Sullivan v. City of Springfield

• Decision Date: 24 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-1817.,08-1817.
• Citation: 561 F.3d 7
• Parties: Kevin SULLIVAN; Vincent Dudley; Mark Mehringer; Jason Sleeper; Michael Trombley, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. CITY OF SPRINGFIELD, Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

561 F.3d 7

Kevin SULLIVAN; Vincent Dudley; Mark Mehringer; Jason Sleeper; Michael Trombley, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. CITY OF SPRINGFIELD, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 08-1817.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard January 6, 2009.

Decided March 24, 2009.

Alfred Gordon with whom Harold L. Lichten and Pyle, Rome, Lichten, Ehrenberg & Liss-Riordan, P.C. were on brief for appellants.

Maurice M. Cahillane, Associate City Solicitor, with whom Edward M. Pikula, City Solicitor, was on brief for appellee.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, SELYA AND SILER,^* Circuit Judges.

LYNCH, Chief Judge.

Kevin Sullivan, Vincent Dudley, Mark Mehringer, Jason Sleeper, and Michael Trombley are current and former police officers who were hired by Springfield, Massachusetts ("the City") in 1997 and then laid off in 2003. Plaintiffs were all later recalled by the City. In 2005, they sued the City, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, inter alia.

Plaintiffs, who are white, claimed that "race-based determinations" made by the City during the hiring process in 1997 were not permitted under either a consent decree or the U.S. Constitution. They alleged these 1997 determinations harmed them by assigning them to lower seniority ranks than minority officers hired at the same time. Plaintiffs claimed that, if the City had not made these impermissible race-based determinations in 1997, they would have had higher seniority in 2003 and would not have been laid off or would otherwise have been recalled sooner.

On cross motions, the district court granted summary judgment to the City on two grounds. It found that plaintiffs had not shown facts establishing any race-based causal connection between defendant's actions and the plaintiffs' injuries. It also found the City's actions were within the scope of the City's ongoing obligations under a consent decree in a 1970s case known as Castro v. Beecher (Castro I), 334 F.Supp. 930 (D.Mass.1971). See Sullivan v. City of Springfield, 555 F.Supp.2d 246, 256, 258 (D.Mass.2008). We affirm the district court's decision on both grounds.

I.

A. The Castro Consent Decree

The history of the Castro consent decree sets the stage. In 1970, eight minority plaintiffs,¹ who had applied unsuccessfully to become Boston police officers, brought suit against the Massachusetts Civil Service Division, an agency which has since become known as the Human Resources Division ("HRD"), the name we use. The suit alleged discriminatory hiring and recruiting practices, which violated the Fourteenth Amendment and had led to a disproportionately low number of minority police officers in Boston. See Castro I, 334 F.Supp. at 934-35; see also Deleo v. City of Boston, No. 03-12538, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24034, at *4 (D.Mass. Nov. 23, 2004) ("At the time, the black population of [Boston] was approximately 16.3% of the total population, but about 3.6% of the Boston police force was black.").²

The district court in Castro I rejected the plaintiffs' claims as to several of the eligibility requirements. See, e.g., Castro I, 334 F.Supp. at 947-41 (discussing the height and swim test requirements). It also declined to certify the plaintiffs' requested class. Id. at 947-48. It concluded, however, that the Massachusetts Civil Service Police Entrance Examination—the written examination administered by HRD to police applicants—discriminated against minorities who "did not share the prevailing white culture." Id. at 943. The court barred the use of the existing examination and set out guidelines for creating a non-discriminatory one. See id. at 944-45; see also Castro v. Beecher (Castro II), 459 F.2d 725, 729 (1st Cir.1972).

The decision was appealed to this court, which held that class certification should have been granted. Castro II, 459 F.2d at 732. It agreed that the examination was discriminatory, but held that the district court's remedy had been too narrow, and remanded. This court stated that, "[i]n our view, if relief in the near future is to be more than token, further provision is necessary," and that the relief could include the creation of a priority pool for minority applicants who passed a non-discriminatory examination and who could be hired according to a preferential ratio. Id. at 737. While recognizing that "any such effort is bound to be a crude one and must be pursued with sensitivity," this court stated that "preferential status for the priority pool will yield a significant increment of [minority] police officers in the near term." Id. at 736-37.

