Lacy v. Chrysler Corp.
| Decision Date | 04 March 1976 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 74-1949,CERTAIN-TEED,74-1981 and 75-1077,s. 74-1949 |
| Citation | 12 FEP Cases 471,533 F.2d 353 |
| Parties | 12 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 471, 11 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 10,746 Mary LACY, Appellant, v. CHRYSLER CORP., Appellee. Yvonne HARRIS, Appellant, v. SHERWOOD MEDICAL INDUSTRIES, Appellee. Jimmie WHITFIELD, Appellant, v.PRODUCTS et al., Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Harvey Tessler, Clayton, Mo., for appellant Lacy in No. 74-1949.
David A. Lang, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant Harris in No. 74-1981.
David A. Lang, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant Whitfield in No. 75-1077.
Charles L. Reischel, Asst. Gen. Counsel, EEOC, Washington, D. C., for EEOC amicus. William A. Carey, Gen. Counsel, Joseph T. Eddins, Jr., Associate Gen. Counsel, Beatrice Rosenberg, Charles L. Reischel and Juan R. Rivera, Attys., EEOC, Washington, D. C., filed brief for amicus curiae. Abner W. Sibal, Gen. Counsel, Joseph T. Eddins, Jr., Associate Gen. Counsel, Beatrice Rosenberg and Charles L. Reischel, Attys., Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Washington, D. C., filed supplemental brief for amicus curiae.
Charles A. Newman, St. Louis, Mo., for appellee Chrysler in No. 74-1949. Charles A. Newman and Edwin D. Akers, Jr., St. Louis, Mo., filed brief and supplemental brief for appellee.
D. J. Sullivan, St. Louis, Mo., for appellee Sherwood Medical Industries, Inc., in No. 74-1981. Brief and supplemental brief for appellee were filed by D. J. Sullivan and Timothy L. Stalnaker, St. Louis, Mo.
Mark S. Dichter, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellee Certain-Teed Prod. Co., in No. 75-1077. Brief and supplemental brief for appellee were filed by Mark S. Dichter and Joseph I. Goldstein, Philadelphia, Pa., and Eugene K. Buckley, Evans & Dixon, St. Louis, Mo.
Before GIBSON, Chief Judge, and LAY, HEANEY, BRIGHT, ROSS, STEPHENSON, WEBSTER, and HENLEY, Circuit Judges, en banc.
In these three consolidated appeals, appellants (plaintiffs in the district court) urge that the trial courts erred in dismissing their actions by ruling that the 90-day period to commence individual civil actions against an employer under provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 1 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (Supp II, 1972), begins to run from the date that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission) advises the employee-charging party by letter that conciliation efforts with the employer have failed.
Although we previously decided this issue in Tuft v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 517 F.2d 1301 (8th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 96 S.Ct. 782, 46 L.Ed.2d 641, 44 U.S.L.W. 3394 (1976), we granted an en banc hearing in this case to pass upon procedures of the Commission in factual settings varying from those in Tuft.
We reverse the district court judgments in Lacy v. Chrysler Corp., No. 74-1949, and Harris v. Sherwood Medical Industries, E.D.Mo., 386 F.Supp. 1149 and reinstate the appellants' actions. We affirm the dismissal in Whitfield v. Certain-Teed Products, E.D.Mo., 389 F.Supp. 274.
We turn to the factual background and discuss each of these actions.
Mary Lacy, a black woman, filed a racial discrimination charge against Chrysler Corporation with the EEOC on or about September 7, 1972, asserting discriminatory treatment because of certain layoff and recall provisions of Chrysler. On July 17, 1973, the St. Louis, Missouri, district office of the EEOC advised Ms. Lacy by letter "that conciliation efforts in your case have failed." The letter went on to state that
(a)nytime now you may request your letter of Right to Sue. This is done by requesting, in writing, from the District Director, Mr. Eugene P. Keenan.
When you request your letter of Right to Sue, you have only 90 days to get a lawyer to file suit for you in Federal District Court. It is not wise to request your Right to Sue letter until you have obtained a lawyer who has agreed to represent you.
