Richardson v. Commission On Human Rights & Opportunities

• Decision Date: 07 July 2008
• Docket Number: Docket No. 06-0474-cv.
• Citation: 532 F.3d 114
• Parties: Leonyer M. RICHARDSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS & OPPORTUNITIES, Office of Policy and Management, Cynthia Watts Elder, Leanne Appleton, Linda Yelmini, Donald Bardot and Administrative and Residual Employees Union, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

532 F.3d 114

Leonyer M. RICHARDSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS & OPPORTUNITIES, Office of Policy and Management, Cynthia Watts Elder, Leanne Appleton, Linda Yelmini, Donald Bardot and Administrative and Residual Employees Union, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 06-0474-cv.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: February 9, 2007.

Decided: July 7, 2008.

Josephine S. Miller, Danbury, CT, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Joseph A. Jordano, Assistant Attorney General of the State of Connecticut, (Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General, David M. Teed, Assistant Attorney General, on the brief), Hartford, CT, for Defendants-Appellees CHRO, OPM, Watts Elder, Appleton, Yelmini, and Bardot.

James M. Sconzo, Jorden Burt LLP, Simsbury, CT, for Defendant-Appellee Residual Employees Union Local 4200.

Before: WALKER, SACK, and WESLEY, Circuit Judges.

JOHN M. WALKER, JR., Circuit Judge.

We are asked to decide whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids the inclusion of an election-of-remedies provision in a collective bargaining agreement, cf. EEOC v. SunDance Rehab. Corp., 466 F.3d 490, 497 (6th Cir.2006), or, in the alternative, whether adherence to that provision constitutes discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") says that it does. The Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ("CHRO"), not incidentally also a defendant in this action, assures us that the EEOC is wrong.

We conclude that the law governing contracts that purport to release or waive Title VII rights is independent of the law governing employer actions taken in retaliation for, and intended to deter, employee opposition to unlawful employment practices, including the filing of charges with the EEOC or its state analogues. In analyzing the former, we apply Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36, 45, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 39 L.Ed.2d 147 (1974), and its progeny. In analyzing the latter, we apply the anti-retaliation provision of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a), and cases interpreting its scope, see, e.g., Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 126 S.Ct. 2405, 165 L.Ed.2d 345 (2006).

While there are limits on what a union may agree to in collective bargaining, Plaintiff's union has not transgressed them by contracting to limit an employee's legal recourse under certain circumstances. The collective bargaining agreement about which Plaintiff complains simply stipulates that an aggrieved employee may either arbitrate her grievance or file a charge with the CHRO describing that grievance.

Nor did the union discriminate against Plaintiff by adhering to the election-of-remedies provision after Plaintiff chose to file a charge with the CHRO. The union's choice to adhere to its collective bargaining agreement in this case was indubitably non-discriminatory: the collective bargaining agreement does not constitute a waiver of any statutory rights under Gardner-Denver, and the defendants' withdrawal from arbitration did not constitute retaliation because the forum-selection clause was a reasonable defensive measure to avoid duplicative proceedings in the two fora Richardson's employer maintained for addressing discrimination complaints. See United States v. N.Y. City Transit Auth., 97 F.3d 672 (2d Cir.1996).

For these reasons, and because Plaintiff's remaining Title VII claims are groundless, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff-Appellant Leonyer M. Richardson, an African-American woman, was employed by the state of Connecticut for more than fifteen years. This appeal concerns the circumstances of her termination and subsequent efforts to arbitrate its legitimacy.

In 2000, Richardson transferred from the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management ("OPM") to the CHRO, joining the CHRO as a fiscal administrative officer. Shortly thereafter, she had a series of vituperative interactions with Leanne Appleton, her immediate supervisor at the CHRO, the most notable of which was a dispute concerning the proper method of making bank deposits. Richardson complained that Appleton's demand that Richardson adhere to what Appleton claimed were proper procedures was "retaliation on Leanne Appleton's part."

After airing her grievances internally on several occasions, on July 30, 2001, Richardson filed a charge with the CHRO, which was not only Richardson's employer but also the state analogue to the EEOC. In her charge, Richardson alleged both disparate treatment and retaliation by Appleton. Between July 30 and October 16 2001, the conflict between Richardson and Appleton escalated both in intensity and breadth: On October 3, 2001, Richardson amended her CHRO charge to further allege that a second CHRO employee, Cynthia Watts Elder, who supervised Appleton and Richardson, had retaliated against her for complaining about Appleton. Finally, on October 16, 2001, Watts Elder terminated Richardson's employment with the CHRO.

