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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 18-14484
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 6:14-cv-00094-LGW-GRS
JAMIE NESBITT,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
CANDLER COUNTY, GEORGIA,
d.b.a.
Candler County Ambulance Service,
Defendant-Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
________________________
(January 3, 2020)
Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, BRANCH, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.
ED CARNES, Chief Judge:
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This case turns on what Congress meant when it said “because of” in the
antiretaliation provision of the False Claims Act,
31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1). When
we interpret the text of a statute, “we must presume that Congress said what it
meant and meant what it said.” United States v. Steele,
147 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th
Cir. 1998) (en banc); accord, e.g., Conn. Nat’l Bank v. Germain,
503 U.S. 249,
253–54 (1992); In re Thompson,
939 F.3d 1279, 1285 (11th Cir. 2019). Because
of our obligation to presume that “because of” means “because of” and not
something else, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
I.
The plaintiff, Jamie Nesbitt, started working as an emergency medical
technician for Candler County’s ambulance service in 2006. Several years later
one of his coworkers, Donald Greer, was promoted to be the new deputy director
of the ambulance service. That was when Nesbitt’s problems began.
Nesbitt grew concerned about how Greer was instructing him and other staff
members to fill out certain paperwork. Part of his job as an EMT was to complete
a “trip report” after each ambulance ride to document the condition of the patient
and the medical necessity of the ambulance service. Medicare relies on those
reports when deciding whether to pay for the service. The narrative section of a
trip report is especially important for billing purposes.
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According to Nesbitt, when Greer became the deputy director he started
pressuring the EMTs to write in their report narratives that patients were unable to
walk, even if they could. That way Medicare would pay for more trips. Nesbitt
believed that Greer was asking him to commit fraud, so he began complaining to
Greer himself and other County officials.
After Nesbitt started complaining, Greer changed his schedule. Ordinarily
the County EMTs worked two 24-hour shifts per week and were on call for two
additional 24-hour days. The on-call days gave the EMTs a chance to pick up
more overtime hours. Greer started putting Nesbitt on call for only the first half of
a day instead of for the full 24 hours, which meant less overtime pay.
With Greer’s approval, Nesbitt began working another job at a private
ambulance company called Meddixx. The County had a policy prohibiting EMTs
from working side jobs without the approval of the ambulance service director.
Greer was not the director, David Moore was. Nesbitt assumed that Moore
somehow knew about his other job, but there’s no evidence that Moore did know
about it, much less that he approved it.
The County fired Nesbitt in 2014. The five-member Board of
Commissioners had the sole authority to hire and fire County employees. Usually
when an employee was fired, the County Administrator or a department head
would make the termination recommendation to an individual Board member, who
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would present the recommendation to the full Board. The Board would then
discuss the recommendation and vote on it.
Greer and Moore started the process to terminate Nesbitt. They met with the
County Administrator, William Lindsey, and told him that they wanted to fire
Nesbitt because he would not follow orders and had violated the County’s policy
on side jobs. The Board voted to terminate Nesbitt’s employment, and after that,
Moore and Greer called him into Greer’s office and told him that he no longer
worked for the County. They gave him a letter stating that he had been fired for
two reasons: his unauthorized job with Meddixx and his refusal to fill out trip
reports in “the proper way.” Doc. 57-6.
II.
In August 2014 Nesbitt filed suit under the False Claims Act,
31 U.S.C.
§§ 3729–3731, and the Georgia False Medicaid Claims Act,
Ga. Code Ann. §§ 49-
4-168–168.6, alleging that the County had engaged in a fraudulent scheme related
to billing for ambulance services and had fired him in retaliation for his
whistleblowing. In June 2016 the United States intervened and reached a
settlement with the County and Nesbitt. As part of the settlement, Nesbitt and the
government voluntarily dismissed the fraud claims, but Nesbitt’s False Claims Act
retaliation claim moved forward. In granting summary judgment for the County on
that claim, the district court concluded that although Nesbitt had engaged in
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“protected conduct” he had not created a genuine issue of material fact that he had
been fired because of that conduct. This is Nesbitt’s appeal.
