Gehrt v. University of Ill. at Urbana-Champaign

• Decision Date: 11 July 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-1317.,96-1317.
• Citation: 974 F.Supp. 1178
• Parties: Karen GEHRT, Plaintiff, v. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Central District of Illinois

Page 1178

974 F.Supp. 1178

Karen GEHRT, Plaintiff, v. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE, Defendant.

No. 96-1317.

United States District Court, C.D. Illinois.

July 11, 1997.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Howard W. Feldman, Bradley Roger Bucher, Feldman & Wasser, Springfield, IL, for Karen Gehrt.

Fred K. Heinrich, Elaine Massock, Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen, Urbana, IL, for University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Cooperative Extension Service.

Sharon A. Seeley, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Washington, DC, for U.S.A.

ORDER

McDADE, District Judge.

Before the Court are Defendant's Objections [Doc. # 19] to the Report and Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge [Doc. # 18] denying in part and granting in part Defendant's Motion to Dismiss [Doc. # 2].

In short, Plaintiff Karen Gehrt filed a fourcount Complaint against Defendant University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Cooperative Extension Service alleging: (I) sexual harassment under Title VII; (II) violations of the Equal Pay Act; (III) age discrimination under the ADEA; and (IV) retaliation under Title VII. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss all counts of the Complaint on the following bases: (1) all counts were barred by the Eleventh Amendment; (2) the Complaint lacked a sufficient factual basis; (3) the Complaint requested relief which could not be awarded; (4) Plaintiff failed to exhaust her administrative remedies; and (5) the limitations period had expired on some of the claims presented. Because one of the asserted bases for dismissal was Defendant's Eleventh Amendment immunity, the United States Government intervened in the lawsuit to brief that issue.

The Magistrate Judge issued his Report and Recommendation on May 22, 1997, recommending that all prayers for punitive damages should be stricken from the Complaint but that the motion to dismiss should be denied in all other respects. Defendant objected to the Magistrate Judge's recommendations regarding Eleventh Amendment immunity, exhaustion of administrative remedies, timeliness of administrative remedies, and timeliness of Plaintiff's claims under the Equal Pay Act. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C § 636(b)(1)(C) and Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(b), the Court shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the Report and Recommendation to which timely objections were made.

Eleventh Amendment Immunity

The Court agrees with the Magistrate Judge's well-reasoned and well-researched decision that none of Plaintiff's claims are barred by the Eleventh Amendment.¹ Both precedent and reason dictate such a result. Initially, the Court rejects Defendant's interpretation of the two elements for Congressional abrogation of sovereign immunity set forth in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 609, ___, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 1123, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996). Under that decision, the Court need ask only two questions: (1) whether Congress has unequivocally expressed its intent to abrogate the immunity, and (2) whether Congress has acted pursuant to a valid exercise of power. Id.

Defendant argues that the second element requires Congress to have expressly passed the legislation pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendant draws support for this argument from a portion of Seminole Tribe which states: "[O]ur inquiry into whether Congress has the power to abrogate unilaterally the States' immunity from suit is narrowly focused on one question: Was the Act in question passed pursuant to a constitutional provision granting Congress the power to abrogate?" (emphasis added). However, nothing in this isolated passage dictates such a result. The term "passed" may simply denote the actual passage of the legislation, not the intent of Congress to abrogate Eleventh Amendment immunity through a particular constitutional provision.

There is ample precedent to support the Court's understanding of this second element. "The question of the constitutionality of actions taken by Congress does not depend on recitals of the power which it undertakes to exercise." Woods v. Cloyd W. Miller, Co., 333 U.S. 138, 144, 68 S.Ct. 421, 424, 92 L.Ed. 596 (1948). The Court need only discern some legislative purpose or factual predicate to support the exercise of the "appropriate legislation" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. EEOC v. Wyoming, 460 U.S. 226, 243 n. 18, 103 S.Ct. 1054, 1064 n. 18, 75 L.Ed.2d 18 (1983). This does not mean that Congress need actually recite the words "section 5" or "Fourteenth Amendment" or "equal protection." Id. In absence of an explicit statement by Congress negating its power under the Fourteenth Amendment, the crucial inquiry is whether the objectives of the Act were within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. Mills v. State of Maine, 118 F.3d 37, 43-44 (1st Cir.1997); EEOC v. Elrod, 674 F.2d 601, 608 (7th Cir. 1982). See, e.g., Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 476-78, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 2773-75, 65 L.Ed.2d 902 (1980) (upholding legislation under the Fourteenth Amendment even though statute and legislative history did not refer to it); Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 453 n. 9, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 2670 n. 9, 49 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976) (relying upon legislative history to reconstruct probable intent of Congress in relying on Fourteenth Amendment).

