Richardson v. Alabama State Bd. of Educ.
| Citation | 935 F.2d 1240 |
| Decision Date | 17 July 1991 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 90-7002,90-7336,s. 90-7002 |
| Parties | 60 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 911, 56 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 40,891, 68 Ed. Law Rep. 268 Alice RICHARDSON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ALABAMA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al., Defendants, Lamar County Board of Education; L.C. Steedley, individually and in his capacity as Superintendent of the Lamar County Board of Education; Charles L. Cook; Dennis Knight; Dale McNeeds; Jerry Minor and Ricky Perkins, Defendants-Appellants. Alice RICHARDSON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ALABAMA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al., Defendants, Lamar County Board of Education; L.C. Steedley, individually and in his capacity as Superintendent of the Lamar County Board of Education; Charles L. Cook; Dennis Knight, et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Donald B. Sweeney, Rives & Peterson, Birmingham, Ala., Ronald H. Strawbridge, Vernon, Ala., for defendants-appellants.
Richard A. Samp, Washington Legal Foundation, Washington, D.C., for amicus curiae.
Joe R. Whatley, Jr., Cooper, Mitch, Crawford, Kuykendall & Whately, Birmingham, Ala., Donald V. Watkins, Montgomery, Ala., Jeremiah A. Collins, Deborah Malamud, Bredhoff & Kaiser, Washington, D.C., for plaintiff-appellee.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Before KRAVITCH and COX, Circuit Judges, and RONEY, Senior Circuit Judge.
Alice Richardson, a black school teacher, brought a Title VII action against her employer, the Board of Education of Lamar County, Alabama. After a bench trial the district court ruled in her favor, and the County Board appeals. The County Board argues that appellee's suit was precluded by a previous consent decree and also challenges the district court's adjudication of the Title VII claim and remedies. We affirm.
In 1983 the County Board hired Richardson to teach reading at the fifth and sixth grade level at Millport Elementary School. Although she had been certified and had taught in Mississippi, she had not passed the Alabama Initial Teacher Certification Test, as is required by Alabama law in order to secure permanent certification. The County Board, after approval by the State Department of Education, issued her a temporary certificate for the 1983-84 school year to allow her to teach and to take the certification test. Richardson twice failed the test in 1984. The County Board, with the state's permission, granted her another temporary certificate for the 1984-85 school year, but she failed the test twice more that year. 1 In October 1985, the state approved another one-year temporary certificate for Richardson, but deducted Meanwhile the certification test was being challenged as racially discriminatory in violation of Title VII. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e et seq. A class action brought in 1981 alleged that the test, created and administered by the State Board of Education for all state public schools, had an adverse impact upon black teachers. Allen v. Alabama State Bd. of Educ., 636 F.Supp. 64 (M.D.Ala.1986). The plaintiff class consisted of "all black persons who have been or will be denied any level teacher certification because they failed to pass the tests administered under the program" of the State Board. Allen v. Alabama State Bd. of Educ., 612 F.Supp. 1046, 1048 (M.D.Ala.1985). The plaintiff class included Richardson. On July 3, 1985, after negotiations between the parties, the district court granted plaintiffs' motion to conditionally enforce an agreement to settle the litigation with the State Board. Id. On October 25, 1985, two days after Richardson received approval for her third temporary certificate to teach, the district judge approved the consent decree. It provided for: 1) a permanent injunction against the State Board preventing use of any teacher certification exam that has a disparate impact on black teacher candidates, 2) guidelines for future teaching certification tests, 3) certification within ninety days of certain teachers who were denied certification based on failure of the written test, but who had scored within an assigned point range, 4) $500,000 in compensatory damages, $5,000 of which was designated for four named plaintiffs and the rest divided pro rata among remaining plaintiffs, 5) attorneys fees, and 6) retention of jurisdiction "to monitor and enforce the defendants' compliance with the terms of this Decree to the extent necessary." 2 It is undisputed that Richardson was entitled to certification under the terms of the consent decree. See consent decree, para. 11. She eventually received her pro rata share of the damages and was certified in July 1987, but not before two intervening events occurred.
$500 from its annual allotment to Lamar County pursuant to its regulations. The County Board deducted the $500 from Richardson's salary, and she taught for the 1985-86 school year.
