Lehman v. Nakshian

453 U.S. 156, 101 S. Ct. 2698, 69 L. Ed. 2d 548, 1981 U.S. LEXIS 37, 49 U.S.L.W. 4835, 31 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 1373, 26 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 31,900, 26 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 65

Opinions

Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question presented by this case is whether a plaintiff in an action against the United States under § 15 (c) of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is entitled to trial by jury.

I

The 1974 amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967¹ added a new § 15,² which brought the Federal Government within the scope of the Act for the first time. Section 15 (a)³ prohibits the Federal Government from discrimination based on age in most of its civilian employment decisions concerning persons over 40 years of age. Section 15 (b)⁴ provides that enforcement of § 15 (a) in most agencies, including military departments, is the responsibility of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Commission is directed to “issue such rules, regulations, orders and instructions as [the Commission] deems necessary and appropriate” to carry out that responsibility. Section 15 (c)⁵ provides:

“Any person aggrieved may bring a civil action in any Federal district court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes of this Act.” 88 Stat. 75.

In 1978, respondent Alice Nakshian, who was then a 62-year-old civilian employee of the United States Department of the Navy, brought an age discrimination suit against the Navy under § 15 (c). She requested a jury trial. The defendant moved to strike the request, and the District Court denied the motion. Nakshian v. Claytor, 481 F. Supp. 159 (DC). The court stressed that the “legal or equitable relief” language used by Congress to establish a right to sue the Federal Government for age discrimination was identical to the language Congress had previously used in § 7 (c) of the Act⁶ to authorize private ADEA suits. That language, the District Court said, was an important basis for this Court’s holding in Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, that § 7 (c) permits jury trials in private suits under the Act. The court stated that “if Congress had intended its consent to ADEA suits [against the Government] to be limited to non-jury trials, it could have easily said as much.” 481 F. Supp., at 161. Recognizing that as a result of 1978 amendments to the ADEA § 7 (c) (2) expressly confers a right to jury trial, whereas no such language exists in § 15,⁷ 481 F. Supp., at 161, the court found no “explicit refusal” by Congress to grant the right to jury trial against the Government, and noted that the legislative history of the 1978 amendments spoke in general terms about a right to jury trial in ADEA suits.

On interlocutory appeal under 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (b), a divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed. Nakshian v. Claytor, 202 U. S. App. D. C. 59, 628 F. 2d 59. The appellate court rejected the Secretary’s argument that a plaintiff is entitled to trial by jury in a suit against the United States only when such a trial has been expressly authorized. Instead, the court viewed the question as “an ordinary question of statutory interpretation,” and found sufficient evidence of legislative intent to provide for trial by jury in cases such as this. Noting that Congress had conferred jurisdiction over ADEA suits upon the federal district courts, rather than the Court of Claims, the Court of Appeals concluded that “ ‘absent a provision as to the method of trial, a grant of jurisdiction to a district court as a court of law carries with it a right of jury trial.’ ” Id., at 63, 628 F. 2d, at 63 (quoting 5 J. Moore, J. Lucas, & J. Wicker, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 38.32 [2], p. 38-236 (1979) (footnotes omitted)). The Court of Appeals also adopted the District Court’s view of the “legal . . . relief” language in § 15 (c). Further, it was the court’s view that the existence of the explicit statutory right to jury trial in suits against private employers does not negate the existence of a right to jury trial in suits against the Government, since the provision for jury trials in private suits was added only to resolve a conflict in the Courts of Appeals on that issue and to confirm the correctness of this Court's decision in the Lorillard case.

We granted certiorari to consider the issue presented. Sub nom. Hildalgo v. Nakshian, 449 U. S. 1009.

II

It has long been settled that the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury does not apply in actions against the Federal Government. In Galloway v. United States, 319 U. S. 372, 388-389, the Court observed (footnotes omitted):

“The suit is one to enforce a monetary claim against the United States. It hardly can be maintained that under the common law in 1791 jury trial was a matter of right for persons asserting claims against the sovereign. Whatever force the Amendment has therefore is derived because Congress, in the legislation cited, has made it applicable.”

