Singh v. Jutla

• Citation: 214 F.Supp.2d 1056
• Decision Date: 05 August 2002
• Docket Number: No. C 02-1130 CRB.,C 02-1130 CRB.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California
• Parties: Macan SINGH, Plaintiff, v. JUTLA & C.D. & R's OIL, INC., Defendants.

214 F.Supp.2d 1056

Macan SINGH, Plaintiff, v. JUTLA & C.D. & R's OIL, INC., Defendants.

No. C 02-1130 CRB.

United States District Court, N.D. California.

August 5, 2002.

Sara Campos, Marielena Hincapie, National Immigration Law Center, Oakland, CA, William W. Friedman, Karen G. Johnson-McKewan, Diane L. Webb, Brobeck, Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, LLP, San Francisco, CA, Christopher Ho, Legal Aid Society of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, for Macan Singh.

Eugene T. Franklin, Hayward, CA, for C.D. & R's Oil, Inc.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

BREYER, District Judge.

Plaintiff filed a claim with this Court under the Fair Labor Standards Act's ("FLSA") anti-retaliation provisions and the California Labor Code. Now before the Court is defendants' motion to dismiss. After carefully considering the papers filed by the parties, and having had the benefit of oral argument, the Court hereby DENIES the motion to dismiss for the reasons set forth below.

BACKGROUND

As alleged, defendant Jutla recruited plaintiff, Macan Singh, to come work for him in the United States. Jutla promised plaintiff a place to live, tuition for education, and that plaintiff would eventually become Jutla's business partner in his corporation, C.D. & R's Oil Inc. Plaintiff, in the United States illegally, worked for Jutla from approximately May 1995 to February 1998 and received no pay.

On January 6, 1999 plaintiff filed a wage claim against defendants with the California Department of Industrial Relations ("Labor Commissioner"), pursuant to section 98 of the California Labor Code. Plaintiff sought unpaid wages and overtime pay for work actually performed. After plaintiff filed the claim, Jutla threatened to report him to the Immigration and Naturalization Services ("INS") unless the claim was dropped. Jutla also tried to force Singh to sign a written waiver of his claims. Plaintiff, however, refused to submit to Jutla. The Labor Commissioner awarded plaintiff $69, 633.73. Defendants appealed from the Labor Commission's judgment by filing an action in the Alameda Superior Court. On February 23, 2001, the first day of the trial, the parties settled. In a written agreement signed by both parties on May 3, 2001, Jutla agreed to make scheduled payments to Singh.

The following day, May 4, 2001, the INS arrested and detained plaintiff. Plaintiff has been in INS custody for fourteen months. He alleges that defendant Jutla contacted the INS and provided them with information of plaintiff's status in an act of retaliation.

On March 7, 2002, plaintiff filed a complaint with this Court against defendants for retaliation under the FLSA and the California Labor Code, requesting declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief.

DISCUSSION

I. Legal Standard

A Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim is viewed with disfavor and is rarely granted. See Gilligan v. Jamco Dev. Corp., 108 F.3d 246, 249 (9th Cir.1997). Under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint should not be dismissed unless a plaintiff can prove "no set of facts in support of his claim that would entitle him to relief." Parks Sch. of Bus., Inc. v. Symington, 51 F.3d 1480, 1484 (9th Cir.1995). The court must take the non-moving party's factual allegations as true and must construe those allegations in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See id. The court must also draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. See Usher v. City of Los Angeles, 828 F.2d 556, 561 (9th Cir.1987).

II. Pre-Hoffman Law

Defendants contend that under Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, ___ U.S. ___, 122 S.Ct. 1275, 152 L.Ed.2d 271 (2002) plaintiff has no cause of action. Before this argument can be addressed, however, it is necessary to briefly discuss the relevant law prior to Hoffman.

A. Undocumented aliens have a cause of action under the National Labor Reform Act ("NLRA")

In Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U.S. 883, 104 S.Ct. 2803, 81 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984), the Supreme Court held that undocumented aliens could bring an action under the NLRA. Broadly speaking, Sure-Tan stands for the proposition that undocumented workers are protected from unfair labor practices under the NLRA, and specifically, that when the evidence establishes that an employer reported the presence of an illegal employee to the INS in retaliation for the employee's protected union activity that the alien has a cause of action under section 8(a)(3) of the NLRA. Id. at 896, 104 S.Ct. 2803. The Sure-Tan court recognized, however, that if there is no specific finding of anti-union animus, reporting an undocumented alien employee would not be an unfair labor practice. Id.

