Opinion
CIVIL ACTION NO. 99-500
May 4, 2000.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
This matter is before the court upon a motion to dismiss by Kentucky Retirement Systems ("KRS") (No. 20). For the reasons stated below, the court will deny the motion.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") brought this suit against the Kentucky Retirement Systems ("KRS"), alleging a violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"). The EEOC claims that the KRS denies or reduces disability retirement benefits on the basis of age. The defendant's motion to dismiss, however, concerns only the constitutionality of applying the ADEA to Kentucky's retirement plan for state employees. The KRS argues that the EEOC's claims are barred by the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments.
In 1974, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") to apply the ADEA to the states. 29 U.S.C. § 630(b). The amendment also permitted any employee to bring an ADEA action against his or her employer, including a public agency, in federal or state court. 29 U.S.C. § 626(b). The statute makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate "against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's age." 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1).
Eleventh Amendment
The Eleventh Amendment prohibits the extension of federal judicial power to a suit against a state by a citizen of another state. U.S. Const. amend. XI. The Amendment stands, however, "not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition . . . which it confirms." Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 54 (1996). Generally, the Amendment denies federal jurisdiction over suits against nonconsenting states. College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 119 S.Ct. 2219, 2223 (1999). Congress may, however, abrogate the states' immunity from suits based on federal laws if two requirements are met. First, Congress must "unequivocally express its intent to abrogate [the states'] immunity." Second, Congress must have acted pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority. Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 55.
The defendant relies heavily on Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 120 S.Ct. 631 (2000). In that case, private individuals brought an ADEA suit against their employer, the state of Florida. The Supreme Court held that, in passing the ADEA, Congress made its intention to abrogate the states' immunity unmistakably clear. The issue before the Court, therefore, was whether the extension of the ADEA to state governments was constitutionally valid.
In EEOC v. Wyoming, 460 U.S. 226, 243 (1983), superseded by statute as stated in Kopec v. City of Elmhurst, 193 F.3d 894, (7th Cir. 1999), the ADEA was deemed a valid exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause of Article I, § 8. The Wyoming Court held that the ADEA "did not transgress any external restraints imposed on the commerce power by the Tenth Amendment." Id. at 243. Because the Act was valid under Congress's Commerce Clause power, the Court declined to determine whether the Act "could also be supported by Congress's power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment." That question was addressed in Kimel, where the court recognized that Congress's power to enact the ADEA under the Commerce Clause does not necessarily mean that Congress validly abrogated the states' immunity from suits brought by private individuals pursuant to the ADEA. Congress may, however, abrogate that immunity under the enforcement provision of § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 456 (1976). The Kimel Court, therefore, concluded that private individuals may maintain ADEA suits against the states only if Congress properly exercised its legislative power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in passing the ADEA. Kimel, 120 S.Ct. at 643. The standard for determining whether § 5 permits abrogation of state immunity from individual suits is whether there exists "a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied [by the statute] and the means adopted [in the statute] to that end." Id. at 644. Concluding that the ADEA did not satisfy that standard, the Court held that Congress could not abrogate the states' immunity from ADEA lawsuits brought by individuals. However, the Court made the limited nature of its holding clear: "Our decision today does not signal the end of the line for employees who find themselves subject to age discrimination at the hands of their state employers. We hold only that, in the ADEA, Congress did not validly abrogate the States' sovereign immunity to suits by private individuals." Id. at 650 (emphasis added). The defendant's contention that Kimel generally denounced the ADEA as applied to the states, therefore, is unfounded. Kimel stands only for the proposition that private individuals may not bring ADEA suits against their state employers.
This lawsuit is brought by the EEOC, not by private individuals. Therefore, Kimel does not squarely apply to this case. The defendant claims that an ADEA suit brought by the EEOC against a state merely disguises an ADEA suit brought by an individual against a state. According to the KRS, the EEOC's suit circumvents the Eleventh Amendment as well as Kimel. This court disagrees.
