Muller Optical Co. v. EEOC

• Decision Date: 10 November 1983
• Docket Number: No. 83-2836 H.,83-2836 H.
• Citation: 574 F. Supp. 946
• Parties: MULLER OPTICAL COMPANY and Robert E. Long, Plaintiffs, v. The EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Tennessee

574 F. Supp. 946

MULLER OPTICAL COMPANY and Robert E. Long, Plaintiffs, v. The EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Defendant.

No. 83-2836 H.

United States District Court, W.D. Tennessee, W.D.

November 10, 1983.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Stephen H. Biller of Heiskell, Donelson, Bearman, Adams, Williams & Kirsch, Memphis, Tenn., for plaintiffs.

David L. Slate, Michael A. Middleton, Joseph Ray Terry, Daniel A. Williams, of E.E.O.C., Washington, D.C., Lawrence J. Kamenetzky, Zelma Phillips Brown, of E.E. O.C., Memphis, Tenn., for defendant; W. Hickman Ewing, R. Larry Brown, Vivian Donelson, Memphis, Tenn., of counsel.

ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFFS' MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

HORTON, District Judge.

Plaintiffs Muller Optical Company and its president, Robert E. Long, seek a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendant, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), from requiring Long to appear at a deposition and produce documents in compliance with a subpoena issued by the EEOC. The Court held a hearing on this matter, and, after a full review of the record and careful consideration of the issues involved, enters this Order DENYING plaintiffs' motion.

This action is the culmination of a controversy that began when plaintiffs' former employee, Vera Marie Adkins, filed a charge with the EEOC contending that Muller had discharged her because of her age and her sex. After Muller resisted the EEOC's several attempts to investigate Adkins' charge, the EEOC issued a subpoena, pursuant to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, ordering Long to appear at the EEOC's office on October 14, 1983. The subpoena required Long to bring specified records and testify before EEOC personnel. In an effort to avoid complying with this subpoena, the plaintiffs filed this action. The plaintiffs contend the EEOC lacks jurisdiction under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to investigate Adkins' charge.

PLAINTIFFS' CONTENTIONS:

To understand plaintiffs' contention that the EEOC is without authority to investigate an age discrimination charge, it is necessary to look at the underlying legislation. Under Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978, the statutory responsibility for administering and enforcing the Age Discrimination in Employment Act was transferred from the Secretary of Labor to the EEOC effective July 1, 1979. This Reorganization Plan was enacted pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1977, 5 U.S.C. 901 et seq. Through this Reorganization Act, Congress gave the President of the United States authority to restructure and reorganize the executive branch and its agencies. 5 U.S.C. §§ 901, 903. The President was empowered to prepare reorganization plans and submit such plans to both Houses of Congress. 5 U.S.C. § 903. If during the sixty days after a plan was transmitted to Congress, neither house passed "a resolution stating in substance that the House does not favor the reorganization plan," then the reorganization plan became effective. 5 U.S.C. § 906(a). Thus, the Reorganization Act included a legislative veto provision.

The plaintiffs here contend that the presence of a legislative veto provision in the Reorganization Act that authorized the transfer of responsibility for administering and enforcing the ADEA from the Secretary of Labor to the EEOC renders that transfer void. The plaintiffs base their argument on the recent United States Supreme Court decision Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, ___ U.S. ___, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983). In Chadha the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizing either House of Congress to invalidate the Attorney General's decision to allow a particular deportable alien to remain in the United States. Id. at 2788. The Court held in Chadha that the House of Representatives' veto of the Attorney General's decision violated the constitutional requirement that legislative acts be passed by both Houses of Congress and presented to the President. Because the one House veto exercised by the House of Representatives failed to comply with these constitutional requirements of bicameralism and presentment, the Court severed the legislative veto provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act and declared the severed provision unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs contend that the presence of the legislative veto within the Reorganization Act serves to invalidate the reorganization plans implemented under the Act. In the plaintiffs' view, there has been no valid statutory grant of authority empowering the EEOC to enforce the ADEA, and therefore, the EEOC has no jurisdiction to subpoena plaintiff Long as a part of an investigation of Adkins' age discrimination charge.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS:

