Palotai v. University of Md. College Park

• Decision Date: 08 April 1997
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. DKC 96-3537.
• Citation: 959 F.Supp. 714
• Parties: Thomas PALOTAI, Plaintiff, v. UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

959 F.Supp. 714

Thomas PALOTAI, Plaintiff, v. UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK, Defendant.

Civil Action No. DKC 96-3537.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

April 8, 1997.

Philip B. Zipin, Gagliardo & Zipin, Silver Spring, MD, for Thomas Palotai.

Thomas Faulk, Office of the Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, MD, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Office of the Atty. Gen., Baltimore, MD, for University of Md. College Park.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

CHASANOW, District Judge.

Plaintiff Thomas Palotai filed a six count complaint in this court against his employer, the University of Maryland College Park, alleging violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219, and the Maryland Wage and Hour Law, Md. Lab. & Empl.Code Ann. §§ 3-401—3-431, as well as breach of contract and/or unjust enrichment. Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant failed to compensate him for overtime work in violation of § 207(a) of the FLSA and §§ 3-415 and 3-420 of the Maryland Wage and Hour Law, and that Defendant breached both an oral contract and a contract based on Plaintiff's employee handbook by failing to pay Plaintiff certain wages.

Defendant has filed a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, arguing that the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution affords Defendant immunity from Plaintiff's suit in federal court. No hearing is deemed necessary, and the court now rules pursuant to Local Rule 105.6. For the reasons that follow, Defendant's motion to dismiss will be granted.

ELEVENTH AMENDMENT SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY

The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Although the literal terms of the Amendment do not so provide, the Eleventh Amendment has long been interpreted also to prevent citizens from bringing suit against their own State in federal court. Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 238, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 3145-46, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985) (citing Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1, 10 S.Ct. 504, 33 L.Ed. 842 (1890)). As the Supreme Court recently explained, "`we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition ... which it confirms.' ... [F]irst, that each State is a sovereign entity in our federal system; and second, that `[i]t is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent.'" Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 1122, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996) (citations omitted).

The immunity that the Eleventh Amendment confers extends also to state agencies and instrumentalities. The University of Maryland is such "an arm of the State partaking of the State's Eleventh Amendment immunity." Bickley v. Univ. of Maryland, 527 F.Supp. 174, 181 (D.Md.1981) (quoting Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 280, 97 S.Ct. 568, 572-73, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977), and citing Moreno v. Univ. of Maryland, 420 F.Supp. 541, 549-50 & n. 7 (D.Md.1976), aff'd sub nom., Moreno v. Elkins, 556 F.2d 573 (4th Cir.1977), vacated on other grounds sub nom., Toll v. Moreno, 441 U.S. 458, 99 S.Ct. 2044, 60 L.Ed.2d 354 (1979)).

State Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity is not absolute, however. Congress, in certain circumstances, may abrogate the States' immunity. See Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 452-56, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 2669-71, 49 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976) (explaining that the Eleventh Amendment and the principle of state sovereignty which it embodies are necessarily limited by the enforcement provisions of § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment; therefore, for purposes of enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress may provide for private suits against States which would be constitutionally impermissible in other contexts). Furthermore, a state may waive its protection under the Eleventh Amendment. See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 671-678, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 1359-63, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974).

Therefore, unless Congress has abrogated the States' immunity with respect to Plaintiff's causes of action, or unless Maryland has waived its protection under the Eleventh Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment will bar Plaintiff's claims against Defendant from proceeding in this court.

A. ABROGATION

The first issue is whether Congress abrogated the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity in enacting the FLSA or in amending it to extend the application of the FLSA to State employees.¹ Resolution of this issue turns on a two part inquiry: "first, whether Congress has `unequivocally expresse[d] its intent to abrogate the immunity,' and second, whether Congress has acted `pursuant to a valid exercise of power.'" Seminole Tribe, ___ U.S. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1123 (quoting Green v. Mansour, 474 U.S. 64, 68, 106 S.Ct. 423, 425-26, 88 L.Ed.2d 371 (1985)).