III.
We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment,
considering all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.
See Hamilton v. Southland Christian Sch., Inc.,
680 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir.
2012). Summary judgment is proper “if the movant shows that there is no genuine
dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of
law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). “[A]t the summary judgment stage the judge’s
function is not himself to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter
but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial.” Anderson v. Liberty
Lobby, Inc.,
477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986).
IV.
The result in this case, as we have said, depends on the standard of causation
that applies to retaliation claims under the False Claims Act. Nesbitt conceded at
oral argument that if a but-for standard instead of a motivating factor standard
applies, he loses.
A party can be held to concessions and admissions its counsel made at oral
argument. Crowe v. Coleman,
113 F.3d 1536, 1542 (11th Cir. 1997). But there is
a difference between concessions about the law and those about how the law
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applies and the result it produces given the facts of a specific case. Contrast
Roberts v. Galen of Va., Inc.,
525 U.S. 249, 253 (1999) (“[T]he concession of a
point on appeal by respondent is by no means dispositive of a legal issue . . . .”);
U.S. Nat’l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc.,
508 U.S. 439, 448
(1993) (“[T]he Court of Appeals acted without any impropriety in refusing to
accept what in effect was a stipulation on a question of law.”); Bourdon v. U.S.
Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (DHS),
940 F.3d 537, 547 n.6 (11th Cir. 2019) (“[T]he
Government cannot concede away the proper interpretation of a statute . . . .”); and
United States v. Lee,
586 F.3d 859, 866 (11th Cir. 2009) (refusing to accept the
government’s concession as to the interpretation of a statutory term); with I.L. v.
Alabama,
739 F.3d 1273, 1284 (11th Cir. 2014) (“The district court and the
plaintiffs alike were entitled to rely on Alabama’s factual concession that taxes
would rise if the court enjoined enforcement of Amendment 373 and to believe,
given that concession, that no further evidence on the issue was needed.”); Rozar
v. Mullis,
85 F.3d 556, 565 (11th Cir. 1996) (accepting a party’s concession that
there was no evidence that the defendants had violated the Fourteenth
Amendment); and United States v. Gerber,
994 F.2d 1556, 1558 (11th Cir. 1993)
(accepting a defendant’s concession that certain evidence was wrongly suppressed
under the Fourth Amendment).
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Nesbitt has conceded nothing about the proper causation standard, only that
given the facts he will lose if the but-for standard applies. We accept his
concession about the result of applying that standard to the facts of this case.
Nesbitt loses under the but-for standard because it requires him to do what he
cannot, which is to “show that the harm would not have occurred in the absence
of[,] that is, but for” his protected conduct. Univ. of Tex. Sw. Med. Ctr. v. Nassar,
570 U.S. 338, 346–47 (2013) (quotation marks and dash omitted). To avoid
losing, Nesbitt argues for application of the motivating factor standard. That more
plaintiff-friendly standard requires only a showing that the protected conduct “was
a motivating factor for any employment [decision], even though other factors also
motivated the [decision].” See
id. at 349 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(m)). The
result of this case depends on the choice between the but-for and the motivating
factor causation standards.
That choice was made by Congress when it worded the relevant statutory
provision:
Any employee shall be entitled to all relief necessary to make that
employee whole, if that employee is discharged, demoted, suspended,
threatened, harassed, or in any other manner discriminated against in
the terms and conditions of employment because of lawful acts done by
the employee in furtherance of an action under this section or other
efforts to stop [one] or more violations of this subchapter.
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31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)(1) (emphasis added) (references to contractors, agents, and
associated others omitted).