The EEOC agrees that the Reorganization Act, which authorized the President to transfer the administration of the ADEA from the Secretary of Labor to the EEOC via a reorganization plan, does contain a one House veto provision similar to the one found unconstitutional in Chadha. The EEOC, however, advances several arguments to support its contentions that plaintiffs have not established that they are entitled to injunctive relief, nor have they established that the EEOC lacks jurisdiction to investigate Adkins' age discrimination charge. The EEOC's arguments may be summarized as follows:

1. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that they are entitled to injunctive relief by showing: (a) there is a substantial likelihood they will succeed on the merits; (b) they will suffer irreparable injury absent injunctive relief; (c) granting the injunction would cause no substantial harm to others; and (d) the public interest would be served by issuing injunctive relief.

2. Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the validity of the legislative veto since plaintiffs have suffered no injury in fact as a result of the presence of the legislative veto in the Reorganization Act.

3. The Chadha decision is not applicable here since the transfer from the Secretary of Labor to the EEOC did not involve any unilateral action by only one House of Congress.

4. The Chadha decision is not applicable since here the effect of the challenged Reorganization Plan was merely to transfer the enforcement power from one executive agency to another; the transfer determined who enforced the substantive rights created under the ADEA, but it otherwise had no effect on those rights.

5. Congress would have passed the Reorganization Act even if the legislative veto had not been included in the Act. From this, it follows that the unconstitutional one House veto provision is severable from the remainder of the Reorganization Act.

6. In subsequent legislation that does meet the requirements of bicameralism and presentment, Congress has ratified the transfer of the administration and enforcement of the ADEA from the Secretary of Labor to the EEOC.

7. Even if Chadha does dictate that the Reorganization Act be held unconstitutional and even if Congress has not subsequently ratified the transfer challenged here, the ruling of unconstitutionality should not be applied retroactively.

8. Irreparable harm has not been shown because plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the EEOC is handling Adkins' age discrimination charge any differently than would the Department of Labor had enforcement not been transferred.

STANDING:

The EEOC argues that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the EEOC's jurisdiction over age discrimination charges. Article III of the Constitution "requires the party who invokes the court's authority to `show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant,' Gladstone, Relators v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1607, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 ... (1979), and that the injury `fairly can be traced to the challenged action' and `is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision,' Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 41 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 1925, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 ... (1976)." Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (footnote omitted).

The EEOC contends that in order to challenge the legislative veto provision of the Reorganization Act the plaintiffs must demonstrate they have suffered injury in fact stemming from the one House veto provision they attack. Since neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate exercised its legislative veto under the Reorganization Act to prevent the ADEA transfer, EEOC contends that the plaintiffs have suffered no injury in fact and therefore have no standing to challenge the EEOC's authority. The Court finds that the EEOC misperceives the nature of the injury in fact sufficient to confer standing. The plaintiffs do not contend that the failure of either House of Congress to exercise the legislative veto caused them injury. Rather, plaintiffs allege their injury arises from the EEOC's issuance of a subpoena that — in plaintiff's view — the EEOC is not constitutionally authorized to issue.

The Court finds that plaintiffs have indeed suffered injury in fact sufficient to confer standing to challenge the defendant's authority to issue the subpoena. Plaintiffs have been subpoenaed to appear with books and records in hand before the EEOC. If plaintiffs comply with the subpoena and the EEOC is without authority to issue the subpoena, then plaintiffs have been subjected to an intrusive and time consuming investigation by a governmental agency acting outside the law. On the other hand, if plaintiffs do not comply with the subpoena, then they may be subjected to court action initiated by EEOC to enforce compliance with the subpoena. 15 U.S.C. § 49. Failure to obey a court order enforcing the subpoena is punishable as contempt and may also subject these plaintiffs to a...