Joiner v. City of Macon

• Decision Date: 13 February 1986
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 79-287-MAC.
• Citation: 627 F. Supp. 1532
• Parties: C.D. JOINER, on Behalf of himself and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, and United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. CITY OF MACON, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Georgia

627 F. Supp. 1532

C.D. JOINER, on Behalf of himself and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, and United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. CITY OF MACON, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 79-287-MAC.

United States District Court, M.D. Georgia, Macon Division.

February 13, 1986.

David L. Mincey, Macon, Ga., Linda R. Hirschman, J. Peter Dowd, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

W. Warren Plowden, Jr., Macon, Ga., for defendant.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

OWENS, Chief Judge.

1. This action was brought pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 201-219 (West 1985)("FLSA") by plaintiff transit employees seeking backpay for unpaid overtime compensation, liquidated damages, prejudgment interest, costs, and attorney's fees.

HISTORY OF THIS LITIGATION

2. Plaintiffs Joiner and others ("plaintiffs") who filed consents to sue in this action¹ have been employed by the City of Macon transit system ("defendant") at all times material to this action.

3. Upon cross motions for summary judgment filed by the parties, this court held on April 27, 1981:

... it cannot be said that Macon Transit System is an integral operation in an area of traditional governmental functions which would be exempted from the requirements of the FLSA.

Accordingly, the overtime provisions of the FLSA were deemed to apply to Macon's transit system and the plaintiffs were deemed entitled to judgment on liability as a matter of law. That decision was affirmed in Joiner v. City of Macon, 699 F.2d 1060 (11th Cir.1983). Thereafter defendant's petition for writ of certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States on March 4, 1985, without explanation or comment. Joiner v. City of Macon, ___ U.S. ___, 105 S.Ct. 1391, 84 L.Ed.2d 781 (1985).

4. Defendant's petition for writ of certiorari was pending because of the Supreme Court's consideration and decision on February 19, 1985, in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. ___, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985) ("Garcia"). In Garcia the Supreme Court overruled its earlier decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976)("National League") and "rejected, as unsound in principle and unworkable in practice, a rule of state immunity from federal regulation that turns on a judicial appraisal of whether a particular governmental function is `integral' or `traditional,'" Garcia, 105 S.Ct. at 1016, and held "...that Congress' action in affording public employees the protections of the wage and hour provisions of the FLSA contravened no affirmative limit on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause," id. at 1020.

5. Thereafter defendant moved this court to reexamine its April 27, 1981, summary judgment opinion on the issue of liability. On August 30, 1985, this court, denying such motion, ruled:

If the Supreme Court were of the opinion that Garcia required a reconsideration of this Court's opinion it would have so stated in its order. Having failed to so state the Supreme Court's denial meant that the City of Macon lost its final opportunity to overturn the decision of this court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

FINDINGS OF FACT

6. Defendant's payroll records reveal, and accordingly there is no dispute that since at least December 20, 1977, each plaintiff except C.W. McCoy² worked numerous work weeks for Macon in excess of forty hours per week for which they were paid only their regular straight time rate of pay. Plaintiffs were not paid one and one-half their regular rate of pay for each hour worked in excess of forty hours per week. The parties have reviewed Macon's payroll data and have stipulated to the hours worked and rates of pay for each pay period, from which each party has submitted to the court their respective calculations of back pay due.

The parties continue to be in dispute over whether plaintiffs Griffin, Bone, W. Jackson and Kitchens are exempt as executive or administrative personnel. See 29 U.S. C.A. § 213(a)(West 1965). The parties are given leave for 90 days to engage in discovery in regard to those issues. Those issues will then be resolved by the court.

7. In order to determine the period of time for which Macon is liable to plaintiffs and the appropriate back pay, liquidated damages, and other relief, it will be necessary to review the pertinent history of the application of FLSA to public transit employees.

a. In 1966 Congress extended FLSA coverage to state and local government employees except for drivers, operators, and conductors in the mass-transit industry; however, even these exceptions were removed by Congress in 1974. Congress' application of FLSA to such public employees was ruled to be within Congress' power in Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 88 S.Ct. 2017, 20 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1968).

b. Since March 15, 1973, defendant has operated a public transit system in Macon. Prior thereto the transit system was privately operated by Bibb Transit Company, a privately owned corporation.

c. In 1976 the Supreme Court overturned Maryland v. Wirtz in National League finding that the FLSA could not be constitutionally applied if the state activity is an "integral operation in areas of traditional governmental functions," National League, 426 U.S. at 852, 96 S.Ct. at 2474. Local mass transit systems were not specified in National League as immune from FLSA coverage.