“In construing a statute we must begin, and often should end as well, with
the language of the statute itself.” Steele,
147 F.3d at 1318 (quotation marks
omitted). Here the crucial language is the phrase “because of.” The work needed
to interpret that phrase has been done for us in a pair of Supreme Court decisions.
See Univ. of Tex. Sw. Med. Ctr. v. Nassar,
570 U.S. 338 (2013); Gross v. FBL Fin.
Servs., Inc.,
557 U.S. 167 (2009). They involved interpretation of nearly identical
language in two other job discrimination statutes.
In Gross the Court decided the standard of causation for discrimination
claims brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967,
29 U.S.C. §§ 621–634. See
557 U.S. at 173. The relevant part of that statute
provides: “It shall be unlawful for an employer . . . to fail or refuse to hire or to
discharge any individual or otherwise 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) (emphasis added). The
Supreme Court observed that the phrase “because of,” as it is commonly used,
means “by reason of: on account of.” Gross,
557 U.S. at 176 (quotation marks
omitted). That means, the Court held, age must be the but-for cause of the
employer’s adverse decision: age must have had “a determinative influence on the
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outcome” of the employer’s decision-making process.
Id. (quotation marks and
emphasis omitted).
Four years later came the Nassar decision. See
570 U.S. 338. It involved
the antiretaliation provision of Title VII, which provides:
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to
discriminate against any of his employees or applicants for employment
. . . because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment
practice by this subchapter, or because he has made a charge, testified,
assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding,
or hearing under this subchapter.
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) (emphasis added). The question was what standard of
causation applied under that provision. Nassar, 570 U.S. at 346. The Court began
with two premises. First, Congress legislates against the background of traditional
tort law. See id. at 347. Unless something in the statute says otherwise, we
presume that Congress meant to incorporate familiar tort principles into federal tort
statutes. See id. And it is “textbook tort law that an action is not regarded as a
cause of an event if the particular event would have occurred without it.” Id.
(quotation marks omitted). Second, the Court acknowledged the importance of its
Gross decision to the question at issue. See id. at 343, 349–51. Gross provided
insight into the proper interpretation of “because” based on the plain meaning of
the word. See id. at 350–51.
The Supreme Court focused on the statute’s text. See id. at 352. It observed
that there is no “meaningful textual difference between” the antiretaliation
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provision in Title VII and the antidiscrimination provision in the ADEA. Id. It
follows, the Court held, that “Title VII retaliation claims require proof that the
desire to retaliate was the but-for cause of the challenged employment action.” Id.
The Court also rejected a number of “counterargument[s]” based on Congress’
1991 amendments to Title VII, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s
interpretation of the statute, and the Court’s Title VII antidiscrimination precedent.
See id. at 352–63.
Our reading of Gross and Nassar convinces us that the but-for causation
standard applies to claims under the antiretaliation provision of the False Claims
Act just as it does to the antiretaliation provision of Title VII and the
antidiscrimination provision of the ADEA. The key “because of” and “because”
language is identical or materially identical in all three statutes. See Nassar 570
U.S. at 352 (noting that there is a “lack of any meaningful textual difference
between” the “because” language in Title VII and the “because of” language in the
ADEA). The analytical result must be identical as well given our duty, as an
“inferior court[],” to follow Supreme Court decisions. See U.S. Const. Art. III,
§ 1.
Those of our sister circuits that have taken Gross and Nassar into account
have concluded, as we do, that the but-for causation standard applies to False
Claims Act retaliation claims. See DiFiore v. CSL Behring, LLC,
879 F.3d 71,
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76–78 (3d Cir. 2018); United States ex rel. King v. Solvay Pharm., Inc.,
871 F.3d
318, 333 (5th Cir. 2017). They reasoned, as we have reasoned, that we must
interpret the phrase “because of” in the False Claims Act the same way the
Supreme Court has interpreted materially identical language in similar statutes.
See DiFiore, 879 F.3d at 76–78; King, 871 F.3d at 333.
