EEOC v. Allstate Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 09 September 1983
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. J82-0186(B).
• Citation: 570 F. Supp. 1224
• Parties: EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Plaintiff, v. ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi

570 F. Supp. 1224

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Plaintiff, v. ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. J82-0186(B).

United States District Court, S.D. Mississippi, Jackson Division.

September 9, 1983.

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Katie J. Monroe, Trial Atty., Jerome C. Rose, Regional Atty., E.E.O.C., Birmingham, Ala., for plaintiff.

Jimmie B. Reynolds, Jr., Steen, Reynolds, Dalehite & Currie, Jackson, Miss., Kalvin M. Grove, Fox & Grove, Chicago, Ill., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

BARBOUR, District Judge.

On Friday, August 18, 1983, this Court issued a Summary Order granting summary judgment for the Defendant, Allstate Insurance Company. This Memorandum Opinion is written pursuant to that order and incorporates the same.

On April 14, 1982, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (hereafter EEOC) sued to enforce the Equal Pay Act. The EEOC alleged that it had authority to enforce the Equal Pay Act¹ pursuant to Section 1 of Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978, 92 Stat. 3781, which amended 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 216(c) and 217. Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 was "enacted" pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1977, 5 U.S.C.A. Section 901, et seq.

The present motion for summary judgment made by Allstate places before this Court the legal question of whether or not the EEOC has the authority to enforce the Equal Pay Act by the initiation of litigation.² There are no genuine issues of material fact with regard to the matters presented by this motion; therefore, it is appropriate to decide the issue of law by summary judgment.

ONE-HOUSE VETO

The basis of Allstate's motion for summary judgment relates to the one-house veto provision contained in the Reorganization Act of 1977. Under this Act the President was granted the authority to present reorganization plans to Congress which either House of Congress could veto by a resolution passed by a majority vote. Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 was not objected to by either House and therefore was "enacted" into law. Section 1 of this Plan transferred the enforcement of the Equal Pay Act from the Labor Department to the EEOC. See 1978 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad. News 9799 (reprint of Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978).

In a recent United States Supreme Court decision the question of the constitutional validity of one-house veto provisions was decisively resolved. The motion before this Court for summary judgment is based on this decision and the determination of its effect under the facts presented here.

CHADHA

On June 23, 1983, the United States Supreme Court announced its decision in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, ___ U.S. ___, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983). Chadha held that the retention by Congress of the power to veto the act of the Attorney General suspending deportation proceedings violated the constitutional doctrines of separation of powers and the constitutional requirement that legislation be accomplished by action by both houses of Congress and by presentment to the President of the United States. Chadha, ___ U.S. at ___ - ___, 103 S.Ct. at 2779-2783. The Supreme Court's exhaustive analysis of the history behind Article I and its limit on the exercise of legislative power are unnecessary to repeat.³ Congress may legislate and grant certain power, but it may not revoke that power granted without legislating again.⁴ In Chadha the Supreme Court found that the one-house veto provision not only violated the bicameralism and presentment requirements of the Constitution, but also infringed upon the doctrine of separation of powers.⁵

STANDING

The EEOC asserts a standing argument which, if sustained, would preclude summary judgment.

The EEOC alleges that Allstate does not have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Reorganization Act of 1977 by claiming that Allstate was not injured by that Act, even if it is unconstitutional.

It is beyond dispute that every defendant has standing to question the legal authority of the plaintiff to sue. The EEOC has attempted to turn Allstate's defense into an offensive weapon by questioning Allstate's standing to assert the alleged constitutional infirmity as a defense. Clearly Allstate has standing to challenge the plaintiff's legal right to sue, but assuming arguendo, that standing is not self-evident in this case this Court will address the merits of the EEOC's standing argument.