See also Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 572; McElrath v. United States, 102 U. S. 426, 440. Moreover, the Court has recognized the general principle that “the United States, as sovereign, 'is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued . . . and the terms of its consent to be sued in any court define that court’s jurisdiction to entertain the suit.’ ” United States v. Testan, 424 U. S. 392, 399, quoting United States v. Sherwood, 312 U. S. 584, 586. See also United States v. Mitchell, 445 U. S. 535, 538. Thus, if Congress waives the Government’s immunity from suit, as it has in the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. § 633a (1976 ed. and Supp. III), the plaintiff has a right to a trial by jury only where that right is one of “the terms of [the Government’s] consent to be sued.” Testan, supra, at 399. Like a waiver of immunity itself, which must be “unequivocally expressed,” United States v. Mitchell, supra, at 538, quoting United States v. King, 395 U. S. 1, 4, “this Court has long decided that limitations and conditions upon which the Government consents to be sued must be strictly observed and exceptions thereto are not to be implied.” Soriano v. United States, 352 U. S. 270, 276. See also United States v. Kubrick, 444 U. S. 111, 117-118; United States v. Sherwood, supra, at 590-591.

When Congress has waived the sovereign immunity of the United States, it has almost always conditioned that waiver upon a plaintiff's relinquishing any claim to a jury trial. Jury trials, for example, have not been made available in the Court of Claims for the broad range of cases within its jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1491 — i. e., all claims against the United States “founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress, ... or upon any express or implied contract with the United States, or for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort.” See Glidden Co., supra. And there is no jury trial right in this same range of cases when the federal district courts have concurrent jurisdiction. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 1346 (a)(2) and 2402. Finally, in tort actions against the United States, see 28 U. S. C. § 1346 (b), Congress has similarly provided that trials shall be to the court without a jury. 28 U. S. C. § 2402.⁸

The appropriate inquiry, therefore, is whether Congress clearly and unequivocally departed from its usual practice in this area, and granted a right to trial by jury when it amended the ADEA.⁹

A

Section 15 of the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. § 633a (1976 ed. and Supp. III), prohibits age discrimination in federal employment. Section 15 (c) provides the means for judicial enforcement of this guarantee: any person aggrieved “may bring a civil action in any Federal district court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes” of the Act. Section 15 contrasts with § 7 (c) of the Act, 29 U. S.' C. § 626 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. III), which authorizes civil actions against private employers and state and local governments, and which expressly provides for jury trials. Congress accordingly demonstrated that it knew how to provide a statutory right to a jury trial when it wished to do so elsewhere in the very “legislation cited,” Galloway, supra, at 389. But in § 15 it failed explicitly to do so.¹⁰ See Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U. S. 490, 512-513; cf. Monroe v. Standard Oil Co., 452 U. S. 549, 561.

The respondent infers statutory intent from the language in § 15 (c) providing for the award of “legal or equitable relief,” relying on Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, for the proposition that the authorization of “legal” relief supports a statutory jury trial right. But Lorillard has no application in this context. In the first place, the word “legal” cannot be deemed to be what the Lorillard Court described as “a term of art” with respect to the availability of jury trials in cases where the defendant is the Federal Government. In Lorillard, the authorization for the award of “legal” relief was significant largely because of the presence of a constitutional question. The Court observed that where legal relief is granted in litigation between private parties, the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a jury, and reasoned that Congress must have been aware of the significance of the word “legal” in that context. But the Seventh Amendment has no application in actions at law against the Government, as Congress and this Court have always recognized. Thus no particular significance can be attributed to the word “legal” in § 15 (c).

Moreover, another basis of the decision in Lorillard was that when Congress chose to incorporate the enforcement scheme of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) into § 7 of the ADEA, it adopted in ADEA the FLSA practice of making jury trials available. 434 U. S., at 580-583. Again, that reasoning has no relevance to this case, because Congress did not incorporate the FLSA enforcement scheme into § 15. See 29 IT. S. C. § 633a (f) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Rather, §§ 15 (a) and (b) are patterned after §§ 717 (a) and (b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in March 1972, see Pub. L. 92-261, 86 Stat. 111-112, which extend the protection of Title VII to federal employees. 42 U. S. C. §§ 2000e-16 (a) and (b). See 118 Cong. Rec. 24397 (1972) (remarks of Sen. Bentsen, principal sponsor of § 15 of ADEA). And, of course, in contrast to the FLSA,¹¹ there is no right to trial by jury in cases arising under Title VII. See Lorillard, supra, at 583-584; Great American Federal Savings & Loan Assn. v. Novotny, 442 U. S. 366, 375, and n. 19.