Then, on remand, the district court in National League made clear that the Supreme Court's holding did not provide public bodies with general immunity from FLSA. The district court noted and incorporated in its decision a Department of Labor special enforcement policy concerning states and political subdivisions which, inter alia, established a procedure by which such constitutionally immune activities would be determined, National League, 429 F.Supp. 703. The Department of Labor's enforcement policy identified certain areas as traditional governmental functions, such as schools, hospitals, fire, and police protection, and also identified other functions as not traditional governmental, naming specifically "the operation of a railroad by a state" as noted by the Supreme Court in National League, 429 F.Supp. at 706 (citing 426 U.S. at 854 n. 18, 96 S.Ct. at 2475 n. 18).

On December 21, 1979, the Department of Labor formally amended its FLSA interpretive regulations to provide that publicly owned mass transit systems are not entitled to imunity under National League, 44 Fed.Reg. 75, 630 (1979)(codified at 29 C.F.R. § 775.3(b)(3)(1983)) and since that time no regulations have issued restricting FLSA's application to mass transit.

d. Throughout the period following December 21, 1979, other courts of appeals, besides the Eleventh Circuit in this case, found and confirmed FLSA coverage of publicly operated mass transit.³ And during this period the Supreme Court decided United Transportation Union v. Long Island R.R. Co., 455 U.S. 678, 102 S.Ct. 1349, 71 L.Ed.2d 547 (1982), in which the Court ruled that commuter rail service provided by the state-owned Long Island Rail Road did not constitute a traditional governmental function and hence did not enjoy constitutional immunity under National League.⁴

e. On April 27, 1981, this court found defendant and its transit system to be covered by the FLSA.

8. From the foregoing it must be found that defendant, aware of the Department of Labor's regulations and other courts' decisions, pursued its honest differences with those regulations and decisions until this court's adverse ruling on April 27, 1981. From and after that date defendant knew its transit system was covered by FLSA.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

9. Defendant has asked the court to reexamine and change the summary judgment order on the issue of liability that has already been affirmed on appeal, citing Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 92 S.Ct. 349, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971)("Chevron") for the proposition that the Supreme Court's decision in Garcia should be applied prospectively only. What defendant ignores is that this court ruled on liability on April 27, 1981, pursuant to the FLSA, and such ruling was affirmed and the Supreme Court denied defendant's petition for a writ of certiorari approximately two weeks after Garcia was decided.⁵

Moreover the Chevron factors regarding nonretroactivity are a compendium of federal common law principles for use in the absence of federal statutory provisions. Federal common law is inapplicable where Congress has determined by statute—as here the FLSA and the Portal to Portal Act, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 251-262 (West 1985)— the underlying policy and its enforcement. Milwaukee v. Illinois and Michigan, 451 U.S. 304, 312-14, 101 S.Ct. 1784, 1790-91, 68 L.Ed.2d 114, 123-25 (1981). See also Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U.S. 363, 366-67, 63 S.Ct. 573, 575, 87 L.Ed. 838, 841-42 (1943)(Federal common law can be applied, if at all, only "in the absence of an applicable Act of Congress. ..."); Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 195, 98 S.Ct. 2279, 2302, 57 L.Ed.2d 117, 147 (1978).

The Chevron factors, even if applicable, do not compel nonretroactivity.⁶ First, with regard to the establishment of a new principle of law or deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed, "The `clear break' principle has usually been stated as the threshold test for determining whether or not a decision should be applied nonretroactively", United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 550 n. 12, 102 S.Ct. 2579, 2587, 73 L.Ed.2d 202, 214 (1982). Here there was no "clear break"; Garcia is an expansion of the law, not a change in the law. As the pertinent history of the application of the FLSA to public transit employees reveals, even after the Supreme Court's decision in National League, the federal appellate courts—including the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in this case—and the U.S. Department of Labor regulations on December 21, 1979,...