Franklin-Mason v. Mabus

• Decision Date: 14 February 2014
• Docket Number: No. 12–5057.,12–5057.
• Citation: 742 F.3d 1051
• Parties: Roxann J. FRANKLIN–MASON, Appellant v. Raymond Edwin MABUS, Jr., Secretary, Department of the Navy, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

742 F.3d 1051

Roxann J. FRANKLIN–MASON, Appellant

v.Raymond Edwin MABUS, Jr., Secretary, Department of the Navy, Appellee.

No. 12–5057.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Sept. 26, 2013.

Decided Feb. 14, 2014.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:96–cv–02505).

Lisa Alexis Jones argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.

Alan Burch, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Ronald C. Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: BROWN and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

BROWN, Circuit Judge:

This case has so many chapters it makes War and Peace look like a short story. And the saga continues. Fifteen years ago, after Franklin–Mason prevailed in the initial stages of this employment discrimination litigation, the Navy offered a stipulation of Settlement (Settlement Agreement or the Agreement). The Agreement proposed not only reinstatement, restoration of seniority, and retirement credits, but potential for promotion. A key provision anticipated the creation of a Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force (NFAF) Program (PM 1), headed by a high level Financial Manager, and proposed to appoint Franklin–Mason as a Senior Financial Analyst, reporting to the Manager of this independent unit. The Agreement also purported to insulate Franklin–Mason from working directly for, or being supervised by, certain employees in the Comptroller's Office who had tormented her in the past. The new unit was never approved. Things fell apart.

Franklin–Mason, convinced she had been deliberately hoodwinked, repeatedly sought to have the terms of the Agreement—terms incorporated into the district court's order of dismissal—enforced. Now, having concluded specific performance is no longer practicable, Franklin–Mason seeks nearly a million dollars in damages and attorney's fees. The Navy pounces on this shift. First, the Navy notes a federal court cannot provide a damages remedy for the government's breach of a settlement agreement absent a waiver of sovereign immunity. Check. Second, a judicial consent decree—like the Settlement Agreement here—is not a contract for purposes of the Tucker Act and falls outside the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims. And mate. Thus, the Navy reasons the government's breach of a court-supervised settlement is a wrong without a remedy. We are not convinced. We hold a settlement agreement embodied in a consent decree is a contract under the Tucker Act and transfer the case to the Court of Federal Claims.

I

The tortuous history of this decades-long dispute could fill library shelves, but in the interest of brevity, we commence with a bare-bones procedural précis. From 1987 to 1996, Franklin–Mason litigated her Title VII claim before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1996, the Administrative Judge (AJ) found Franklin–Mason had established, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the Navy had unlawfully discriminated against her on the basis of race and sex. The Navy disagreed, rejecting the AJ's findings.

Undeterred, Franklin–Mason filed suit against the Navy on October 31, 1996, alleging violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e. The Navy, eager to avoid substantial potential liability, offered a settlement. The matter was referred to a magistrate for settlement discussions, and ultimately, the parties settled and the district court approved the Agreement and entered an order of dismissal. Of particular relevance, the Agreement explicitly permitted a party to seek judicial enforcement and monetary damages for a breach. Franklin–Mason filed three motions to enforce the terms of the Settlement Agreement. Those efforts proved fruitless, however, and on November 19, 2001, she moved, for a fourth time, to enforce the terms of the Agreement. The present dispute arises from this fourth attempt.

The motion was again transferred to the magistrate for a Report and Recommendation. After concluding there were genuine issues of material fact as to two of Franklin–Mason's claims, Franklin–Mason v. England, No. Civ.A. 96–2505JMF, 2005 WL 1804426, at *1 (D.D.C. Aug. 1, 2005), the magistrate scheduled an evidentiary hearing, but in the interim, Franklin–Mason resigned from her position with the Navy—allegedly constructively discharged because of the Navy's failure to abide by the terms of the Agreement. During the hearing, Franklin–Mason asserted that, given the passage of time and her separation from the Navy, she could no longer pursue specific performance, but would instead seek to recover approximately $900,000 in expectation damages and attorney's fees. This prompted the magistrate to request supplemental briefing on whether jurisdiction properly lay in the district court or the Court of Federal Claims. In a rare moment of concord, both parties agreed that, although the Agreement ought be construed as a contract under the Tucker Act, pursuant to Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Insurance Co., 511 U.S. 375, 114 S.Ct. 1673, 128 L.Ed.2d 391 (1994), the district court could exercise ancillary jurisdiction over the motion to enforce. The magistrate decided the district court should retain jurisdiction, but concluded that, although there may have been a substantial breach of the Settlement Agreement, Franklin–Mason was entitled only to nominal damages.