The respondent also infers a right to trial by jury from the fact that Congress conferred jurisdiction over ADEA suits upon the federal district courts, where jury trials are ordinarily available, rather than upon the Court of Claims, where they are not. Not only is there little logical support for this inference, but the legislative history offers no support for it either.¹² Moreover, Rule 38 (a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that the right to a jury trial "as declared by the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution or as given by a statute of the United States shall be preserved to the parties inviolate” (emphasis added). This language hardly states a general rule that jury trials are to be presumed whenever Congress provides for cases to be brought in federal district courts.¹³ Indeed, Rule 38 (a) requires an affirmative statutory grant of the right where, as in this case, the Seventh Amendment does not apply.

B

As already indicated, it is unnecessary to go beyond the language of the statute itself to conclude that Congress did not intend to confer a right to trial by jury on ADEA plaintiffs proceeding against the Federal Government. But it is helpful briefly to explore the legislative history, if only to demonstrate that it no more supports the holding of the Court of Appeals than does the statutory language itself.

The respondent cannot point to a single reference in the legislative history to the subject of jury trials in cases brought against the Federal Government. There is none. And there is nothing to indicate that Congress did not mean what it plainly indicated when it expressly provided for jury trials in § 7 (c) cases but not in § 15 (c) cases. In fact, the few inferences that may be drawn from the legislative history are inconsistent with the respondent’s position.

The ADEA originally applied only to actions against private employers. Section 7 incorporated the enforcement scheme used in employee actions against private employers under the FLSA. In Lorillard, the Court found that the incorporation of the FLSA scheme into § 7 indicated that the FLSA right to trial by jury should also be incorporated. The Lorillard holding was codified in 1978 when § 7 (c) was amended to provide expressly for jury trials in actions brought under that section.

Congress expanded the scope of ADEA in 1974 to include state and local government and Federal Government employers. State and local governments were added as potential defendants by a simple expansion of the term “employer” in the ADEA. The existing substantive and procedural provisions of the Act, including § 7 (c), were thereby extended to cover state and local government employees. In contrast, Congress added an entirely new section, § 15, to address the problems of age discrimination in federal employment. Here Congress deliberately prescribed a distinct statutory scheme applicable only to the federal sector,¹⁴ and one based not on the FLSA but, as already indicated, on Title VII,¹⁵ where, unlike the FLSA, there was no right to trial by jury.¹⁶

Finally, in a 1978 amendment to ADEA, Congress declined an opportunity to extend a right to trial by jury to federal employee plaintiffs. Before the announcement of Lorillard, the Senate, but not the House, had included an amendment to § 7 (c) to provide for jury trials in a pending bill to revise ADEA. After Lorillard, the Conference Committee recommended and Congress enacted the present § 7 (c)(2), closely resembling the jury trial amendment passed by the Senate. But the Conference did not recommend, and Congress did not enact, any corresponding amendment of § 15 (c) to provide for jury trials in cases against the Federal Government. Indeed, the conferees recommended and Congress enacted a new § 15 (f), 29 U. S. C. § 633a (f) (1976 ed., Supp. III), providing that federal personnel actions covered by § 15 are not subject to any other section of ADEA, with one exception not relevant here. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-950, p. 11 (1978). See also H. R. Rep. No. 95-527, p. 11 (1977) (“Section 15 . . . is complete in itself”). Since the new subsection (f) clearly emphasized that § 15 was self-contained and unaffected by other sections, including those governing procedures applicable in actions against private employers, Judge Tamm, dissenting in the Court of Appeals, was surely correct when he concluded that “[i]n amending both sections as it did, Congress could not have overlooked the need to amend [§ 15 (c)] to allow jury trials for government employees if it had so wished.” 202 U. S. App. D. C., at 69, n. 8, 628 F. 2d, at 69, n. 8.

