Hodgson v. Board of Ed., Parsippany-Troy Hills
| Decision Date | 14 June 1972 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 1788-71 to 1796-71 and 527-72. |
| Parties | James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, PARSIPPANY-TROY HILLS et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, PASSAIC, NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, POMPTON LAKES, NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, BERGEN-FIELD, NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, CITY OF BAYONNE, et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the BOROUGH OF FORT LEE et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. NEWTON BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, GARFIELD, NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants. James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, LODI, NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
Richard F. Schubert, Solicitor of Labor, Francis V. LaRuffa, Regional Solicitor, by Laurel J. McKee, Chief Trial Atty., U. S. Dept. of Labor, New York City, for plaintiff in all actions.
Schenck, Price, Smith & King, by Alten W. Read, Morristown, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Parsippany Troy Hills.
Louis Marton, Jr., Passaic, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Passaic.
Slingland, Bernstein & Van Hartogh, by George W. Slingland, Pompton Lakes, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Pompton Lakes.
Major & Major, by James A. Major, Hackensack, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Bergenfield.
John Pagano, Bayonne, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Bayonne.
Murphy & Skelley, by Joseph T. Skelley, Fort Lee, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Fort Lee.
Dolan & Dolan, by William Martin Cox, Newton, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Newton.
William A. Massa, George R. Blaney, Jersey City, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Jersey City.
Anthony J. Sciuto, Garfield, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Garfield.
Gerald P. Lo Proto, Lodi, N. J., for defendant, Board of Education, Lodi.
The Secretary of Labor sues in these several actions to enjoin violations, by certain New Jersey school boards, of the overtime and minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219 (FLSA).
This matter comes on by way of defendants' various motions for summary judgment and dismissal, all of which were consolidated by my order, raising as they do a common question of law, to wit, whether the Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution bars these actions.1
The Eleventh Amendment provides:
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.2
Defendants essentially contend that these actions, while brought in the name of the Secretary, will in fact benefit defendants' employees and thus are in reality suits by citizens of this State against the defendants which, as subdivisions of the State, can raise the Eleventh Amendment bar.3
Plaintiff declares that these suits do not implicate the Eleventh Amendment. His argument follows: the complaint seeks injunctive relief under 29 U.S.C. § 217 to halt defendants' alleged violations of § 15(a) (2) of the FLSA 29 U.S.C. § 215(a) (2) and to restrain defendants from withholding from certain of its employees payment of minimum wage and overtime compensation in whatever amount may be found by this Court to be due them.4 Section 217 provides as follows:
The district courts . . . shall have jurisdiction, for cause shown, to restrain violations of section 215 of this title, including in the case of violations of section 215(a) (2) of this title the restraint of any withholding of payment of minimum wages or overtime compensation found by the court to be due to employees under this chapter . . . .
The Secretary argues that only he can bring an action under § 217; and that an employee cannot compel its institution. Powell v. Washington Post Co., 105 U.S.App.D.C. 374, 267 F.2d 651, 652 (1959), cert. denied, 360 U.S. 930, 79 S. Ct. 1449, 3 L.Ed.2d 1544 (1959), is supportive of this position. Finally, the argument goes, it is a suit under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) which Congress provided for the private relief of an aggrieved employee, while § 217 was intended to serve the broad public interest.5 Thus, the Secretary concludes, while incidentally defendants' employees may derive benefit from these actions, their principal thrust is to serve the nation as a whole, and that the broad public good, not merely a narrow private good, will benefit thereby. For the reasons hereinafter set forth, we adopt the Secretary's position and determine the Eleventh Amendment not to be involved in these suits.
Before dealing with the Eleventh Amendment issue, it is appropriate to put to rest a collateral contention made by the defendants, that Congress in applying to them the FLSA was unaware of, or ignored, the fiscal aspect of its action.
The FLSA was only made applicable to certain public school employees (as are here involved) in 1966. Defendants herein are not the first to complain about added payroll costs imposed by that statutory change. The legislative history of the amendatory provisions reveals that, incident to amendment, various concerned local school boards, resisting the change, had similarly complained of the additional financial burden cast upon them by the proposed revisions.
The House of Representatives, in passing the original amendment, commented H.R.Rept. No. 1366, 89th Cong., 2d Sess. (1966), as cited in H.R.Rept. No. 13712, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 16-17 (1966):
Even outweighing the consideration of unfair competition between covered and noncovered enterprises were the needs of the employees of these enterprises. A custodial worker in an educational institution is as much in need of a minimum standard of living as a custodial worker in an aircraft plant. . . .
The Senate, however, deleted coverage of employees of private and public primary and secondary schools. The Committee report, which recommended such a deletion, noted that 2 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News (89th Cong.2d Sess.1966) at p. 3010:
. . . By exclusion of these employees from coverage under the Senate reported bill, the committee is not passing upon the merits of extending coverage of the act to employees of elementary and secondary schools. It believes that this amendment should be the subject of hearings and further consideration in future amendments to the act. The committee was also concerned about the impact which a possible increase in wages for such employees might have upon local school districts that depend in part upon tax dollars for operating revenues.
From conference committee, however, the present version emerged and became law. Thus it is clear that the fiscal impact of the disputed legislation was considered and comprehended when the coverage of the FLSA was extended to employees of primary and secondary schools.
Both sides to this dispute recognize that, to a degree, the United States Supreme Court has dealt with, even if it has not resolved, the extent to which the FLSA may be applied to certain institutions of the states and their subdivisions, including those operating public schools. In Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 88 S.Ct. 2017, 20 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1968), suit for a Declaratory Judgment of statutory invalidity was brought by twenty-eight states (including New Jersey) and one school district. The Supreme Court upheld the FLSA in its application to certain public employees, including those employed in schools operated by states or their subdivisions, while emphasizing that the statutory coverage did not extend to executive, administrative or professional employees, nor to teachers in elementary or secondary schools. See 29 U.S.C. § 213(a) (1); and 2 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News (89th Cong.2d Session 1966) at 3048. The Court in pertinent part stated (392 U.S. at 193-194, 88 S.Ct. at 2022):
. . . Congress has "interfered with" these state functions only to the extent of providing that when a State employs people in performing such functions it is subject to the same restrictions as a wide range of other employers whose activities affect commerce, including privately operated schools . . . .
Defendants do not quarrel with, nor do they ask this Court not to apply, the holding in Maryland v. Wirtz, supra. Rather, they raise herein those two issues which the Supreme Court in Maryland v. Wirtz, given the posture of that case, expressly deemed it inappropriate to consider: 1) whether the Eleventh Amendment bars the application of the FLSA in those cases where a state or its political subdivision is a defendant in an action based thereon; 2) whether employees (such as defendants') meet the criteria of 29 U.S.C. § 203(s).6
These two questions were indeed left open by the Supreme Court in Maryland v. Wirtz, and are clearly put before this Court by the cases at bar.
While the Supreme Court left the narrow Eleventh Amendment issue open, we are not...
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