First, in February 1986, the district judge granted the State Board's motion for rehearing, ruled that the consent decree could not be enforced due to federalism concerns, and certified the case for immediate appeal. Allen v. Alabama State Bd. of Educ., 636 F.Supp. 64 (M.D.Ala.1986). The district court also proceeded with a trial beginning in May 1986. Second, on May 12 the County Board decided not to renew Richardson's teaching contract for the next school year. The stated reasons were that she did not have an Alabama teaching certificate and that the consolidation of Millport and Kennedy Schools to form a new school, South Lamar High School, combined with budget constraints required the termination of fifteen teaching positions. In June 1986 Richardson filed a complaint with the EEOC.
The litigation against the State Board was finally concluded in April 1987 when the Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court's order in the testing litigation and ordered reenforcement of the consent decree. Allen v. Alabama State Bd. of Educ., 816 F.2d 575 (11th Cir.1987), reh'g denied, 817 F.2d 761. The trial court enforced the consent decree on May 14, 1987. Richardson filed this suit against the County Board, its members and the schools superintendent on June 17, 1987, alleging that her dismissal based on the test was discriminatory and a violation of Title VII. The district court found Richardson was entitled to prevail on a disparate impact theory and it ordered back pay and benefits, attorneys fees, and reemployment as a teacher in the County. 729 F.Supp. 806. The County Board appeals on several grounds.
The County Board argues the district court erred by even addressing the The doctrine of res judicata, or claim preclusion, forecloses relitigation of matters actually or potentially litigated in an earlier lawsuit. See S.E.L. Maduro, Inc. v. M/V Antonio de Gastaneta, 833 F.2d 1477, 1481 (11th Cir.1987). The doctrine applies only if four elements are present: 1) there is a final judgment on the merits of the first action, 2) the first decision is rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction, 3) the parties to both actions, or those in privity with them, are identical, and 4) the causes of action in both suits are identical. Id.; Hart v. Yamaha-Parts Distributors, Inc., 787 F.2d 1468, 1470 (11th Cir.1986). We specifically have held that res judicata applies to Title VII consent decrees. See In re Birmingham Reverse Discrimination Employment Litigation, 833 F.2d 1492, 1498 (11th Cir.1987), aff'd sub nom. Martin v. Wilks, 490 U.S. 755, 109 S.Ct. 2180, 104 L.Ed.2d 835 (1989); United States v. Jefferson County, 720 F.2d 1511, 1517 (11th Cir.1983), reh'g denied, 724 F.2d 978 (1984); see also Kaspar Wire Works, Inc. v. Leco Engineering & Mach., Inc., 575 F.2d 530, 538 (5th Cir.1978) (). 4 In Jefferson County and In re Birmingham, supra, plaintiffs who were not parties to the first action sought to bring discrimination claims against the same defendant, who asserted preclusion based on the consent decree. This case is the inverse situation: the same plaintiff has brought discrimination claims against a different defendant, who seeks to use a previous consent decree as a shield.
merits of Richardson's claim under Title VII. 3 It contends her claim duplicates the Title VII litigation resolved in the Allen consent decree, which was drafted in 1985 and finally enforced in 1987. The County Board claims that the consent decree precludes further litigation on the discriminatory effect of the tests under both res judicata (claim preclusion) and collateral estoppel (issue preclusion). The district court held that neither barred Richardson's suit. The district court's conclusions regarding res judicata and collateral estoppel are questions of law to be reviewed de novo. See N.A.A.C.P. v. Hunt, 891 F.2d 1555, 1560 (11th Cir.1990). The factual determinations underlying these conclusions, however, are accepted on review unless clearly erroneous. See Riddle v. Cerro Wire and Cable Group, Inc., 902 F.2d 918, 922 (11th Cir.1990); Jaffree v. Wallace, 837 F.2d 1461, 1468 (11th Cir.1988); Hann v. Carson, 462 F.Supp. 854, 860-61 (M.D.Fla.1978)
The Allen defendants were the Alabama State Board of Education and state officials. The Lamar County Board was not named. The Allen consent decree does not direct any of its extensively detailed remedies at Lamar County or any other county. The defendants in the present case were the Lamar County Board of Education, its members and its schools superintendent. 5
We agree with the district court's decision that the class action suit does not bar this litigation because the plaintiff seeks redress for different harm in the present action, although it is related to the previous suit and both suits were brought under Title VII. Thus, the causes of action are not identical. The Allen decree dealt with the flaws in the testing process, and as one of...
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