In response to yesterday’s post on the Supreme Court agreeing to review the issue of associational retaliation, Michael Fox at Jottings by An Employer’s Lawyer suggests that Thompson might come out better for employers than one might think:
However, this is ultimately a question of statutory construction, which calls to mind Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, where the dispute was whether Title IX prohibited retaliation, although there was no anti-retaliation provision in the statute itself. In a 5-4 decision, the court’s opinion finding retaliation was prohibited was authored by Justice O’Connor. Significantly one of the dissenters was Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Despite some personnel changes since the Jackson case, the Court’s ideological split remains the same. Thompson will come down to a decision between statutory interpretation and policy (with Justice Kennedy likely holding the deciding vote).
The original Thompson v. North American Stainless (6th Cir. 3/31/08) [pdf] decision chose policy:
However, “[i]t is a well-established canon of statutory construction that a court should go beyond the literal language of a statute if reliance on that language would defeat the plain purpose of the statute[.]” … Here, a literal reading of section 704(a) suggests a prohibition on employer retaliation only when it is directed to the individual who conducted the protected activity. Such a reading, however, “defeats the plain purpose” of Title VII. There is no doubt that an employer’s retaliation against a family member after an employee files an EEOC charge would … dissuade “reasonable workers” from such an action.
The en banc panel [pdf]—the decision the Supreme Court agreed to review—went the opposite way, opting for the clear language of the statute:
The statutory language of § 704(a) … explicitly identifies those individuals who are protected – employees who “opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice” or who “made a charge, testified, assisted or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing” under Title VII. Section 704(a) thus clearly limits the class of claimants to those who actually engaged in the protected activity…. In other words, Congress carefully chose qualifying words of action (“opposed,” “testified,” “made a charge,” “participated,” “assisted”), not words of association…. The plain text simply cannot be read to encompass “piggyback” protection of employees like Thompson who, by his own admission, did not engage in protected activity, but who is merely associated with another employee who did oppose an alleged unlawful employment practice.
While the Supreme Court’s battle lines are clear, how the ruling will come out is less so. Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education is one guidepost for us to look to. Crawford v. Metropolitan Gov’t of Nashville is another. In Crawford (decided unanimously just last year), the Supreme Court held that the opposition clause of Title VII’s retaliation provision covers an employee who merely answers questions during an employer’s purely internal investigation into a co-worker’s allegations of harassment against a different employee. In that case, the Court took a broad reading of the meaning of “opposition” to impart a policy choice against retaliation.
If you want to look to Crawford for further guidance, Justice Kennedy was part of the seven-member majority that defined “oppose” (albeit in dicta) as “to be hostile or adverse to, as in opinion.” Justices Alito and Thomas separately concurred to make the point that “opposition” must include “active and purposive” conduct, and to take the majority to task for embracing a definition that permits opposition without action. If Thompson ultimately interprets the opposition clause to include silent opposition, it could be a bad day for employers. The Court could conclude that one closely associated with another who engages in protected activity engages in opposition through the closeness of the relationship and the implied hostility to the employer’s position.
We won’t find out what all this means until sometime next year. The tea leaves are not at all clear. Employers should be concerned, though, that Title VII is about to be judicially expanded yet again, and the doors may swing wide open for the filing of more retaliation claim.
Presented by Kohrman Jackson & Krantz, with offices in Cleveland and Columbus. For more information, contact Jon Hyman, a partner in our Labor & Employment group, at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com.