Kolstad v. American Dental Ass'n

• Decision Date: 08 May 1998
• Docket Number: 96-7047,Nos. 96-7030,s. 96-7030
• Citation: 139 F.3d 958
• Parties: 76 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1178, 76 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1321, 150 A.L.R. Fed. 777, 73 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,401, 329 U.S.App.D.C. 265, 67 USLW 3479 Carole KOLSTAD, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. AMERICAN DENTAL ASSOCIATION, Appellee/Cross-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 958

139 F.3d 958

76 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1178,

76 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1321,

150 A.L.R. Fed. 777, 73 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,401,

329 U.S.App.D.C. 265, 67 USLW 3479

Carole KOLSTAD, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. AMERICAN DENTAL ASSOCIATION, Appellee/Cross-Appellant.

Nos. 96-7030, 96-7047.

United States Court of Appeals,

District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Sept. 22, 1997.

Decided May 8, 1998.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 94cv01578).

Bruce S. Harrison and Elizabeth Torphy-Donzella, Baltimore, MD, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellee/cross-appellant.

Joseph A. Yablonski, Washington, DC, argued the cause and filed the brief for appellant/cross-appellee.

J. Ray Terry, Jr., Deputy General Counsel, and Robert J. Gregory, Attorney, Washington, DC, were on the brief for amicus curiae Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Before: EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD, SILBERMAN, WILLIAMS, GINSBURG, SENTELLE, HENDERSON, RANDOLPH, ROGERS, TATEL and GARLAND, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge TATEL, with whom Chief Judge HARRY T. EDWARDS, and Circuit Judges WALD, ROGERS and GARLAND join.

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

Carole Kolstad sued her employer, the American Dental Association ("ADA"), under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. At the close of evidence, the district court refused to instruct the jury on punitive damages. The jury awarded Kolstad back pay, and the district court denied ADA's motion for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of liability. A panel of this court reversed the district court's dismissal of Kolstad's punitive damages claim and remanded for a trial on punitive damages. Kolstad v. American Dental Ass'n, 108 F.3d 1431, 1437-39 (D.C.Cir.1997). We granted en banc review on the question whether the standard of evidence for punitive damages under Title VII is, in all but a narrow range of cases, no higher than the standard for liability. We reject that view and hold that punitive damages in a Title VII case may be imposed only on a showing of egregious conduct. We further hold that no evidence of such behavior was shown at trial in this case, and thus affirm the district court on the issue of punitive damages.

* * *

ADA is a Chicago-based professional organization with an office in Washington. Jack O'Donnell worked in the Washington office, where he held the double-barreled title of Director of Legislation and Legislative Policy and Director of the Council on Government Affairs and Federal Dental Services. The first role involved developing and advocating ADA's stance on federal legislation and regulations; the second entailed coordinating regular meetings of the Council on Governmental Affairs, a policy-making body composed of ADA members.

In September 1992 O'Donnell announced he would retire at year's end. Upon learning of O'Donnell's impending departure, Kolstad (then serving as ADA's Director of Federal Agency Relations) and Tom Spangler (then ADA's Legislative Counsel) each expressed interest in the vacancy. Since 1988, when Kolstad became responsible for federal regulatory matters at ADA, Leonard Wheat (the head of the Washington office) had repeatedly rated her performance as "distinguished." Before coming to ADA, Kolstad had spent six years in the General Counsel's office of the Department of Defense, where she drafted proposed legislation, prepared testimony for congressional hearings, and represented the Department's interests on Capitol Hill. Spangler began working at ADA in 1991. He dealt mainly with legislative matters, and had also received "distinguished" performance evaluations from Wheat. Before joining ADA, Spangler spent five years as a lobbyist for the National Treasury Employees Union. Both Kolstad and Spangler are lawyers. Each had worked directly with O'Donnell, Spangler principally supporting his lobbying efforts and Kolstad assisting his management of the Council.

Wheat asked Dr. William Allen, ADA's Executive Director in Chicago, to appoint O'Donnell's successor. After consulting with Wheat, Allen revised the "Position Description Questionnaire" for O'Donnell's job, incorporating verbatim elements of the Position Description Questionnaire that had been used to hire Spangler in 1991. (There is no evidence that the job has not in fact included those elements.) In October 1992 Wheat approved a performance evaluation of Spangler in which Spangler stated that one of his objectives for 1993 was to "provide management and administrative support ... for the Council on Government Affairs," work that O'Donnell was then performing.

