Lockhart v. Sullivan, 89 C 1226.

• Decision Date: 06 September 1989
• Docket Number: No. 89 C 1226.,89 C 1226.
• Citation: 720 F. Supp. 699
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
• Parties: Eloise LOCKHART, Plaintiff, v. Louis W. SULLIVAN, M.D., Secretary D.H.H.S.; Otis R. Bowen, M.D.,; Francis J. O'Byrne, individually and as A.L. J.I.C., D.H.H.S., OHA; Michael Bernstein, individually and as Supervisory Attorney-Advisor, D.H.H.S., OHA; and Other Unknown Agents, D.H.H.S., Defendants.

720 F. Supp. 699

Eloise LOCKHART, Plaintiff, v. Louis W. SULLIVAN, M.D., Secretary D.H.H.S.; Otis R. Bowen, M.D.,; Francis J. O'Byrne, individually and as A.L. J.I.C., D.H.H.S., OHA; Michael Bernstein, individually and as Supervisory Attorney-Advisor, D.H.H.S., OHA; and Other Unknown Agents, D.H.H.S., Defendants.

No. 89 C 1226.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

September 6, 1989.

Eloise Lockhart, Dallas, Tex., pro se.

Frederick Branding, Asst. U.S. Atty., Chicago, Ill., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

BRIAN BARNETT DUFF, District Judge.

Eloise Lockhart is a black woman who formerly was a career Attorney-Advisor for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("DHHS"). During 1983-85, DHHS employed Lockhart in its Chicago Office of Hearings and Appeals for the Social Security Administration. In 1983 Lockhart filed two Equal Employment Opportunity ("EEO") complaints with DHHS. She charged in her first complaint, filed July 6, 1983, that DHHS had assigned her office space on the basis of her race and gender, and that DHHS had discriminated against her on the same grounds when it filled a vacancy in a supervisory position in April 1983. On August 8, 1983, Lockhart filed a second EEO complaint, charging discrimination in the filling of three additional supervisory vacancies. If the acts alleged in these complaints had been true, DHHS would have violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq. (1982), as applied to federal employees through id., § 2000e-16.

DHHS investigated Lockhart's 1983 complaints and decided that they were meritless. Lockhart appealed this decision to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's ("EEOC") Office of Review and Appeals. The EEOC affirmed the DHHS's ruling in 1986. Lockhart did not appeal the EEOC decision to a United States district court within the thirty-day period established by law, see id. at § 2000e-16(c), and so action on the substance of Ms. Lockhart's 1983 complaints is finished.

Finished, that is, unless DHHS retaliated against Lockhart for complaining — an action which is a separate violation of Title VII. See id. at § 2000e-3(a) (unlawful employment practice to discriminate against person because he or she has filed Title VII charges); Judge v. Marsh, 649 F.Supp. 770, 781-82 (D.D.C.1986) (applying § 2000e-3(a) to federal employees). In a pro se complaint filed in this court, Lockhart charges that DHHS retaliated soon after she filed her 1983 complaints. According to the complaint, these retaliatory actions prompted Lockhart to file a series of administrative charges and complaints beginning on October 1, 1984 — charges that allegedly produced heightened retaliation.

According to records which DHHS has produced to this court, Lockhart filed four EEO complaints in late 1984 and early 1985.¹ The first complaint filed November 14, 1984, alleged that DHHS had discriminted against her in not promoting her to a supervisory position in October 1984. The second and third complaints, filed December 12, 1984, alleged that DHHS discriminated in charging her with being absent without leave for 30 minutes in October 1984, and in requiring her to file a formal request for additional leave in November 1984. The third complaint also claimed discrimination and reprisal in the agency's proposal to suspend Lockhart in November 1984. The final complaint, filed March 7, 1985, claimed discrimination and reprisal in the agency's supervision of Lockhart in January 1985 and in constructively discharging her effective March 30, 1985.

DHHS investigated Lockhart's 1984-85 complaints and proposed findings of no discrimination on all of them on December 12, 1986. Eight days later Lockhart requested a hearing before an EEOC Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ"). The hearing took place over April 4-6, 1988. Lockhart was represented by counsel at this hearing. In October 1988 the ALJ recommended a finding of no discrimination or reprisal against Lockhart. DHHS adopted the ALJ's recommendation on December 20, 1988, and gave Lockhart notice of its decision on January 14, 1989.

