Williams v. Consolidated City of Jacksonville

• Decision Date: 14 August 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-14191.,02-14191.
• Citation: 341 F.3d 1261
• Parties: George A. WILLIAMS, Michael A. Perryman, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CONSOLIDATED CITY OF JACKSONVILLE, Rayfield Alfred, Fire Chief, in his individual and official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

341 F.3d 1261

George A. WILLIAMS, Michael A. Perryman, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CONSOLIDATED CITY OF JACKSONVILLE, Rayfield Alfred, Fire Chief, in his individual and official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 02-14191.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

August 14, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Ernest D. Mueller, Steven E. Rohan, Jacksonville, FL, for Defendants-Appellants.

Scott Thomas Fortune, Kimberly A. Gossett, Fortune & Gossett, P.A., Jacksonville Beach, FL, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before MARCUS and WILSON, Circuit Judges, and RESTANI,^* Judge.

WILSON, Circuit Judge:

This case arose out of Jacksonville Fire Chief Rayfield Alfred's decision not to create four new roving captain positions in the Fire Captain Rescue Division of the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department as proposed by a subordinate official. The plaintiffs, George A. Williams, Michael A. Perryman, Michael B. Price, and Nolan A. Sauls,¹ are four white lieutenants in the fire department who were passed over for promotion as a result of Chief Alfred's decision not to create the new positions. Alleging that Chief Alfred's decision amounted to race and gender discrimination, they filed a complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-17, and the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992 (FCRA), Fla. Stat. §§ 760.01-760.11, against the Consolidated City of Jacksonville and Chief Alfred in his individual and official capacities (collectively the defendants). After the district court denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment based upon qualified immunity as to the claims against Chief Alfred in his individual capacity, the defendants brought this interlocutory appeal, asserting that Chief Alfred is entitled to qualified immunity.² As we find that Chief Alfred is entitled to qualified immunity, we reverse and remand this case to the district court with instructions to enter summary judgment in favor of Chief Alfred as to the claims brought against him in his individual capacity.

BACKGROUND³

On November 1, 1995, Chief Alfred, a black man, was appointed by Mayor John Delaney to his current position as the director and chief of the fire department in Jacksonville, Florida. Mayor Delaney recruited Chief Alfred from Washington, D.C., where he previously served as fire chief. Chief Alfred was appointed because the fire department had a history of racism and nepotism and Mayor Delaney wanted to bring someone in from outside of the department to ensure that the department would be run in a race-neutral manner. Significantly, there was no affirmative action plan in place.

As fire chief, Chief Alfred has the authority to create new positions and the responsibility to fill vacancies within the fire department. In so doing, however, he does not enjoy absolute discretion, because his authority to promote within the ranks of lieutenant, captain, and chief in the rescue division is limited to promoting from an eligibility list that is generated from a competitive written examination. Indeed, under the rescue division promotion system, which was devised pursuant to the City's contract with the Jacksonville Association of Firefighters, Local 122, an eligibility list is created from the certified results of a race-neutral examination that is administered solely for the purpose of determining who is eligible for promotion and the order in which those candidates will be promoted. To determine the order of promotion, eligible candidates are ranked according to their examination scores, and Chief Alfred must promote according to that order. In other words, when a vacancy opens or a new position is created, the next highest person on the eligibility list is promoted to that position. Once an examination is certified, the eligibility list is valid for two years, at which time it expires and a new examination is administered and a new eligibility list is generated. Thus, all candidates who remain on an eligibility list when it expires, but who wish to be considered for future promotions, must retake the examination and undergo the process anew.