Spangler formally applied for the vacancy once it was posted in November 1992. Kolstad also applied, after complaining in a letter to Allen that Wheat had refused for several weeks to meet with her to discuss her interest in the position. Wheat interviewed both applicants and recommended Spangler for the job. In December 1992 Allen telephoned Kolstad to tell her that he had given the promotion to Spangler, explaining that she lacked experience with health care reform and was too valuable to ADA in her current position to take on O'Donnell's job.

Kolstad's claims of discrimination rest largely on the idea that ADA had in effect picked Spangler in advance of the formal selection process; seeing the formal process as largely facade, she contends that its artificial quality evidences intent to engage in sex discrimination. She also gave testimony, hotly contested, that Wheat told sexually offensive jokes at staff meetings and sometimes used derogatory terms to refer to prominent professional women.

After exhausting her administrative remedies before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Kolstad filed suit, charging ADA with unlawful employment discrimination and seeking equitable relief, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(g)(1), and damages, 42 U.S.C. § 1981a. At the close of the trial evidence, the district judge declined to give the jury the issue of punitive damages. The jury found that ADA had unlawfully discriminated against Kolstad on the basis of sex and awarded her $52,718 in back pay. The district court denied ADA's motion for judgment as a matter of law on liability. The court also held that Kolstad was not entitled to attorneys' fees or the equitable remedy of instatement. Kolstad v. American Dental Ass'n, 912 F.Supp. 13 (D.D.C.1996).

A panel of this court affirmed the denial of ADA's motion for judgment as a matter of law, but reversed and remanded for trial on punitive damages and for reconsideration of Kolstad's claims for instatement and attorneys' fees. Kolstad v. American Dental Ass'n, 108 F.3d 1431 (D.C.Cir.1997). We granted rehearing en banc on the question whether the issue of punitive damages was properly withheld from the jury in this case. We conclude that it was, and affirm the district court.

* * *

Until 1991 successful plaintiffs in Title VII cases could only get "equitable" relief. See Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 252-53, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 1490-91, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994). In the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Congress authorized a broader range of monetary remedies for Title VII plaintiffs. The Act provides that a plaintiff who proves "intentional discrimination" in violation of Title VII may recover compensatory and punitive damages in addition to the equitable relief available under prior law. 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(a). A separate provision--the one at issue in this proceeding--limits the recovery of punitive damages to cases in which "the complaining party demonstrates that the respondent engaged in a discriminatory practice or discriminatory practices with malice or with reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of an aggrieved individual." 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(1). The sum of compensatory and punitive damages is capped at a total ranging from $50,000 and $300,000 depending on the employer's size. 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3).

We think that by enacting a separate provision setting out a special standard for the imposition of punitive damages, Congress showed that it did not intend to make punitive damages automatically available in the standard case of intentional discrimination under Title VII. The structure of the statute--one standard for basic liability, another for the exceptional remedy of punitive liability--strongly suggests that, before the question of punitive damages can go to the jury, the evidence of the defendant's culpability must exceed what is needed to show intentional discrimination. To be sure, Congress's choice of language ("malice or ... reckless indifference to ... federally protected rights") hardly pinpoints what the content of that "something more" ought to be. Still less, however, does that language support either the rule proposed by Kolstad--that punitive damages should be available in every case strong enough to get to the jury on simple compensation--or even the marginally less permissive rule urged by the dissent.

We begin by rejecting Kolstad's broad assertion that a finding of intentional discrimination is enough to put the question of punitive damages before the jury in every Title VII case. ¹ Such an approach would conflict with the remedial structure of the statute, with legislative history indicating that Congress meant to reserve punitive damages for particularly egregious violations of Title VII, and with the Supreme Court's pronouncements on the purposes and availability of punitive damages. Kolstad's position does draw some superficial plausibility from the language of the statute: since recklessness is typically subsumed within intent in the mens rea taxonomy, it might appear logical to read § 1981a(b)(1) as authorizing punitive damages whenever intent is shown--in other words, whenever compensatory damages are...