At this point Lockhart had a choice: she could have sought review with the EEOC within 20 days of receiving DHHS's decision, or else appealed to a federal district court. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c); 29 C.F.R. § 1613.281 (1988).² Lockhart decided to do both. She appealed DHHS's adverse decision on her 1984-85 complaints to the EEOC on January 20, 1989, and filed a two-count suit in this court on February 15, 1989. Count 1 of her suit charges employment discrimination in violation of Title VII. Count 2 alleges that DHHS, Otis R. Bowen,³ Francis J. O'Byrne, Michael Bernstein, and other DHHS employees⁴ violated her rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as her constitutional right to privacy.⁵

The defendants have moved to dismiss both counts.⁶ Lockhart's employer, DHHS, first argues that Lockhart may not seek review of her 1983 complaints in this court, as Lockhart did not appeal the EEOC's 1986 ruling on those complaints within 30 days. Lockhart replies that she does not wish to relitigate the substance of the 1983 complaints, but rather, she wishes to use them to explain DHHS's motive for harming her. Retaliation was the subject of at least two of her 1984-85 complaints, and as noted above, retaliation against someone who has filed a Title VII charge is itself a violation of Title VII. Whether one can challenge an adverse ruling does not prevent that person from using the fact of the charge which prompted that ruling in a later complant of illegal retaliation. The fact of the initial complaint is a logical prerequisite of a charge of unlawful employment practices under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3, and Lockhart is entitled to allege and prove this fact.

DHHS's second argument is that Lockhart could not have appealed DHHS's decision on her 1984-85 complaints both here and before the EEOC, and thus this court lacks jurisdiction over them. While DHHS's argument had merit at the time Lockhart filed her complaint, see note 2 above, DHHS was done in by the efficiency of the EEOC. DHHS notified the EEOC's Office of Review and Appeals on March 6, 1989 of Lockhart's filing here; before this court had a chance to decide whether the federal courts have jurisdiction over Lockhart's appeal, the EEOC dismissed Lockhart's EEOC appeal on April 4, 1989. Lockhart has only one appeal now, as Title VII and the EEOC's regulations allow. This court thus has jurisdiction over Lockhart's appeal of her 1984-85 EEO complaints, and thus DHHS's motion to dismiss Count 1 is denied.

The defendants next ask this court to dismiss Count 2 for not stating a claim upon which this court can grant relief. Count 2, as noted earlier, seeks relief for various constitutional infractions. While there is no federal constitutional or statutory provision which expressly allows persons to sue federal officers for such infractions, the Supreme Court has determined that certain constitutional rights imply a remedy of private suit. As the Court announced this rule in Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), these implied rights of action to redress constitutional violations have become known as "Bivens suits."

Notwithstanding the rule announced in Bivens, a person does not have the right to file a Bivens action any time a federal officer violates the Constitution. As the Court noted in Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 100 S.Ct. 1468, 64 L.Ed.2d 15 (1980), the victim of a federal officer's constitutional wrong does not have a private right of action when "Congress has provided an alternative remedy which it explicitly declared to be a substitute for recovery directly under the Constitution and viewed as equally effective," id. at 18-19, 100 S.Ct. at 1471 (emphasis in original), or when "`special factors'" counsel "`hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress.'" Id. at 18, 100 S.Ct. at 1471, quoting Bivens, 403 U.S. at 396, 91 S.Ct. at 2004.

The defendants contend that both of Carlson's limitations on Bivens suits are present here. They direct the court's attention to Brown v. GSA, 425 U.S. 820, 835, 96 S.Ct. 1961, 1969, 48 L.Ed.2d 402 (1976), where the Supreme Court held that Title VII and the procedures it contains in 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c) were "the exclusive judicial remedy for claims of discrimination in federal employment." Brown teaches this court to look closely at Count 2, for if Lockhart states claims for discrimination in her employment, Title VII bars them; if her constitutional claims do not relate to employment discrimination, Title VII has no effect on them. See Ethnic Employees of Library of Congress v. Boorstin, 751 F.2d 1405, 1414-16 (D.C.Cir.1985) (collecting cases demonstrating limits of Title VII preemption of constitutional claims of federal employees).

Count 2 contains three types of claims: two which Title VII preempts, several which Title VII might preempt, and one which Title VII does not preempt. In ¶ 18 of her Complaint, Lockhart claims that the defendants denied her equal protection of the laws in failing to promote her from April 1983 to September 1984. In ¶ 25 she claims the defendants denied her equal protection in processing her complaints. A denial of equal protection, however, in relation to hiring, firing, compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment is a violation of Title VII, when the denial is based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). It would be unreasonable to infer from Lockhart's complaint that she alleges discrimination on some ground other than these, and so this court concludes that Title VII preempts a Bivens remedy for Lockhart's claims of denial of equal protection.

Examples of the second category of claims, those which Title VII might preempt, are found in ¶¶...