46 L.Ed.2d 181 (1975). There the Court overturned, on constitutional grounds, a presumption that pregnant women could not work and therefore were ineligible for unemployment compensation. Turner, however, did not address the issue presented by this case.
The Commission argues that § 3304(a)(12) was intended only to eliminate the somewhat shorter presumptive periods of disqualification that some states continued to impose after Turner and to "prohibit states from creating a special category for pregnancy-related claims, and then denying benefits to those claimants thereby basing the denial on the fact of pregnancy alone." 4 The Commission points out that it treats pregnant women like any employee who quits a job because of ill health. Consequently, the Commission asserts, its practice does not conflict with the federal statute.
We cannot accept the Commission's argument. As the district court pointed out, § 3304(a)(12) is remedial in nature and should be broadly construed. Tcherepnin v. Knight, 389 U.S. 332, 336, 88 S.Ct. 548, 553, 19 L.Ed.2d 564 (1967). If Congress had intended, as the Commission argues, only to codify the Turner decision and take the additional step of barring discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, it could easily have drafted a statute reflecting those limited purposes. Instead, it broadly provided that "(n)o person shall be denied compensation under ... state law solely on the basis of pregnancy or termination of pregnancy." These words must be interpreted "in their ordinary everyday senses." Hanover Bank v. Commissioner, 369 U.S. 672, 687, 82 S.Ct. 1080, 1088, 8 L.Ed.2d 187 (1962). Regardless of how the Commission treats employees with other disabilities, the mandate of the statute is clear: the Commission cannot deny compensation "solely on the basis of pregnancy or termination of pregnancy." Because the statute is unambiguous, resort to legislative history is unwarranted. Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory Construction § 46.04 (4th ed. C. Sands 1973). It may not be amiss, however, to note that nothing in the scant legislative history indicates that Congress intended the statute to be read other than literally.
Contrary to an argument advanced by the Commission, the Secretary of Labor's certification of South Carolina's compensation law pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 3304 is neither controlling nor entitled to great weight. As we have previously mentioned, § 41-35-120 of the South Carolina Code does not mention pregnancy. Consequently, it is not facially in conflict with federal law. The Secretary's certification in summary fashion purports to approve a number of states' "unemployment compensation laws." It makes no reference to the interpretation that the South Carolina Commission has placed on the state law.
For reasons adequately explained by the district court, 502 F.Supp. at 957 n.20, we find no error in its refusal to defer to the view expressed by the Department of Labor's Administrator, Unemployment Insurance Service. In a letter solicited during the course of this litigation, the administrator wrote that § 3304(a)(12) has been interpreted to do no more than prohibit discrimination on the basis of pregnancy. As the Supreme Court has recently noted, "(t)he amount of deference due an administrative agency's interpretation of a statute ... 'will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, (and) its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements....' " St. Martin Evangelical Lutheran Church v. South Dakota, --- U.S. ----, 101 S.Ct. 2142, 2148-49 n.13, 68 L.Ed.2d 612 (1981). Tested by these criteria, the letter is entitled to little weight. The administrator cites neither authority nor legislative history for the interpretation he espouses. He accepts the premise that pregnancy should be treated like any other illness without explaining how this premise can be reconciled with the exceptional treatment of pregnancy embodied in § 3304(a) (12).
We therefore conclude that the district court properly declared that the Commission's practices contravened § 3304(a)(12). We also conclude that the injunctive relief the court ordered to correct these practices is appropriate.
The district court also ordered the Commission to make retroactive payments to claimants who have been denied compensation since January 1, 1978. 5 The Commission challenges the award as both inequitable and violative of the eleventh amendment.
The words "retroactive" and "retrospective" have been commonly used in several different contexts. It is therefore essential to understand the context in which the court ordered "retroactive" payments in this case. The court construed § 312(c) of the Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 1976, Pub.L.No. 94-566, 90 Stat. 2667, 2679 (1976), to make § 3304(a)(12) effective January 1, 1978. See 26 U.S.C. § 3304 note. No party challenges this interpretation of the Act. The court awarded payments only from the effective date of § 3304(a)(12). It did not apply the statute retrospectively. Nor did the court depart from or overrule prior judicial decisions and apply a new principle retrospectively. For these reasons, cases dealing with retrospective application of statutes or innovative judicial decisions are inapposite. 6
In short, the court enforced an Act of Congress in accordance with the date that Congress indicated it should become effective. Whether the court abused its discretion should be tested by the criteria formulated by Judge McGowan in Rothstein v. Wyman, 467 F.2d 226, 234 (2d Cir. 1972):
A federal court in this situation is called upon to perform two related...
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