The EEOC claims that Allstate has no injury such as may satisfy the standing requirements of Article III of the Constitution. The Article III requirement of standing was recently summarized by the Supreme Court in Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) as follows:

At an irreducible minimum, Art. III requires the party who invokes the Court's authority to "show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant," Gladstone Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1607, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979), and that the injury "fairly can be traced to the challenged action" and "is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision". Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 41 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 1925, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976). In this manner does Art. III limit the federal judicial power "to those disputes which confine Federal Courts to a role consistent with a system of separated powers and which are traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process." (citations omitted).

Allstate has shown that it has personally suffered actual injury in that it has been subjected to a law suit filed pursuant to an unconstitutional statute. There is no doubt that a favorable decision by this Court would redress the injury of which Allstate complains. The identification of this injury to the allegedly unconstitutional passage of the Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 is obvious insofar as the EEOC would have no legal authority to engage in litigation for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Equal Pay Act without a constitutional delegation of power from Congress. Therefore, the injury of Allstate in that it is subject to litigation⁶ at the instance of a governmental agency whose authority to institute such litigation is being questioned on constitutional grounds meets the Art. III requirements of injury in fact which is traceable to the alleged illegality and which will be redressed by a favorable decision.⁷

UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE ONE-HOUSE VETO

Any use of a legislative veto scheme which has the effect of enacting laws without complying with the Constitutional prescription for legislation is unconstitutional.⁸

I.

The first issue to decide is whether the action complained of here was "essentially legislative in purpose and effect." Chadha, ___ U.S. at ___, 103 S.Ct. at 2784. The reorganization accomplished under the Plan altered the legal status of agencies and of individuals, including Allstate, by transferring enforcement functions of the Equal Pay Act from the Department of Labor to the EEOC. Such reorganization of the Executive Branch is a legislative function.⁹ The reorganization became published law just as though it had been introduced into Congress as a regular bill and thereafter passed by both Houses and not vetoed by the President.

This Court must conclude that the reorganization was essentially legislative in its purpose and effect.

II.

This conclusion takes us to the second issue: Does the fact that no veto was interposed alter the requirements of bicameralism and presentment?

The question presented by this case is not directly answered in Chadha. Chadha did emphasize the importance of preserving the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government.¹⁰ Moreover, the Court noted that "to allow Congress to evade the strictures of the Constitution and in effect enact Executive proposals into law by mere silence cannot be squared with Art. I." Chadha, ___ U.S. at ___ n. 22, 103 S.Ct. at 2787 n. 22. It is evident from the opinion in Chadha that "every use of the legislative veto" is invalid.¹¹

The fundamental problem with the legislative retention of veto power is that it places the executive in the position of legislating subject to a Congressional veto.¹² In this sense it stands Art. I of the Constitution on its head. Congress has various tools by which it may control its grant of power, but "Congress must abide by its delegation of authority until that delegation is legislatively altered or revoked." Id. 103 S.Ct. at 2786. Because the Court in Chadha clearly sweeps with a broad stroke in its holding that the legislative one-house veto is unconstitutional, this Court must follow that precedent¹³ by holding that a retained one-house veto is unconstitutional even when not exercised.

III.

The EEOC has argued that the constitutional issue is not ripe for decision because no veto power was exercised by Congress. The EEOC cites Clark v. Valeo,¹⁴ 559 F.2d 642 (D.C.Cir.1977) (en banc), a case in which no veto was exercised. The Court in Clark v. Valeo states that "a contention that there are no real considerations of ripeness here can rest on a view of the merits that a one-house veto is so patently unconstitutional that nothing more is needed to inform the judgment of this Court." Id. at 649.

The Court in Clark v. Valeo relied on Justice White's concurring opinion in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 257-86, 96 S.Ct. 612, 744-58, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976) (White, J., concurring) where he concluded that the one-house veto provision was constitutional. The Court in its per curiam opinion in Buckley v. Valeo, did not reach the issue of the constitutionality of the unexercised one-house veto.¹⁵ Justice White alone reached the one-house veto finding it constitutional.

Chadha has intervened at this juncture,...