C

But even if the legislative history were ambiguous, that would not affect the proper resolution of this case, because the plaintiff in an action against the United States has a right to trial by jury only where Congress has affirmatively and unambiguously granted that right by statute. Congress has most obviously not done so here. Neither the provision for federal employer cases to be brought in district courts rather than the Court of Claims, nor the use of the word “legal” in that section, evinces a congressional intent that ADEA plaintiffs who proceed to trial against the Federal Government may do so before a jury. Congress expressly provided for jury trials in the section of the Act applicable to private-sector employers, and to state and local governmental entities. It did not do so in the section applicable to the Federal Government as an employer, and indeed, patterned that section after provisions in another Act under which there is no right to trial by jury. The conclusion is inescapable that Congress did not depart from its normal practice of not providing a right to trial by jury when it waived the sovereign immunity of the United States.

For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.

It is so ordered.

1 81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §§ 621-634 (1976 ed. and Supp. III).

2 29 U. S. C. § 633a.

3 Section 15 (a), as amended in 1978, provides in pertinent part:

“All personnel actions affecting employees or applicants for employment who are at least 40 years of age ... in military departments [and other enumerated Government agencies] shall be made free from any discrimination based on age. 29 U. S. C. § 633a (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III).

4 29 U. S. C. § 633a (b) (1976 ed. and Supp. III).

5 29 U. S. C. § 633a (c).

6 Section 7 (c), as amended in 1978 and as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 626 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), provides:

“(1) Any person aggrieved may bring a civil action in any court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes of this chapter; Provided, That the right of any person to bring such action shall terminate upon the commencement of an action by the Commission to enforce the right of such employee under this chapter.

“(2) In an action brought under paragraph (1), a person shall be entitled to a trial by jury of any issue of fact in any such action for recovery of amounts owing as a result of a violation of this chapter, regardless of whether equitable relief is sought by any party in such action.”

With the exception of the express right to jury trial conferred by § 7 (c)(2) and of the proviso in § 7 (c)(1), §7 (e) is identical to §15 (c). Section 7 (c) (2) was added by the 1978 amendments of the ADEA.

7 See n. 6, supra.

8 It is not difficult to appreciate Congress’ reluctance to provide for jury trials against the United States. When fashioning a narrow exception to permit jury trials in tax refund cases in federal district courts under 28 U. S. C. § 1346 (a)(1), in legislation that Congress recognized established a “wholly new precedent,” H. R. Rep. No. 659, 83d Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1953), Congress expressed its concern that juries “might tend to be overly generous because of the virtually unlimited ability of the Government to pay the verdict.” Ibid. Indeed, because of their firm opposition to breaking with precedent, the House conferees took almost a year before acceding to passage of the bill containing that exception. Only after much debate, and after the conferees became convinced that there would be no danger of excessive verdicts as a result of jury trials in that unique context — because recoveries would be limited to the amount of taxes illegally or erroneously collected — was the bill passed. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 2276, 83d Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1954).

9 The respondent argues that the strong presumption against the waiver of sovereign immunity has no relevance to the question of a right to trial by jury. But it is clear that the doctrine of sovereign immunity and its attendant presumptions must inform the Court’s decision in this case. The reason that the Seventh Amendment presumption in favor of jury trials does not apply in actions at law against the United States is that the United States is immune from suit, and the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, therefore, never existed with respect to a suit against the United States. Since there is no generally applicable jury trial right that attaches when the United States consents to suit, the accepted principles of sovereign immunity require that a jury trial right be clearly provided in the legislation creating the cause of action.

10 The dissenters contend that this argument can only be made at the expense of overruling the Lorillard decision. But, as hereafter indicated, Lorillard has little relevance here. And, of course, the position taken in the dissent totally loses its force in view of the 1978 amendments to the ADEA, see infra, at 167-168, where Congress expressly extended a jury trial right in § 7 (c) but not in § 15 (c).

