Rosenfeld v. Department of Army

• Decision Date: 14 August 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-1872,84-1872
• Citation: 769 F.2d 237
• Parties: 38 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1150, 37 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 35,481 Hyman ROSENFELD, Appellant, v. DEPARTMENT OF the ARMY, Agency, U.S. Army, Aberdeen, Maryland, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 237

769 F.2d 237

38 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1150,

37 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 35,481

Hyman ROSENFELD, Appellant, v. DEPARTMENT OF the ARMY, Agency, U.S. Army, Aberdeen Maryland, Appellee.

No. 84-1872.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued March 5, 1985.

Decided Aug. 14, 1985.

Sheldon H. Laskin, Ellicott City, Md. (Charles T. Vekert, Rupli, Vekert & Laskin, Ellicott City, Md., on brief) for appellant.

John Paul Woodley, Jr., Captain, Judge Advocate General's Corps, Washington, D.C. (J. Frederick Motz, U.S. Atty., Larry A. Ceppos, Asst. U.S. Atty., Baltimore, Md., Peter B. Loewenberg, Chief, Civilian Personnel Litigation Office of the Judge Advocate Gen., Washington, D.C., on brief) for appellee.

Before WINTER, Chief Judge, and SPROUSE and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges.

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

The sole issue presented in this appeal is whether a determination by the Civil Service Commission that a federal employee is disabled should be granted collateral estoppel effect in a subsequent action brought by the employee to challenge his involuntary retirement under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 621 et seq. (1982). We hold that 5 U.S.C. Sec. 8347(c) (1982), limiting the reviewability of administrative disability findings on direct appeal, does not prevent a de novo judicial resolution of the reason for plaintiff's involuntary retirement in a later ADEA suit. Adhering to the presumption against finality of administrative decisions in discrimination actions where there has been no prior judicial review, we reverse the district court's summary judgment for defendant.

I

Plaintiff Hyman Rosenfeld is a sixty-four year old former civil service employee of the United States Army who served as a maintenance mechanic at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland from 1942 to 1978. Due to growing tension with his immediate supervisor, Rosenfeld requested a lateral transfer in 1975, which the Army denied, apparently because of Rosenfeld's age. Rosenfeld thereupon filed an age discrimination complaint with the Director of Equal Employment Opportunity for the Department of the Army. The Director, in a February 24, 1977 decision, found reasonable cause to believe that age discrimination had occurred, and ordered the Army to give Rosenfeld priority consideration for the next available position for which he was qualified.

Between the time that Rosenfeld filed his age discrimination complaint in 1976 and the Director rendered his final decision, plaintiff's supervisors repeatedly suggested in memoranda to management that Rosenfeld be involuntarily retired on grounds of mental disability. The Army ordered Rosenfeld to undergo a fitness for duty examination, the need for which he contested. The examining psychiatrist concluded on March 7, 1977 that Rosenfeld was suffering from latent schizophrenia and was unable to work in his current setting. As a result, the Army placed Rosenfeld on involuntary sick leave in June 1977 and the Director's February 1977 order was held in abeyance.

Prompted by the psychiatrist's report, the Army initiated administrative proceedings in 1977 aimed at forcing Rosenfeld to retire. Upon the Army's application, the Civil Service Commission's Bureau of Retirement Insurance and Occupational Health issued an order on September 6, 1977, specifying that Rosenfeld be retired involuntarily because he suffered from a mental disability. Rosenfeld appealed unsuccessfully to the Federal Employee Appeal Authority, which sustained the Commission's order on December 14, 1978, and finally to the Appeal Review Board, which rejected his appeal on July 5, 1979.

As Rosenfeld was contesting the involuntary retirement order through the administrative process, he was also filing further age discrimination complaints, which were rejected on the merits by the Director in 1979, and by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982. Rosenfeld thereafter brought this ADEA suit in 1982, complaining that he had been denied the requested transfer and involuntarily retired because of his age or in reprisal for his 1976 discrimination charge, and seeking injunctive relief, reinstatement and back pay and benefits. ¹ The district court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment, finding that it had been conclusively determined by the Civil Service Commission that Rosenfeld was mentally disabled when the alleged discrimination occurred, and that accordingly plaintiff could not establish a prima facie case of age discrimination because he could not prove that he was qualified for employment. Relying upon 5 U.S.C. Sec. 8347(c), the district court ruled that Congress had precluded judicial review of the Commission's finding of mental disability.