Some of our sister circuits that have not taken Gross and Nassar into account
have reached a different result, concluding that the motivating factor standard of
causation is the proper one to apply under the antiretaliation provision of the False
Claims Act. See Singletary v. Howard Univ.,
939 F.3d 287, 293 (D.C. Cir. 2019);
United States ex rel. Ziebell v. Fox Valley Workforce Dev. Bd., Inc.,
806 F.3d 946,
953 (7th Cir. 2015); McKenzie v. BellSouth Telecomms., Inc.,
219 F.3d 508, 518
(6th Cir. 2000). A review of those decisions shows the error of their ways.
Instead of considering the plain meaning of the statute’s text, the Sixth
Circuit in McKenzie jumped to the legislative history of the antiretaliation
provision of the False Claims Act. See
219 F.3d at 518. The court cited a Senate
report stating that to establish a retaliation claim, the “employee must show that
‘the retaliation was motivated at least in part by the employee’s engaging in
protected activity.’”
Id. (quoting S. Rep. No. 99-345, at 35 (1986), as reprinted in
1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5266, 5300). That Senate report is all the Sixth Circuit
considered. See
id. The McKenzie decision predated Gross and Nassar, and the
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Sixth Circuit has not revisited the question in a published opinion since those two
Supreme Court decisions were issued.
More than a decade before the Supreme Court decided Gross and Nassar, the
D.C. Circuit adopted a motivating factor causation standard for False Claims Act
retaliation claims. See United States ex rel. Yesudian v. Howard University,
153
F.3d 731, 736 (D.C. Cir. 1998). Like the Sixth Circuit in McKenzie, the D.C.
Circuit in Yesudian made the mistake of ignoring the plain meaning of the phrase
“because of” and looking solely to the Senate report as if it were the law. See
id.
The D.C. Circuit has reiterated that mistake once after Gross but before Nassar, see
United States ex rel. Schweizer v. Oce N.V.,
677 F.3d 1228, 1238, 1240 (D.C. Cir.
2012), and once more for good measure after Nassar, see Singletary, 939 F.3d at
293, 303. In its Schweizer decision, the D.C. Circuit did not mention the Gross
decision and did not consider whether to apply a but-for causation standard. See
Schweizer, 677 F.3d at 1238–40. Instead, without question or comment it simply
followed Yesudian as its circuit precedent. See id. at 1238, 1240 (citing Yesudian,
153 F.3d at 736). It did the same thing again in Singletary. See 939 F.3d at 293,
303.
In Brandon v. Anesthesia & Pain Management Associates, Ltd.,
277 F.3d
936 (7th Cir. 2002), which was decided before either Gross or Nassar, the Seventh
Circuit stated in dicta that a motivating factor standard applies to False Claims Act
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retaliation claims. See
id. at 944. Brandon borrowed that standard from the D.C.
Circuit’s Yesudian decision without any independent analysis of the statute’s text.
See
id. Later, in Fanslow v. Chicago Manufacturing Center, Inc.,
384 F.3d 469
(7th Cir. 2004), the court applied the motivating factor standard to a False Claims
Act retaliation claim in reliance on Brandon, again without any analysis of the
statute’s text. See
id. at 485.
After Gross and Nassar the Seventh Circuit decided Ziebell,
806 F.3d 946, in
which it applied the motivating factor standard to a False Claims Act retaliation
claim because of Fanslow and found that the plaintiff had failed to meet that
standard. See
id. at 953. The court did not consider whether Gross and Nassar had
overruled Fanslow or might militate in favor of a but-for standard. See
id.