11 The decisions cited by the Court in Lorillard, 434 U. S., at 580, n. 7, for the proposition that there is a right to a jury trial in FLSA actions all appear to have rested on the Seventh Amendment, not the FLSA itself. Thus, for the same reason that the Seventh Amendment does not apply in suits against the Federal Government, there would be no comparable right to trial by jury in FLSA suits against the Federal Government under 29 U. S. C. §216 (b). Accordingly, even if Congress intended to incorporate the FLSA enforcement scheme into § 15 of the ADEA, there would be no basis for inferring a right to a jury trial in ADEA 'cases where the employer is the Federal Government.

12 There are a number of reasons why Congress may have chosen to limit jurisdiction to the federal district courts. They, along with state courts, already had jurisdiction of private-sector ADEA cases under §7 (c). Congress may have decided to follow the same course in federal sector cases, but confined jurisdiction to federal district courts so that there would not be trials in state courts of actions against the Federal Government. Exclusive district court jurisdiction is also consistent with the jurisdictional references in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 2000e-5 (f)(3) and 2000e-16 (c). Congress may also have believed it appropriate to have trials in federal district courts because they, unlike the Court of Claims, are accustomed to awarding equitable relief of the sort authorized by § 15 (c).

13 The respondent relies on United States v. Pfitsch, 256 U. S. 547. But the language relied on in Pfitsch is dicta, since the parties in that case agreed to trial by the court sitting without a jury, id., at 549, and the jury trial issue was therefore not directly before the Court. In any event, Pfitsch is plainly distinguishable. There Congress specifically rejected a proposal, “presented to its attention in a most precise form,” id., at 552, to confer concurrent jurisdiction on the district courts and Court of Claims under the Tucker Act and instead conferred a new and exclusive jurisdiction on the district courts. Given the particular legislative history in that case, the Court found it “difficult to conceive of any rational ground” for conferring exclusive jurisdiction on the district courts except to provide for jury trials. Ibid. That, of course, is not true here. See n. 12, supra. Moreover, Pfitsch arose before Rule 38 (a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 38 (a) made it clear that there is no general right to trial by jury in civil actions in federal district courts. The Rule establishes a mechanism for determining when there is such a right — i. e., when the Seventh Amendment applies, or if not, when a statute provides it.

The respondent also relies on Law v. United States, 266 U. S. 494. The statement in Law regarding jury trials, which in fact does no more than cite Pfitsch, is also dictum, and of virtually no relevance in this context.

14 A bill introduced by Senator Bentsen on March 9, 1972, S. 3318, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., 118 Cong. Rec. 7745 (1972), represented the first attempt to prohibit age discrimination in federal employment. This bill would have simply amended the definition of “employer” in the Act to include the Federal Government, as well as state and local governments. The result would presumably have been to bring federal employees under the procedural provisions in § 7. But Senator Bentsen subsequently submitted a revised version of his bill in the form of an amendment to pending FLSA amendments. See 118 Cong. Rec. 15894 (1972). In contrast to Senator Bentsen’s original bill, this amendment to the ADEA proposed the expansion of the definition of the term “employer” only with respect to state and local governments; ADEA coverage of federal employees was to be accomplished by the addition of an entirely new and separate section to the Act (presently §15). Senator Bentsen’s amendment was included in the FLSA bill reported by the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, S. Rep. No. 92-842, pp. 93-94 (1972), and it remained in this form when the bill was enacted into law in 1974.

15 Sections 15 (a) and 15 (b) of the ADEA, as offered by Senator Bentsen and as finally enacted, are patterned directly after §§ 717 (a) and (b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in March 1972, see Pub. L. 92-261, 86 Stat. 111-112, which extend Title VII protections to federal employees. Senator Bentsen acknowledged that “[t"|he measures used to protect Federal employees [from age discriminatio.nl would be substantially similar to those incorporated” in recently enacted amendments to Title VII. 118 Cong. Rec. 24397 (1972).

16 In fact, during floor consideration of the 1972 amendments to Title VII, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have conferred a statutory right to trial by jury in Title VII cases. Id, at 4919-4920. Senator Javits, in opposing the amendment, observed that it would impose “what would be a special requirement in these cases, as distinguished from the antidiscrimination field generally, of jury trial.” Id., at 4920.