Indeed, Defendant's interpretation confuses the first and second prongs of the Seminole Tribe test by incorporating the intent element of the first factor into the "appropriate legislation" requirement of the second. However, the first factor has never required Congress to specifically designate which provision of the Constitution it is using to abrogate the State's sovereign immunity; it must only express "its intent to abrogate" in the Act itself. Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1123. Thus, even in Seminole Tribe, the Court found a clear legislative intent to abrogate the States' immunity under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act simply because Congress had made "numerous references to the `State'" in the text of the statute. Id. at ___ _ ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1123-24.

That being said, the Court must now address Congress' abrogation of each of the statutes at issue in this case under the two-part test set forth in Seminole Tribe: the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Equal Pay Act (EPA), and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 121, 104 S.Ct. 900, 919, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984); Henry v. Metropolitan Sewer Dist., 922 F.2d 332, 337 (6th Cir.1990).

Age Discrimination in Employment Act

Ample precedent from both the Seventh Circuit and other circuit courts of appeals dictate that both prongs of the Seminole Tribe test for abrogation have been met with respect to the ADEA.² See Davidson v. Board of Governors of State Colleges and Univs. for Western Ill. Univ., 920 F.2d 441, 443 (7th Cir.1990); Heiar v. Crawford County, 746 F.2d 1190, 1193-94 (7th Cir.1984); EEOC v. County of Calumet, 686 F.2d 1249, 1251-53 (7th Cir.1982); Elrod, 674 F.2d at 604-09; see also Hurd v. Pittsburg State Univ., 109 F.3d 1540, 1543-46 (10th Cir. 1997); Ramirez v. Puerto Rico Fire Serv., 715 F.2d 694, 698-701 (1st Cir.1983). Most recently, Chief Judge Posner in Crawford v. Indiana Dept. of Corrections, 115 F.3d 481, 487 (7th Cir.1997), reinforced the continuing vitality of these cases after Seminole Tribe in finding that the Americans with Disabilities Act sufficiently abrogated sovereign immunity under the Fourteenth Amendment. If Defendant wishes to challenge these rulings, it must do so before the Seventh Circuit directly.

The Court does wish to address two specific arguments raised by Defendant. Defendant first argues that because the ADEA amendments of 1974 were passed pursuant to the Commerce Clause, they cannot now be presumed to have been passed pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. This is wrong for at least three reasons. First, there was no explicit reference by Congress to a specific constitutional provision as authority to extend coverage of the ADEA to the States. Elrod, 674 F.2d at 605. Neither of the cases cited by Defendant held that the ADEA amendments of 1974 actually were passed pursuant to the Commerce Clause, only that Congress could have done so as a valid exercise of its legislative power. See Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 467-68, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 2404-05, 115 L.Ed.2d 410 (1991); Wyoming, 460 U.S. at 243, 103 S.Ct. at 1064.

Second, as discussed above, there is no requirement under Seminole Tribe that Congress attribute its intent to abrogate to any specific provision of the Constitution. It is Congress' power to pass "appropriate legislation" under the Fourteenth Amendment that matters. Wyoming, 460 U.S. at 243 n. 18, 103 S.Ct. at 1063 n. 18; Woods, 333 U.S. at 144, 68 S.Ct. at 424. Thus, Defendant's discussion of the first element requiring a "simple but stringent test" for Congress' intent to abrogate, Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1123, is irrelevant to the discussion whether Congress had the power to abrogate sovereign immunity pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1124.

Third, nothing prohibits Congress from passing legislation pursuant to the power given it in more than one provision of the Constitution. See, e.g., Wyoming, 460 U.S. at 243, 103 S.Ct. at 1064 (refusing to decide whether the ADEA could be upheld under the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Commerce Clause); Crawford, 115 F.3d at 487 ("the Americans with Disabilities Act is an exercise of Congress's power under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment (as well as under the commerce clause))"; Elrod, 674 F.2d at 603 n. 1 (finding that the ADEA would be a constitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause powers as well as under the Fourteenth Amendment).

Defendant's second argument is that Congress cannot protect certain classes of persons by enacting legislation pursuant to the Equal Protection Clause if the Supreme Court has not already...