Lawson v. Metropolitan Sanitary District

102 F.R.D. 783, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11076
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedDecember 6, 1983
DocketNo. 78 C 2235
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 102 F.R.D. 783 (Lawson v. Metropolitan Sanitary District) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lawson v. Metropolitan Sanitary District, 102 F.R.D. 783, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11076 (N.D. Ill. 1983).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

GETZENDANNER, District Judge:

This civil rights action is before the court on plaintiffs’ motion for class certification pursuant to Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amended Complaint alleges that defendant Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago (“MSD”) “has maintained a continuing policy and practice of denying black employees equal employment opportunities” in the following and other related ways:

(a) assigning blacks to the “dirtiest and least desirable” jobs;
(b) refusing to grant “provisional assignments” to blacks, thereby depriving them of valuable training for job promotions;
(c) limiting the employment opportunities of blacks through “discrimination in ... transfer”;
(d) employing promotion examinations that have a disparate impact on blacks;
(e) denying adequate training to blacks who have been promoted;
(f) demoting blacks based on subjective and invalid performance standards;
(g) retaliating against blacks who have filed charges of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and
(h) perpetuating and exacerbating the above practices by maintaining a virtually all-white supervisory and management force.

(Fourth Amended Complaint ¶ 12.)

As one of plaintiffs’ claims for relief is based on violations of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., plaintiffs allege that among them, Charles Lawson, Melvin Troutman, Mary Robinson, and Charles Walker have exhausted their administrative remedies under that statute. Plaintiffs next set forth in detail the specific incidents of racial discrimination that each allegedly suffered. (Fourth Amended Complaint ¶¶ 13-17.) As a result of this claimed discriminatory behavior, plaintiffs complain that MSD violated 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and 2000e-2 (hereafter, “§ 1981,” “§ 1983,” and “Title VII”). (Fourth Amended Complaint H 18.)

In their Motion for Class Certification, plaintiffs pray this court certify a class of:

All black citizens who have been, are, or will be employed by defendant [MSD] and who have been, are, or will be ad[786]*786versely affected by MSD’s policy of discriminating against blacks in its plants located in Cook County, Illinois____

(Motion for Class Certification p. 1.)

The purported policy of discrimination includes all the forms of employment discrimination alleged in the Fourth Amended Complaint. (Motion for Class Certification pp. 1-2.) In addition, since plaintiffs do not limit their motion to any particular theory of recovery, the court assumes they desire class certification with respect to claims brought under §§ 1981 and 1983 and Title VII.

MSD responds to this Motion by arguing that 1) certain named plaintiffs have not properly exhausted their Title VII administrative remedies, 2) plaintiffs have not met the Rule 23 requirements for class certification.

I.

Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies

While it is clear that all plaintiffs in a class action need not have exhausted their administrative remedies, all named plaintiffs must personally have satisfied the prerequisites for court action. Oatis v. Crown Zellerbach Corp., 398 F.2d 496, 499 (5th Cir.1968); 2 A. Larson Employment Discrimination § 49.55, at 9B-151. The Seventh Circuit has explained that the purpose of a class action plaintiff’s filing of an EEOC charge is to notify the charged party and bring to bear upon it the conciliatory efforts of the EEOC, to permit the EEOC to determine the validity of the charge, and to determine the scope of the violation. Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 416 F.2d 711, 720 (7th Cir.1969). The Court continued:

It is apparent that each of these purposes is served when any charge is filed and a proper suit follows which fairly asserts grievances common to the class to be afforded relief in court. There can be no claim of surprise in such a situation. Also, as held in Miller v. Int’l Paper Co., 408 F.2d 283, 285 (5th Cir.1969): “ * * * no procedural purpose could be served by requiring scores of substantially identical grievances to be processed through the EEOC when a single charge would be sufficient to effectuate both the letter and spirit of Title VII.”

Id. See Phillips v. Klassen, 502 F.2d 362, 369 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 996, 95 S.Ct. 309, 42 L.Ed.2d 269 (1974).

Plaintiffs have alleged that among them, Charles Walker, Melvin Troutman, Chauncey Lawson, and Mary Robinson have exhausted their administrative remedies. Harold Johnson, who admittedly has not, is dismissed as a named plaintiff. MSD takes issue with the adequacy of plaintiffs’ efforts to exhaust their administrative remedies.

MSD contends that plaintiffs should be limited in the issues that they wish to assert in this action to the precise issues that they charged in their complaints to the EEOC and the Department of Justice and for which they received Notices of Right to Sue (“Notices”). Granting this premise, most of the issues of the complaint were raised in the charges. Plaintiff Walker, in EEOC complaint number 051821893, complained of retaliation by MSD as a result of his filing discrimination charges. Trout-man, in number 051814770, claimed the MSD assigned duties and meted out punishment discriminatorily. Such discrimination allegedly caused him to be unjustly demoted from his position of Operating Engineer II. Mr. Troutman’s complaint also contains an allegation that his supervisor did not properly monitor Troutman’s working environment. (EEOC complaint number 051814770 at Ill.D.2.) This raises an inference that Troutman felt himself to be ill supervised because black. Mary Robinson complained of the discriminatory use of an invalid examination for promotion purposes in her EEOC complaint number 051781486. Lawson’s EEOC complaint number 051771255 complains of unfair pro[787]*787motion policies and unfair discipline applied to blacks by MSD.1

Were the court strictly to limit plaintiffs’ Fourth Amended Complaint to the charges explicitly stated in their EEOC complaints, only the following allegations could not be maintained in this action: discriminatory job assignments, discriminatory refusal to grant “provisional assignments,” and perpetuation of discriminatory employment practices through the maintenance of a virtually all-white supervisory force.

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Bluebook (online)
102 F.R.D. 783, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11076, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lawson-v-metropolitan-sanitary-district-ilnd-1983.