The Sure-Tan Court also recognized that undocumented aliens are "employees" within the meaning of section 2(3) of the Act.¹ That provision broadly provides that "[t]he term `employee' shall include any employee," 29 U.S.C. § 152(3), subject only to certain specifically enumerated exceptions. Id.

The Sure-Tan Court reasoned that allowing undocumented workers to bring a cause of action under the NLRB furthered the purposes of the NLRA because "[i]f undocumented alien employees were excluded from participation in union activities and from protections against employer intimidation, there would be created a subclass of workers without a comparable stake in the collective goals of their legally resident co-workers, thereby eroding the unity of all the employees and impeding effective collective bargaining. See NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 33, [57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937)]." 467 U.S. 883, 892, 104 S.Ct. 2803.

The Court held that application of the NLRA to illegal aliens "helps to assure that the wages and employment conditions of lawful residents are not adversely affected by the competition of illegal alien employees who are not subject to the standard terms of employment. If an employer realizes that there will be no advantage under the NLRA in preferring illegal aliens to legal resident workers, any incentive to hire such illegal aliens is correspondingly lessened." Id. at 893, 104 S.Ct. 2803.

B. FLSA covers undocumented aliens

The underlying rationale in Sure-Tan, that the NLRA applies to illegal aliens, was extended in Patel v. Quality Inn South, 846 F.2d 700 (11th Cir.1988), where the Eleventh Circuit held that the FLSA applies to illegal aliens. Applying the Sure-Tan analysis, the court looked to the reasoning behind the FLSA and what its objectives were in terms of both legal and illegal workers. The Patel court also had to consider the Immigration Reform Control Act ("IRCA") which had not yet been passed when the Supreme Court handed down Sure-Tan. The IRCA is a comprehensive scheme that made combating the employment of illegal aliens in the United States central to the policy of immigration law. Consistent with Sure-Tan, the Patel court held that "the FLSA's coverage of undocumented aliens goes hand in hand with the policies behind the IRCA... If the FLSA did not cover undocumented aliens, employers would have an incentive to hire them... By reducing the incentive to hire such workers the FLSA's coverage of undocumented aliens helps discourage illegal immigration and is thus fully consistent with the objectives of the IRCA. We therefore conclude that undocumented aliens continue to be `employees' covered by the FLSA." Id. at 704.

1. The FLSA's anti-retaliation provision

The FLSA's anti-retaliation provision, 29 U.S.C. § 215(a)(3), provides that it shall be unlawful for "any person" to "discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee because such employee has filed any complaint or instituted or caused to be instituted any proceeding under or related to this Act..." The elements of a retaliation claim under § 15(a)(3) of the FLSA's anti-retaliation provision are: (1) the plaintiff must have engaged in statutorily protected conduct under § 15(a)(3) of the FLSA, or the employer must have erroneously believed that the plaintiff engaged in such conduct; (2) the plaintiff must have suffered some adverse employment action; and (3) a causal link must exist between the plaintiff's conduct and the employment action. Filing a claim with the California Labor Commissioner, as plaintiff did, constitutes protected conduct as specifically set forth in the Act. Filing the claim satisfies the first element.

The threshold question in this case is whether plaintiff's claim satisfies the second element. The most common retaliatory act is discharge, however certain post-employment misconduct has able been found to violate section 215(a)(3). Post-employment misconduct that has been found to violate the anti-retaliation provision includes: informing a prospective employer that an employee had filed a complaint with the Department of Labor ("DOL"), Dunlop v. Carriage Carpet Co., 548 F.2d 139 (6th Cir.1977); interfering with a former employee's subsequent employment opportunities by speaking to the landlord of the new employer, Bonham v. Copper Cellar Corp., 476 F.Supp. 98 (E.D.Tenn.1979).

2. Reporting an undocumented worker to the INS with a retaliatory motive

In Contreras v. Corinthian Vigor Ins. Brokers, Inc., 25 F.Supp.2d 1053 (N.D.Cal. 1998) the court denied a motion to dismiss an undocumented worker's FLSA retaliation suit under circumstances virtually identical to the present case. The court concluded that "[t]here is no question that the protections provided by the FLSA apply to undocumented aliens." See e.g., In re Reyes, 814 F.2d 168, 170 (5th Cir.1987) ("[I]t is well established that the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act are applicable to citizens and aliens alike and whether the alien is documented or undocumented is irrelevant. An employee is `any individual employed by an employer.'"). Id. at 1058. Though reporting an illegal alien to the INS is generally encouraged conduct because it is consistent with the labor and immigration policies established by the IRCA, the court in Contreras...