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3rd Circuit Rejects Certification in UPS Discrimination Case
The Legal Intelligencer
July 24, 2009
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court's certification of a nationwide class of employees alleging unlawful discrimination by United Parcel Service.
Remanding the case for proceedings consistent with its opinion, the 3rd Circuit said the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania improperly certified the class to bring a pattern-or-practice discrimination suit under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 because it failed to consider whether the class members were qualified under the ADA.
Instead, according to Chief Judge Anthony Scirica's opinion, the district court relied solely on the "Teamsters framework," a two-stage method of proof for adjudicating pattern-or-practice claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that was born out of the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States.
"Contrary to the District Court's conclusion, adopting the Teamsters method of proof to adjudicate plaintiffs' claim does not obviate the need to consider the ADA's statutory elements," Scirica said. "We believe this error in identifying the legal standard controlling plaintiffs' claims resulted in an improper grant of class certification."
Scirica was joined in the decision by Circuit Judge Marjorie O. Rendell and visiting former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Scirica said in a footnote that the central claim in Hohider v. United Parcel Service Inc. was that UPS has an unwritten policy of requiring that injured or ill employees must be "100 percent cured" before they can return to work.
Scirica said in the footnote that the plaintiffs claimed UPS requires all employees returning from medical leave to present a full medical release certifying that the employee is able to perform the "essential functions" of his or her last job, which almost always include excessively demanding physical requirements designed to keep impaired employees from returning.
According to Scirica's footnote, the plaintiffs also alleged that UPS attempts to foreclose impaired employees from returning to work by requiring them to go through a 10-step process to determine whether their disabilities can be accommodated.
According to Scirica, the district court said plaintiffs' claims for compensatory and punitive damages could not be certified for classwide treatment but did not make a judgment regarding backpay claims.
Scirica said the district court found that if the plaintiffs were able to prove that the alleged policies existed and were part of UPS's "standard operating procedure," that would be enough to establish, during the first Teamsters stage of proceedings, that UPS had engaged in a classwide pattern or practice of ADA-prohibited discrimination and for the claims alleging this discrimination to be certified under Rule 23(a) and (b)(2).
The district court also found that inquiries regarding individual class members could be held over until the second Teamsters stage, which is devoted to questions of individual relief.
But Scirica said "the Teamsters framework alone ... does not justify this conclusion."
"That the existence of the policies alleged by the plaintiffs can be adjudicated on a classwide basis ... does not mean that these policies, if proven to exist, would amount to a classwide showing of unlawful discrimination under the ADA," he said, adding that the mere existence of a second Teamsters stage devoted to individual relief does not necessarily mean that all individualized inquiries with respect to a given class can be delayed until then.
Instead, Scirica said, ADA requirements must be considered in order to know what must be demonstrated in order for the court to reach, at the first Teamsters stage, a determination of unlawful discrimination and a finding of classwide liability and relief.
"If those elements include individualized inquiries that cannot be addressed in a manner consistent with Rule 23, then the class cannot be certified," Scirica said.
And the class in Hohider, Scirica concluded, does not meet ADA standards.
"The class, as defined, contains no unifying or limiting criteria -- with respect to employment positions held or desired, for instance, or conditions suffered, or accommodations sought -- that potentially would permit classwide evaluation of whether each member of the class is 'qualified' and thus can perform the essential function of a given job with or without reasonable accommodation," Scirica said.
Scirica said the district court's analysis was insufficient before it decided to sever the plaintiffs' compensatory and punitive damages claims because it "did not explain why this determination did not interfere with certification of the class for other purposes" and did not "address what effect, if any, such partial certification would have on the class action going forward."
Scirica also said the district court abused its discretion when it deferred analysis of the plaintiffs' back pay claims without first determining that the claims actually met the requirements of Rule 23.
The plaintiffs' lead attorney, Judith S. Scolnick of Scott & Scott in New York, said she was "obviously very disappointed" with the 3rd Circuit's ruling.
Scolnick said she had only read the entire opinion once but added that, based on that read, it's "very hard for me to envision what would be a permissible class action under the ADA that would be consistent with this opinion."
UPS' lead counsel, Mark A. Perry of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., deferred comment to UPS's public relations manager, Susan Rosenberg.
Rosenberg said, "UPS believed that no class was warranted."
"We think UPS's policies are very clear that any workers that are injured or ill may return to work when they can perform the essential functions of a particular job, either with or without a reasonable accommodation," she said.