II

Federal anti-discrimination statutes embody a strong presumption in favor of judicial resolution of disputed questions of fact. Prior administrative findings, whatever result may be reached, are ordinarily not entitled to preclusive effect in a subsequent discrimination suit, even though the same facts are in dispute. Whether the prior administrative findings be those of the Civil Service Commission, the EEOC, or any other federal agency is immaterial. The plain lesson of Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 39 L.Ed.2d 147 (1974), and Chandler v. Roudebush, 425 U.S. 840, 96 S.Ct. 1949, 48 L.Ed.2d 416 (1976), is that Congress entrusted the ultimate resolution of questions of discrimination to the federal judiciary.

In Alexander, the Court unanimously held that a private employee's right to a de novo review of his racial discrimination claim under Title VII was not precluded by prior submission of the same claim to final, binding arbitration under the nondiscrimination clause of a collective bargaining agreement. The Court recognized that Congress had intended to "accord parallel or overlapping remedies against discrimination," and that "Title VII provides for consideration of employment-discrimination claims in several forums." 415 U.S. at 47, 94 S.Ct. at 1019. Accordingly, "submission of a claim to one forum does not preclude a later submission to another. Moreover, the legislative history of Title VII manifests a congressional intent to allow an individual to pursue independently his rights under both Title VII and other applicable state and federal statutes." Id. at 47-48, 94 S.Ct. at 1019. In refusing to bar relitigation of the factual question of discrimination, Alexander noted that "[t]he policy reasons for rejecting the doctrines of election of remedies and waiver in the context of Title VII are equally applicable to the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel." Id. at 49 n. 10, 94 S.Ct. at 1020 n. 10. No deference to arbitral procedures was due, for "the resolution of statutory or constitutional issues is a primary responsibility of courts, and judicial construction has proved especially necessary with respect to Title VII, whose broad language frequently can be given meaning only by reference to public law concepts." Id. at 57, 94 S.Ct. at 1024.

The Court extended Alexander in Chandler v. Roudebush, unanimously holding that under the 1972 amendments to Title VII, federal employees had the same right to a de novo judicial review of their employment discrimination claims as did private sector employees. 425 U.S. at 848, 96 S.Ct. at 1953. In Chandler, the Civil Service Commission had rejected the plaintiff's sex and race discrimination claims on the merits, and the plaintiff thereafter brought a Title VII action in district court upon the same facts. The Court upheld the right to a de novo hearing, declaring that the legislative history of the 1972 amendments manifested "a thorough and meticulous consideration of the question whether an administrative agency or a court should be given primary adjudicative responsibility for particular categories of Title VII complaints and an unambiguous choice to grant federal employees the right to plenary trials in the federal district courts." Id. at 853-54, 96 S.Ct. at 1956.

The holding in Chandler, permitting relitigation of the factual question of discrimination in federal court notwithstanding prior rejection of the identical claim by the Civil Service Commission, necessarily repudiates any res judicata or collateral estoppel effect for administrative findings. This fundamental principle, while enunciated in the Title VII context, is no less relevant to the ADEA. "[T]he similarities between the two Acts in their provisions respecting federal employees are such as to completely outweigh the differences, and compel the construction that the civil action provided by both Acts be of the same character." Nabors v. United States, 568 F.2d 657, 659 (9th Cir.1978). Both the ADEA and Title VII, until 1979, authorized the Civil Service Commission to enforce their respective prohibitions of discrimination in federal employment, ² 29 U.S.C. Sec. 633a(b) (1976); 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-16(b) (1976). It would be unreasonable to suppose that Congress intended Commission determinations of fact to be preclusive under the ADEA while enacting a different standard for Title VII. Nabors, 568 F.2d at 659. The 1974 amendment to the ADEA bringing federal employees within the statute's protections followed Congress's amendments extending Title VII's coverage to federal employees. "The similarity of the two Acts in form and substance strongly suggests that Congress ... intended ... that federal and private employees should both enjoy de novo civil actions under both Acts." Id. at 660. We thus conclude that the principles of Alexander and Chandler, refusing any preclusive effect to prior administrative determinations of fact in a subsequent Title VII action, apply with equal force under the ADEA.

Congress can, of course, override the general statutory presumption against administrative preclusion in discrimination cases. Ordinarily res judicata and collateral estoppel may be invoked...