The first step of the inquiry is relatively simple in this case. The FLSA contains an unmistakably clear intent to abrogate the States' sovereign immunity. The FLSA specifically provides that "[a]n action to recover the liability prescribed ... may be maintained against any employer (including a public agency) in any Federal or State court of competent jurisdiction by any one or more employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves and other employees similarly situated." 29 U.S.C. § 216(b).

The critical question is the second part of the inquiry, namely, whether the FLSA was enacted "pursuant to a constitutional provision granting Congress the power to abrogate." Seminole Tribe, ___ U.S. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1125. Defendant argues, and the court agrees, that in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Seminole Tribe, the answer must be no Congress expressly invoked the Interstate Commerce Clause (hereinafter also "the Commerce Clause"), U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, as the source of its authority to enact the FLSA. The statement of policy and findings which preface the FLSA read as follows:

It is declared to be the policy of this chapter, through the exercise by Congress of its power to regulate commerce among the several States and with foreign nations, to correct and as rapidly as practicable to eliminate the conditions above referred to in such industries without substantially curtailing employment or earning power.

29 U.S.C. § 202(b) (emphasis added). Furthermore, every Supreme Court decision examining the constitutional limits to the reach of the FLSA has considered the FLSA to be a Commerce Clause enactment. Taylor v. Virginia, 951 F.Supp. 591, 595 (E.D.Va.1996) (citing United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 61 S.Ct. 451, 85 L.Ed. 609 (1940); Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 88 S.Ct. 2017, 20 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1968); National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976); and Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985)). As a result of the recent Seminole Tribe decision, however, the Commerce Clause is no longer considered to be a source of authority pursuant to which Congress properly may abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity.

In Seminole Tribe, the Supreme Court held that the Indian Commerce Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, does not grant Congress authority to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity. Although the enactment at issue in Seminole Tribe was passed by Congress pursuant to the Indian Commerce Clause, the necessary implication of the Court's decision is that the Interstate Commerce Clause also does not grant Congress the authority to abrogate the States' immunity. In deciding Seminole Tribe, the Court overruled Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 2273, 105 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989), in which a plurality of the Court had concluded that the Commerce Clause granted Congress the power to abrogate state sovereign immunity, because, the Union Gas plurality opined, the power to regulate interstate commerce would be incomplete without the authority to render States liable in damages. According to the Court in Seminole Tribe, the decision in Union Gas "deviated sharply from our established federalism jurisprudence" namely, that "the Eleventh Amendment reflects `the fundamental principle of sovereign immunity [that] limits the grant of judicial authority in Article III.'" Seminole Tribe, ___ U.S. at ___ - ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1127-28 (quoting Pennhurst State Sch. and Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 97-98, 104 S.Ct. 900, 906-07, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984)). In overruling Union Gas, the Court distinguished the only other case in which Congressional power to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity had been upheld, Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 49 L.Ed.2d 614 (1976), which involved an exercise of Congressional power pursuant to § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. According to the Court, the rationale on which Fitzpatrick was based is "wholly inapplicable to the Interstate Commerce Clause," because the Fitzpatrick analysis springs from the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted after the Eleventh Amendment and was intended to alter the pre-existing state-federal balance, while the Commerce Clause pre-dated the Eleventh Amendment and simply was part of the balance struck before the Eleventh Amendment was ratified. Seminole Tribe, ___ U.S. at ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1128 (citing Union Gas, 491 U.S. at 42, 109 S.Ct. at 2302-03 (Scalia, J., dissenting)). The Seminole Tribe Court thus concluded that the "Eleventh Amendment restricts the judicial power under Article III, and Article I cannot be used to circumvent the constitutional limitations placed upon federal jurisdiction." ___ U.S. at ___ - ___, 116 S.Ct. at 1131-32.

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