Thereafter, on August 13, 1974, following a request from Ms. Lacy, the district office issued a letter to Ms. Lacy, entitled "Notice of Right to Sue within 90 days." The full text of this letter is reproduced in the margin. 2 The dates disclose that the so-called "Right to Sue" letter was mailed approximately 13 months after the EEOC had notified Ms. Lacy of the failure of conciliation with her employer. She filed her action against Chrysler in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on September 13, 1974, thirty days after receiving the Right to Sue letter, but some 14 months after she had received the notice of failure of conciliation. The district court ruled that the action had not been brought within the 90-day period provided for in § 706(f)(1), referred to in note 1 supra, and dismissed the case.
Yvonne Costello Harris, a black former employee of Sherwood Medical Industries, filed a complaint with the EEOC that Sherwood had discriminated against her with regard to supervision and promotion and had discharged her on the basis of her race. On March 16, 1972, the EEOC referred her charge to the Missouri Commission on Human Rights as required by 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(d). The state commission, without resolving the complaint, returned the plaintiff's file to the EEOC on June 30, 1972. Thereafter, more than one year later on September 21, 1973, the EEOC's district office in St. Louis wrote Ms. Harris and advised her that conciliation efforts on her behalf had failed. The text of the letter was the same as the initial letter mailed to Mary Lacy, referred to above. Thereafter, on February 4, 1974, the district director in St. Louis sent Ms. Harris a formal Right to Sue letter with the text identical to the Right to Sue letter mailed to Ms. Lacy and quoted in note 2 supra. She filed her Title VII action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri against Sherwood Medical Industries on March 1, 1974, more than 90 days after receiving the letter from the EEOC office in St. Louis advising that conciliation efforts in her case had failed but only 24 days after receiving the formal Right to Sue letter. The district court dismissed the action on defendant's motion for summary judgment on grounds that the suit had not been commenced within the 90-day period prescribed by § 706(f)(1). Harris v. Sherwood Medical Industries, 386 F.Supp. 1149 (E.D.Mo.1974). This appeal followed.
Thus, both Ms. Lacy and Ms. Harris brought Title VII actions within 90 days after receiving a formal notice of right to sue from the EEOC but more than 90 days from the receipt of notice that conciliation efforts had failed in each individual case. The underlying facts in each case reflect a two-letter procedure followed by the EEOC. In the first letter, the EEOC advised the charging party only that conciliation had failed and that a Right to Sue letter could be requested. The second letter formally notified the complainant that (1) the Commission had not filed a civil action with respect to the charge; (2) that the Commission had not entered into a conciliation agreement respecting the claim; and (3) that the complainant had a right to sue in the United States District Court having jurisdiction over the case within 90 days of the receipt of this notice.
In Tuft v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 517 F.2d 1301 (8th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 96 S.Ct. 782, 46 L.Ed.2d 641, 44 U.S.L.W. 3394 (1976), we considered the identical two-letter procedure followed by the Commission and we held that the first letter advising the complainant of the failure of conciliation efforts did not initiate the running of the 90-day period. In that case we undertook an extensive review of the 1972 amendments to the Act, noting in particular that Congress by these amendments had now authorized the Commission to institute legal actions under Title VII. We determined that the amended statute required notification to the aggrieved party at the conclusion of the final step in the administrative process, i. e., after the 1972 amendments, upon the Commission's determination not to file suit.
We reasoned as follows:
This section (§ 706(f)), read in its entirety, calls upon the Commission, in cases of private employers, or the Attorney General, in cases of governmental employers, to "notify" the aggrieved party upon a determination not to file suit.
In the absence of a demand from the complainant, the notice from the Attorney General obviously must follow his decision not to file suit. Since the Commission similarly determines whether to institute a civil action against other employers, it follows that it also must issue its notice upon determining that it will not sue. Thus, absent a demand from the aggrieved party, § 706 requires an official notification to the complainant upon making the decision not to file suit, this determination representing the final step of administrative processing. * * *
This reading of the notification provisions of § 706(f) comports with the expressed congressional desire to place the primary burden of enforcement of Title VII cases on the Commission rather than the private complainant. If the statute required the issuance of notice at some intermediate stage of the administrative process, an aggrieved person would be required to either sue within 90 days or lose his right to sue without knowing whether or not the Commission would file suit on his behalf. Moreover, this construction remains consistent with pre-1972 procedures which generally geared the issuance of notice to exhaustion of administrative remedies. Before the 1972 amendments administrative procedures ended with the termination of conciliation efforts while under the current statute these administrative procedures end with a determination of whether to file suit. (Id. at 1309 (footnote omitted).)
We added:
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