O'Sullivan v. City of Chicago, 03-1412.
| Decision Date | 31 January 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-1412.,No. 03-1436.,03-1412.,03-1436. |
| Citation | 396 F.3d 843 |
| Parties | Gerald O'SULLIVAN, et al. Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
William R. Jentes (argued), Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Lawrence Rosenthal (argued), Mara S. Georges, Office of the Corporation Counsel, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before COFFEY, RIPPLE and KANNE, Circuit Judges.
The plaintiffs in the two actions now before us are current and former lieutenants in the Chicago Police Department who were denied promotion to captain. They filed suit against the City of Chicago ("City") to enforce a consent decree entered in 1983 that required the City of Chicago to make hiring and promotion decisions without reference to an individual's political affiliation. The City moved to dismiss the complaints on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to enforce the decree. The district court granted the motion to dismiss, and the plaintiffs appealed. We now reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
In 1969, Michael Shakman, an independent candidate seeking election to the Illinois Constitutional Convention, and one of his supporters, brought suit on behalf of themselves, other candidates for public office and other voters against a number of governmental entities and officials, including the City of Chicago and its Mayor. The class of plaintiffs alleged that the defendants maintained a patronage system: Government jobs were awarded (or retained) based on a prospective employee's or current employee's support of Democratic candidates. The plaintiffs alleged that this patronage system violated the right of candidates to associate with supporters, the right of voters to a free electoral process and the right of public employees to associate with candidates from other parties.
The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of standing. It reasoned that the named plaintiff, as a candidate and voter, was the "wrong party to complain about alleged wrongs incurred by patronage workers." Shakman v. Democratic Org. of Cook County, 310 F.Supp. 1398, 1401 (N.D.Ill.1969).
This court reversed. We stated:
The interest in an equal chance and an equal voice is allegedly impaired in the case before us by the misuse of official power over public employees so as to create a substantial, perhaps massive, political effort in favor of the ins and against the outs. We conclude that these interests are entitled to constitutional protection from injury of the nature alleged as well as from injury resulting from inequality in election procedure.
Shakman v. Democratic Org. of Cook County, 435 F.2d 267, 268 (7th Cir.1970) ("Shakman I"). Following the remand, the City and the other defendants agreed to a consent judgment entered on May 5, 1972 ("1972 Consent Decree").
The 1972 Consent Decree prohibited the defendants from "conditioning, basing or knowingly prejudicing or affecting any term or aspect of governmental employment, with respect to one who is at the time already a governmental employee, upon or because of any political reason or factor." Appellants' Sep.App., Ex.3 at 3. Furthermore, the district court retained jurisdiction "[t]o enable the parties to this Judgment to apply to this Court at any time for such further orders and directions as may be necessary or appropriate for the construction or carrying out of this Judgment, for the enforcement of compliance with the provisions contained herein, and for the punishment of the violation of any such provisions." Id. at 4. The district court also provided: "Application to enforce such provisions or to impose punishment for any such violation may be presented to this Court by any registered voter." Id. The decree did not address whether political considerations could be used in hiring new employees — a matter that continued to be litigated by the parties.
The litigation on the unresolved hiring issue continued over the next decade. In September 1979, the district court granted the plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment on their hiring claim. See Shakman v. Democratic Org. of Cook County, 481 F.Supp. 1315 (N.D.Ill.1979). The court stated that the patronage hiring practices infringed upon the plaintiffs' rights as voters and candidates because they gave the incumbent party an unfair advantage in elections. The court then directed the parties to address the appropriate form of relief.
On April 4, 1983, the district court entered an order enjoining the defendants from conditioning hiring decisions on an applicant's political affiliation. Although the City initially was bound by this order, it subsequently entered into a second consent judgment on June 20, 1983 ("1983 Consent Decree"), with respect to the hiring issue.
The 1983 Consent Decree enjoined the City from "conditioning, basing or affecting of employment with the City of Chicago on political reasons or factors while maintaining the ability of the elected officials of the City lawfully to establish, manage and direct the policies and affairs of the City." Appellants' Sep.App., Ex.4 at 2. The decree anticipated that the City would file, "not later than 120 days from the date this Judgment becomes effective," "a Plan of Compliance to implement this Judgment." Id. at 3. Finally, it was clear that the 1972 Consent Decree remained in effect and that the district court retained jurisdiction to ensure "enforcement of compliance with the provisions contained in the 1972 Consent Judgment and [the 1983] Judgment, and for remedy for the violation of any of those provisions." Id. at 8. Indeed, the 1983 Consent Decree provided that "[a]pplication to enforce those provisions or to remedy any violation may be presented to this court by any registered voter." Id.
In 1984, the City issued its "Principles for Plan of Compliance" ("PPC") to implement the 1983 Consent Decree as well as its "Detailed Hiring Provisions" ("DHP"). The PPC applied to "hiring for all non-Exempt positions covered by the Judgment." Id., Ex.5 at 2. Central to the PPC was the exclusion of politics from all hiring decisions except those for exempt positions and the elimination of the effects of the past patronage hiring system. The DHP applied to "all hiring decisions concerning individuals who currently are not employed by the City as well as to transfer, demotion, promotion, and reclassification decisions involving current City employees." Id., Ex.6 at I-1. The DHP were amended in 1986 to provide that
[p]romotions from a position with a lower grade classification to a position with a higher grade classification, whereby both positions are in the same job category, shall be exempt from Public Advertising, Posting, and Application and Screening procedures if the only criterion that differentiates the higher classified position from the lower classified position is the period of service in the lower classified position.
R.16, Ex.F at II-8.
Unlike the City of Chicago, several Cook County officials did not agree to the 1983 Consent Decree but appealed the district court's partial summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. In 1987, this court issued its opinion in Shakman v. Dunne, 829 F.2d 1387, 1399 (7th Cir.1987) ("Shakman II"). We first noted that "[t]his appeal raises only the constitutionality of politically-motivated hiring practices without any reference to the other patronage-based employment practices — including the discharge scheme now forbidden by the [1972] consent decree." Id. at 1393 (citations omitted). We also noted that significant changes had occurred since the plaintiffs had filed the action back in 1969:
The case before us today is, from a factual viewpoint, a very different case from the case set forth in the complaint. The consent decree with respect to politically-motivated discharges, has eliminated a significant portion of the contentions that were originally presented in the appellees' complaint and that were before this court during the earlier appeal in 1970, seventeen years ago.... More importantly, we are confronted with a significantly different legal landscape than the one that confronted the district court at the time the complaint was originally filed.... During these intervening years, the Supreme Court has engaged in a thorough examination of "justiciability," the limitations imposed on federal courts by the provision of article III.
Id. at 1392-93 (citations omitted; emphasis in original).
Although reconsideration of the plaintiffs' standing usually would be foreclosed by the "law of the case doctrine," we noted that the doctrine "`was understandably crafted with the course of ordinary litigation in mind,' "id. at 1393 (quoting Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618-19, 103 S.Ct. 1382, 75 L.Ed.2d 318 (1983)), and that "courts are significantly less constrained by the law of the case doctrine with respect to jurisdictional questions," id. Our prior decision in Shakman I had noted that "the voter's interest" asserted by the plaintiffs was entitled to "constitutional protection"; however, we never had examined the plaintiffs' alleged injuries according to the current standing requirements — namely whether the plaintiffs had suffered a "`personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.'" Id. at 1394 (quoting Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984)). Th...
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