Richardson thereupon sought the assistance of her union, Administrative and Residual Employees Union Local 4200 ("Local 4200"), in grieving her termination. In the interim, however, Richardson again amended her CHRO charge, adding an allegation that Watts Elder had only terminated her "for the purpose of [further] retaliating against [her]."

As the district court explained, "[u]pon discovering that Richardson had amended her ... complaint against CHRO to include an allegation of race discrimination regarding her termination, Richardson's union ... withdrew its appeal of her grievance, as complaints of unlawful discrimination filed with CHRO are not subject to arbitration under the union contract." And, indeed, Article 15, Section 10(a)(2), a provision of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that governs the relationship between Local 4200 and the CHRO and the one that is at the center of this dispute, stipulates that

disputes over claimed unlawful discrimination shall be subject to the grievance procedure but shall not be arbitrable if a complaint is filed with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities arising from the same common nucleus of operative fact.¹

Richardson filed yet another charge with the CHRO on April 9, 2002, alleging this time that Local 4200's refusal to seek arbitration of her grievance constituted an independent act of retaliation.²

In a state like Connecticut that has an analogue to the EEOC, an aggrieved employee must first file with the state agency any charge she wishes to pursue in federal court. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(c). However, in many of these states, including Connecticut, any such charge is automatically cross-filed with the EEOC. Lewis v. Conn. Dep't of Corr., 355 F.Supp.2d 607, 615 n. 4 (D.Conn.2005) (discussing Connecticut); App. 1037 (charge against Local 4200 shared by CHRO with EEOC); see, e.g., Ford v. Bernard Fineson Dev. Ctr., 81 F.3d 304, 307 (2d Cir.1996) (discussing New York).

Thus, both the CHRO and the EEOC responded to Richardson's various charges. On March 15, 2002, the CHRO found that Richardson had not been "subjected to any adverse treatment on the basis of [her] membership in a protected class." On September 4, 2002, the CHRO found that Local 4200 had not retaliated against Richardson. Finally, on April 1, 2003, the EEOC determined, to the contrary, that "Article 15, Section 10 of the collective bargaining agreement violate[d] Title VII."

After thus exhausting her administrative remedies, Richardson filed this suit in federal district court against the CHRO, Appleton, Watts Elder, OPM, Linda Yelmini and Donald Bardot (both of whom were at all relevant times labor specialists in OPM), and Local 4200, claiming violations of Title VII, as well as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983, the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act, and the Connecticut Constitution. In a thorough opinion dated March 31, 2005, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Alfred V. Covello, Judge) granted the motions for summary judgment of defendants CHRO, Appleton, Watts Elder, OPM, Yelmini and Bardot. The district court dismissed Richardson's Title VII disparate treatment claim against the CHRO because the CHRO had "sufficiently rebutted the inference of discrimination raised by the plaintiff's prima facie case," and Richardson had not adduced evidence that the CHRO's reasons for disciplining her were merely pretextual. The district court dismissed her Title VII retaliation claim against the CHRO for similar reasons, finding that the CHRO had "a legitimate non-discriminatory reason for the alleged retaliation, `namely insubordination, poor performance, and violence in the workplace.'"

The district court also dismissed Richardson's Title VII retaliation claim against OPM. The district court held that the collective bargaining agreement "does not violate the [Federal Arbitration Act], and it cannot give rise to an inference that OPM, by enforcing the terms of the [agreement], was motivated by a discriminatory animus."³ The district court did not address Richardson's Title VII retaliation claim against Local 4200.

On November 23, 2005, the district court granted Richardson's motion for a corrected judgment in order to address that claim. The district court noted that "[t]he Union proceeded according to [the collective bargaining agreement] ... and the record is void of any evidence of discrimination." It thereupon granted Local 4200's motion for summary judgment.

On appeal, Richardson argues principally that the provision of the collective bargaining agreement invoked by Local 4200 to justify its refusal to seek arbitration of her grievance violates Title VII. She also briefly contests the district court's summary judgment in the CHRO's favor with respect to her disparate treatment and retaliation claims. It is, however, to her first, and more substantial, argument that we initially turn.

ANALYSIS

I. A Brief History of the Enforcement Mechanisms of Title...