The Eleventh Amendment confirms that each state is a sovereign entity, not subject to private suits without its consent. Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 54. States are not, however, immune from suits brought by the federal government to enforce state compliance with federal laws. Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U.S. 313, 322-23 (1934). In ratifying the Constitution, the states constructively waived some aspects of sovereign immunity. This waiver included consent to suits brought against the states by the federal government. Alden v. Maine, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 2267.
The EEOC is a federal agency authorized to sue employers for ADEA violations. 29 U.S.C. § 626. These suits are not brought to permit individuals to circumvent the Eleventh Amendment but to deter age discrimination. Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20, 27 (1991) (the ADEA was designed not only to address an individual's grievances, but also to further important social policies); General Telephone Co. of the Northwest, Inc. v. EEOC, 446 U.S. 318, 326 (1980) (the EEOC is not merely a proxy for victims of discrimination, but is guided by an overriding public interest in equal employment opportunity); EEOC v. Frank's Nursey Crafts, Inc., 177 F.3d 448, 458 (6th Cir. 1999) (the EEOC is not merely a vehicle for conducting litigation on behalf of private parties and does not stand in their shoes, even when it seeks to recover backpay for them); EEOC v. Johnson Higgins, Inc. 91 F.3d 1529, 1537 (2nd Cir. 1996) (there is a strong public interest in eradicating age discrimination).
Concededly, the Eleventh Amendment protects the states from suits brought by the federal government in a nominal capacity, where the real plaintiffs are private individuals. In New Hampshire v. Louisiana, 8 U.S. 76 (1883), the Supreme Court disallowed a suit based on a bond controversy between two states because the bond owners were the actual promoters and managers of the suits. The individuals directly funded the lawsuit and held exclusive settlement authority. Here, however, the EEOC is not litigating individuals' claims. Indeed, alleged discrimination victims cannot even control whether the EEOC will sue. Frank's Nursery, 177 F.3d at 468. Because the agency's authority to bring suit under the ADEA is independent of the rights of private parties, this lawsuit is not a circumvention of the Eleventh Amendment.
Tenth Amendment
The Tenth Amendment provides that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, "nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." U.S. Const. amend. X. "If a power is delegated to Congress in the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment expressly disclaims any reservation of that power to the States; if a power is an attribute of state sovereignty reserved by the Tenth Amendment, it is necessarily a power the Constitution has not conferred on Congress." New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 156 (1992). The defendant characterizes the power to establish a retirement plan for state employees as "an attribute of state sovereignty." According to the defendant, therefore, the EEOC's lawsuit violates the Tenth Amendment because it infringes upon Kentucky's state sovereignty.
The Supreme Court reconsidered the contours of the Tenth Amendment in Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Sys., 469 U.S. 528 (1984), holding:
We . . . now reject, as unsound in principle and unworkable in practice, a rule of state immunity from federal regulation that turns on a judicial appraisal of whether a particular governmental function is `integral' or `traditional.' . . . If there are to be limits on the Federal Government's power to interfere with state functions — as undoubtedly there are — we must look elsewhere to find them.Id. at 547.
The Garcia Court found that limits on the federal government's power to interfere with state functions already existed within the structure of the federal government:
[T]he principal and basic limit on the federal commerce power is that inherent in all congressional action — the built-in restraints that our system provides through state participation in federal governmental action. The political process ensures that laws that unduly burden the States will not be promulgated.Id. at 556.
After Garcia, the Court acknowledged the "possibility that some extraordinary defects in the national political process might render congressional regulation of state activities invalid under the Tenth Amendment." South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505, 512 (1987). Such a defect exists, for example, where a federal law essentially coerces a state government to regulate pursuant to Congress's directives. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 177 (1992). "Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program." Id. at 161.
The EEOC's lawsuit does not "commandeer" Kentucky's legislative process. The ADEA does not even require Kentucky to enact a retirement system. This lawsuit alleges only that, if such a system exists, the benefits should be awarded without regard to age. The ADEA does not intrude upon the state activity of establishing a retirement system. "The State's discretion to achieve its goals in the way it thinks best is not being overridden entirely, but is merely being tested against a reasonable federal standard." Wyoming, 460 U.S. at 240 (1983). This lawsuit will not, therefore, violate the Tenth Amendment.
ORDER
For the reasons stated above, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the defendant's motion to dismiss is DENIED.