Although later decisions from the Seventh Circuit have suggested that Ziebell took
the wrong approach, none has explicitly overruled it.1 In one of those decisions,
United States ex rel. Marshall v. Woodward, Inc.,
812 F.3d 556 (7th Cir. 2015), the
court actually applied a but-for standard to a False Claims Act retaliation claim
without analyzing the statute or any precedent. See
id. at 564. It did so because
the parties agreed that standard applied. See
id. The court then concluded that the
1
In the Seventh Circuit, an opinion that would overrule a prior published decision cannot
be published “unless it is first circulated among the active members of th[e] court and a majority
of them do not vote to rehear en banc the issue.” 7th Cir. R. 40(e); see, e.g., Chapman v. First
Index, Inc.,
796 F.3d 783, 787 (7th Cir. 2015).
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plaintiffs failed to meet the but-for standard. See
id. at 564–65. And after that, in
Heath v. Indianapolis Fire Department,
889 F.3d 872 (7th Cir. 2018), the court
acknowledged in dicta that Gross and Nassar might merit revisiting Fanslow and
the motivating factor standard in the context of False Claims Act retaliation claims.
See
id. at 874. But nothing came of it because the plaintiff’s claim failed under
any causation standard. See
id. So as far as we can tell, the motivating factor
standard articulated in Fanslow and Ziebell remains the law of the Seventh
Circuit.2
In sum, in the circuits that still apply a motivating factor standard of
causation to False Claims Act retaliation claims it can be traced back to a textual
focus on legislative history or to following out-of-circuit law that relied on
legislative history. See McKenzie,
219 F.3d at 518; Yesudian,
153 F.3d at 736; see
also Brandon,
277 F.3d at 944 (citing Yesudian,
153 F.3d at 736). Nesbitt invites
us to rely on legislative history too.
2
In its Norbeck decision, the Eighth Circuit appeared to adopt a motivating factor
causation standard for False Claims Act retaliation claims. See Norbeck v. Basin Elec. Power
Coop.,
215 F.3d 848, 850–52 (8th Cir. 2000). Later Eighth Circuit decisions, however, clarify
that to prove causation the plaintiff must establish that the employer’s decision was “motivated
solely” by his protected conduct. See, e.g., United States ex rel. Strubbe v. Crawford Cty. Mem.
Hosp.,
915 F.3d 1158, 1167 (8th Cir. 2019); Wilkins v. St. Louis Hous. Auth.,
314 F.3d 927, 933
(8th Cir. 2002). To the extent that Norbeck did adopt a motivating factor standard it is flawed
for the same reason some of the other decisions we have discussed are flawed: it relies on
legislative history instead of the text of the False Claims Act. See
215 F.3d at 850–51. And like
some other circuits, the Eighth Circuit has never reconsidered its causation standard in light of
Gross and Nassar.
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But we should not, cannot, and do not use legislative history to get around
the plain meaning of a statute’s text. See Ratzlaf v. United States,
510 U.S. 135,
147–48 (1994) (“[W]e do not resort to legislative history to cloud a statutory text
that is clear.”). “When the import of the words Congress has used is clear, as it is
here, we need not resort to legislative history, and we certainly should not do so to
undermine the plain meaning of the statutory language.” Harris v. Garner,
216
F.3d 970, 976 (11th Cir. 2000) (en banc). To paraphrase Justice Jackson, it is
better to analyze a statute than it is to psychoanalyze Congress; resorting to
legislative history is less interpreting statutory language than recreating it.3 The
Supreme Court interpreted the key statutory language on which this case turns, and
we follow its decisions. We don’t presume to psychoanalyze Congress, just as the
Supreme Court didn’t.
AFFIRMED.
3
United States v. Pub. Util. Comm’n,
345 U.S. 295, 319 (1953) (Jackson, J., concurring)
(“I should concur in this result more readily if the Court could reach it by analysis of the statute
instead of by psychoanalysis of Congress. When we decide from legislative history . . . we must
put ourselves in the place of a majority of Congressmen and act according to the impression we
think this history should have made on them. Never having been a Congressman, I am
handicapped in that weird endeavor. That process seems to me not interpretation of a statute but
creation of a statute.”).
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