Following the remand, and in the context that use of the extant examination was illegal, the parties entered into what has now come to be known as the Castro consent decree. The decree was approved by the district court in 1973. Castro v. Beecher (Castro III), 365 F.Supp. 655, 660 (D.Mass.1973). The court stated that the decree was intended to "counteract the unconscious lopsidedness of the recruitment of the past" by "giv[ing] a ... priority to [minority candidates] who have shown themselves qualified." Id. at 659. In entering a consent decree, the defendant state authorities may well have agreed to relief beyond what the Constitution would have provided as a remedy. See United States v. Charles George Trucking, Inc., 34 F.3d 1081, 1091 (1st Cir.1994). This is a point we need not decide.

The consent decree was subsequently revisited and modified. See Castro V, 522 F.Supp. at 875; Castro v. Beecher (Castro IV), 386 F.Supp. 1281, 1285-86 (D.Mass. 1975). The amended remedy was explicitly modeled on the consent decree adopted in a parallel case involving Massachusetts firefighters. See Castro IV, 386 F.Supp. at 1286 (citing Boston Chapter, NAACP, Inc. v. Beecher, 371 F.Supp. 507 (D.Mass.), aff'd, 504 F.2d 1017 (1st Cir.1974)); see also Castro V, 522 F.Supp. at 875.

The Castro consent decree required HRD to prepare certification lists by creating two groups. The first, "Group A," would "consist of all Black and Spanish-surnamed applicants who pass a future police entrance examination and are otherwise qualified for appointment on the basis of existing requirements." The second, "Group B," would "consist of all other persons who pass a future police entrance examination and are otherwise qualified for appointment on the basis of existing requirements." When an appointing authority such as the City, sought to hire police officers, it would send a request to HRD, which would send the appointing authority a certification list ordered "on the basis of one candidate from Group A for every candidate certified from Group B." In making its hiring decisions, if the appointing authority chose to reject a candidate in favor of another candidate who appeared lower on the HRD list, HRD would not approve the appointment unless the appointing authority "furnished [HRD] with a written statement of [its] reasons" for doing so; HRD would then provide a "written statement of those reasons to ... the candidate upon written request."

The Castro decree was to remain in effect for a given city until that city's police department "achieves a complement of minorities commensurate with the percentage of minorities within the community." The decree accordingly continues to apply to Springfield. The plaintiffs agree that is so. Boston is no longer under the decree. See Deleo, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24034, at *26 (finding that Boston had reached this goal for minority representation).

B. Facts Underlying the Present Case

The facts in the present case are undisputed, and it is undisputed that there are gaps in the evidence about plaintiffs' hirings and layoffs. This may in part be attributable to the fact that plaintiffs did not bring suit until 2005, some eight years after they were hired.³

In 1996, Springfield decided to hire sixty new police officers. Its police commission chairman requested a list of eligible candidates from HRD. Eligibility meant something more limited however; in the intervening years, HRD had delegated to the local appointing authorities most of the responsibility for determining the eligibility of candidates for eligibility criteria other than the examination.

On January 13, 1997, in response to the City's request, HRD generated a list, Certification No. 961295, of 374 candidates who had passed a written examination. Under the Castro decree, the list placed the minority candidate who had scored highest on the test first, followed by the non-minority candidate who had scored highest on the test, followed by the second highest scoring minority candidate and the second highest scoring non-minority candidate, and so on, in alternating order.⁴

After the City received the HRD examination certification list, it asked those candidates who were still interested in being considered for the job to come in and sign the certification list. The record does not establish which candidates signed the list, and which were eliminated from consideration for failure to do so. Although an appointing authority such as the City would generally have sent the original, signed certification list back to HRD, the relevant certification list—or other evidence as to which candidates signed and which did not—is not in the record.

HRD retained oversight of the process used by local appointing authorities to ensure compliance with its rules. The City applied a series of hiring prerequisites to the remaining candidates to decide which candidates would receive offers and be able to go through the police academy. For each candidate, the City ran a background check,⁵ a residency check and an interview; if the candidate was not eliminated at this point, he or she would be given a conditional offer of employment, after which he or she would be further subject to a medical examination, a psychological examination, and a physical abilities test.

Captain William Cochrane, who from 1996 to 2001 was the commanding officer of the Academy for the Springfield Police Department, was responsible for this...