In October of 1999, Thomas T. McCrone, the chief of the rescue division, approached Chief Alfred and proposed that he create four new captain positions in the rescue division, known as roving captain positions, and fill them from an eligibility list that was generated in 1997, but was set to expire in approximately nine days.⁴ At that time, the plaintiffs were the next four candidates on the 1997 eligibility list; thus, if Chief Alfred had agreed to create the new positions, the plaintiffs would have been promoted to the new positions.⁵ After considering Chief McCrone's written proposal, however, Chief Alfred told Chief McCrone that he looked over the existing eligibility list and that he thought the concept of the positions and the justification for them were good, but that he preferred to establish a new list.⁶ Allegedly, Chief Alfred wanted to wait for a new list, because he did not want to promote four white men to the new positions as he already promoted eight white men⁷ from the 1997 eligibility list.⁸

Subsequently, the plaintiffs filed this civil rights lawsuit⁹ against the defendants pursuant to §§ 1981 and 1983, Title VII, and the FCRA, alleging that in the absence of a valid affirmative action plan Chief Alfred's decision not to create the roving captain positions amounted to unlawful race and gender discrimination in employment. The plaintiffs asserted that but for their racial or gender identity, "Chief Alfred would have implemented or created the four Roving Captain Rescue Division positions at the time he was requested to do so, and at the time the need for those positions arose, before the eligibility list expired."

In response, the defendants moved to dismiss the discrimination claims, asserting in part that Chief Alfred was entitled to qualified immunity for the claims brought against him in his individual capacity. The district court disagreed, however, finding that the "plaintiffs have alleged facts sufficient to establish entitlement to relief based upon the violation of a clearly established constitutional or federal statutory right." Williams v. Consol. City of Jacksonville, M.D. Fla.2000, ___ F.Supp.2d ___ (No. 00-00469-CV-J-12, Nov. 1, 2000) (denying in part the defendants' motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' amended complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and their motion to dismiss the claims brought against Chief Alfred in his individual capacity on qualified immunity grounds and granting dismissal of the plaintiffs' § 1981 claim against the City), aff'd, 268 F.3d 1067 (11th Cir.2001) (unpublished table decision). We affirmed that decision on interlocutory appeal, finding that the plaintiffs stated their cause of action sufficiently. Williams, 268 F.3d at 1067. We noted, however, that "[f]urther proceedings will determine whether the Appellant is entitled to qualified immunity." Id.

Thereafter, discovery commenced and the defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing, among other things,¹⁰ that Chief Alfred was entitled to qualified immunity. Again, the district court disagreed, finding that Chief Alfred was not entitled to qualified immunity. The district court seemed to base its opinion, in large part, upon its conclusion that our previous opinion affirming its denial of the defendants' motion to dismiss barred Chief Alfred from receiving qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage. Williams v. Consol. City of Jacksonville, M.D. Fla.2002, ___ F.Supp.2d ___ (No. 00-00469-CV-J-12, July 3, 2002) (denying the defendants' motion for summary judgment).¹¹ Additionally, the district court stated that qualified immunity was not appropriate, because "Plaintiffs have presented evidence sufficient for a jury to conclude that they are entitled to relief based upon the violation of clearly established constitutional or federal statutory rights as set forth in their Amended Complaint." Id. at ___. As a result, Chief Alfred brought this interlocutory appeal of the district court's denial of the defendants' motion for summary judgment based upon qualified immunity.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review the district court's denial of a motion for summary judgment based upon qualified immunity de novo, construing the facts "in the light most favorable to the plaintiff[s]." Lee v. Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1190 (11th Cir.2002). "When that is done, a pure issue of law is created," Cottrell v. Caldwell, 85 F.3d 1480, 1486 n. 3 (11th Cir.1996), and "[w]e then answer the legal question of whether the defendant[] [is] entitled to qualified immunity under that version of the facts," Lee, 284 F.3d at 1190 (second and third alterations in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). As we previously stressed in qualified immunity cases, however, "the `facts', [sic] as accepted at the summary judgment stage of the proceedings, may not be the `actual' facts of the case." Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919, 925 n. 3 (11th Cir.2000).

DISCUSSION¹²

"Qualified immunity offers complete protection for government officials sued in their individual capacities if their conduct `does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'" Vinyard v. Wilson, 311 F.3d 1340, 1346 (11th Cir.2002) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). In effect, qualified immunity "allow[s] government officials to carry out their discretionary duties without the fear of personal liability or harassing litigation, protecting from suit all but the plainly incompetent or one who is knowingly violating the federal law." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

"To receive qualified immunity, the public official...