Three years after the magistrate issued his order, Judge Roberts rejected the recommendation to retain jurisdiction and transferred the case to the Court of Federal Claims. Upon transfer, Franklin–Mason lodged with the Court of Federal Claims an Amended Complaint, alleging breach of the Settlement Agreement and attempting to revive the employment discrimination claims the Agreement had extinguished. The Court of Federal Claims concluded it lacked jurisdiction over the newly filed Amended Complaint since district courts have exclusive jurisdiction over employment discrimination claims. And relying on Kokkonen, the court held the retention of jurisdiction provision in the Agreement divested the Court of Federal Claims of jurisdiction and compelled transfer back to the district court.¹

Considering this motion for the fourth time, Judge Roberts dismissed the employment discrimination claims, noting they were resolved by the Agreement.² Recognizing, too, the conflicting opinions issued by the courts, he denied Franklin–Mason's motion to enforce, positioning the case for our consideration. On February 23, 2012, Franklin–Mason filed a timely appeal. Today, following decades of litigation, a veritable decathlon of delay, and the ensuing rounds of jurisdictional ping-pong, we regretfully lob the ball back to the Court of Federal Claims.

II

We are presented with two questions. First, has the United States waived its sovereign immunity in the district court for breach of a Title VII settlement agreement seeking damages in excess of $10,000? ³ And, if not, does Kokkonen allow us to ignore this lack of waiver? Second, if the district court lacks jurisdiction, does a settlement agreement embodied in a judicial consent decree foreclose jurisdiction by the Court of Federal Claims? We review de novo a district court's order dismissing a motion to enforce for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. See Gen. Elec. Co. v. EPA, 360 F.3d 188, 190–91 (D.C.Cir.2004).

A

To bring a claim against the United States, a plaintiff must identify an unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity. FAA v. Cooper, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 1441, 1448, 182 L.Ed.2d 497 (2012). Courts are required to read waivers of sovereign immunity narrowly and construe any ambiguities in the statutory language in favor of immunity. Id. But “[e]ven when suits are authorized[,] they must be brought only in designated courts.” United States v. Shaw, 309 U.S. 495, 501, 60 S.Ct. 659, 84 L.Ed. 888 (1940). This is because “it rests with Congress to determine not only whether the United States may be sued, but in what courts the suit may be brought.” Minnesota v. United States, 305 U.S. 382, 388, 59 S.Ct. 292, 83 L.Ed. 235 (1939).

Both sides agree Title VII does not provide a waiver of sovereign immunity for suits alleging breach of a settlement agreement. And invoking the Tucker Act is a non sequitur because where, as here, a suit involves a claim for money damages over $10,000, the Act waives the government's sovereign immunity only in the Court of Federal Claims. See Greenhill v. Spellings, 482 F.3d 569, 572 (D.C.Cir.2007) (“[T]he jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims is exclusive when a plaintiff seeks more than $10,000 in damages.”); see also28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(2).

We have construed the Tucker Act and Little Tucker Act—so called for its grant of concurrent jurisdiction to the district courts and the Court of Federal Claims in any civil action against the United States not exceeding $10,000—to provide for exclusive jurisdiction in the Court of Federal Claims for contract disputes seeking more than $10,000 in damages. But, admittedly, “nothing in the language of the Tucker Act makes its grant of jurisdiction to the Court of Federal Claims exclusive for all contract claims over $10,000.” Tritz v. U.S. Postal Serv., 721 F.3d 1133, 1137 (9th Cir.2013); see also Waters v. Rumsfeld, 320 F.3d 265, 270 n. 6 (D.C.Cir.2003). “Rather, that court's jurisdiction is ‘exclusive’ only to the extent that Congress has not granted any other court authority to hear the claims that may be decided by the Claims Court.” Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U.S. 879, 910 n. 48, 108 S.Ct. 2722, 101 L.Ed.2d 749 (1988). Said differently, while the Tucker Act and Little Tucker Act “create a presumption of exclusive jurisdiction in the Court of Federal Claims, ... that presumption can be overcome by an independent statutory grant to another court.” Tritz, 721 F.3d at 1137;see also Auction Co. of Am. v. FDIC, 132 F.3d 746, 753 n....