Hassenfratz v. Garner

911 F. Supp. 235, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19933, 1995 WL 783678
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Mississippi
DecidedNovember 13, 1995
DocketCiv. A. No. 4:94-CV-151(L)(N)
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 911 F. Supp. 235 (Hassenfratz v. Garner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Mississippi primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hassenfratz v. Garner, 911 F. Supp. 235, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19933, 1995 WL 783678 (S.D. Miss. 1995).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

TOM S. LEE, District Judge.

This cause is before the court on the motion of defendant James H. Garner, the Adjutant General of the Mississippi National Guard, for summary judgment. Plaintiff responded to the motion, and the court, having considered the memoranda of the parties,, concludes that the ease should be dismissed as nonjusticiable.

Plaintiff was employed as a civilian technician with the Mississippi Air National Guard (ANG) for more than twenty-three years, where he worked in aircraft maintenance. He was discharged from his position after he allegedly willfully damaged the fairing assembly of one of the aircraft and allegedly made threatening remarks to his superiors. Plaintiff asked for and received an administrative hearing regarding his discharge. His discharge was upheld. Plaintiff subsequently filed suit, alleging that his discharge was in violation of his right to free speech under the First Amendment, his Eighth Amendment right not to be subject to excessive punishment, and his right to due process of law.

Matters involving military personnel actions are generally nonjusticiable. As the Supreme Court noted in Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U.S. 296, 108 S.Ct. 2362, 76 L.Ed.2d 586 (1983):

The special status of the military has required, the Constitution has created, and this Court has long recognized two systems of justice, to some extent parallel: one for civilians and one for military personnel. The special nature of military life—the need for unhesitating and decisive action by military officers and equally disciplined responses by enlisted personnel— would be undermined by a judicially created remedy exposing officers to personal liability at the hands of those they are charged to command. Here, as in Feres, we must be “eoncern[ed] with the disruption of ‘[t]he peculiar and special relationship of the soldier to his superiors’ that might result if the soldier were allowed to hale his superiors into court.”

Id. at 303-304, 103 S.Ct. at 2367-2368. While the Court in Chappell determined that suits by military personnel against their superior officers were nonjusticiable, the Supreme Court in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669, 107 S.Ct. 3054, 97 L.Ed.2d 550 (1987), held that the “incident to service” test from Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 71 S.Ct. 153, 95 L.Ed. 152 (1950), should apply to all Bivens actions brought by military personnel for matters relating to their military service. Under this test, courts look solely to the nature of the acts underlying the claims brought by a member of the military. If the acts are incident to service in the armed forces, then the suit, even if it raises constitutional claims, is nonjusticiable.

A test for liability that depends on the extent to which particular suits would call into question military discipline and deci-sionmaking would itself require judicial inquiry into, and hence intrusion upon, military matters. Whether a case implicates [237]*237those concerns would often be problematic, raising the prospect of compelled depositions and trial testimony by military officers concerning the details of their military commands. Even putting aside the risk of erroneous judicial conclusions (which would becloud military decisionmaking), the mere process of arriving at correct conclusions would disrupt the military regime. The “incident to service” test, by contrast, provides a line that is relatively clear and that can be discerned with less extensive inquiry into military matters.

483 U.S. at 682-83, 107 S.Ct. at 3062-3063. Whereas Chappell prohibited suits against superior officers by their subordinates, the court in Stanley prohibited suits against anyone based on acts or events incident to service. The court found that the incident to service test is consistent with Constitutional provisions allocating responsibility for military matters to the political branches of the government and not to the judiciary:

[T]he Constitution explicitly conferred upon Congress the power, inter alia, “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 14, thus showing that “the Constitution contemplated that the Legislative Branch have plenary control over rights, duties, and responsibilities in the framework of the Military Establishment. ...”

483 U.S. at 679, 107 S.Ct. at 3061 (citation omitted) (emphasis in original).

The court should not consider whether a remedy will be available to a plaintiff who is in the military absent judicial intervention.1 “[I]t is irrelevant ... whether the laws currently on the books afford [the plaintiff], or any other particular serviceman, an ‘adequate’ federal remedy for his injuries.” 483 U.S. at 683, 107 S.Ct. at 3063. The only inquiry is whether the acts which form the basis of a plaintiffs complaint are incident to service in the military. If so, then the claim is nonjustieiable.

In 1968, Congress established the position of National Guard Technician with the passage of the National Guard Technicians Act, 32 U.S.C. § 709 et seq. Under the Act, civilian technicians serve in a quasi-military role with the National Guard. For example, National Guard technicians must also be members of the National Guard as a condition of their employment as technicians. 32 U.S.C. § 709(b).2

In NeSmith v. Fulton, 615 F.2d 196 (5th Cir.1980), the Fifth Circuit held that a suit by a National Guard technician based on his dismissal from his job as a civilian technician was nonjustieiable as a military matter not reviewable by the courts. The court found that “Formally, a civilian technician is a federal civil employee outside the competitive civil service. In substance, however, the position is one in a military organization.” Id. at 201. The court continued:

[O]ne of the express purposes of the National Guard Technicians Act was to “recognize the military characteristics of the National Guard” by requiring civilian technicians to be military members of the National Guard and by providing for their supervision by the adjutants general pursuant to regulations prescribed by the secretary of the relevant military department. H.R.Rep. No. 1823, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1968), 1968 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, p. 3319.
NeSmith’s challenge to the decision to terminate him as a civilian technician thus involves an internal military matter and implicates judicial concern over inappropriate intrusion into such transactions.

Id. In NeSmith, the Fifth Circuit applied the four-prong analysis established in Mindes v. Seaman, 453 F.2d 197 (5th Cir.1971), to determine that the plaintiffs claim was nonjustieiable.

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Bluebook (online)
911 F. Supp. 235, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19933, 1995 WL 783678, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hassenfratz-v-garner-mssd-1995.