Isaac v. North Carolina Department of Transportation

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 05-1680
JAMES ISAAC; WILLIAM STEWART; ALVIN WILLIAMS;
GERALD AGNEW; WAYMOND CHAVIS; JAMES MITCHELL;
LYDELL LANDRUM,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
versus
NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION,
Defendant - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. W. Earl Britt, Senior
District Judge. (CA-03-137-5-BR)
Submitted: June 16, 2006 Decided: July 11, 2006
Before WIDENER, WILLIAMS, and MOTZ, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Alan McSurely, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for Appellants. Roy
Cooper, North Carolina Attorney General, Tiare B. Smiley, Special
Deputy Attorney General, NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
See Local Rule 36(c).
PER CURIAM:
Seven African-American employees of the North Carolina
Department of Transportation (“NCDOT”) sued their employer alleging
causes of action under Title VII, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1981 (West 2003),
and the North Carolina Constitution after a co-worker displayed a
noose in their workplace during Black History Month. NCDOT removed
the case to federal court and moved for summary judgment. The
district court dismissed the § 1981 cause of action and granted
summary judgment to NCDOT on the state constitutional claims and
the Title VII retaliation claims. The court denied summary
judgment on the hostile work environment claims, however. After
trial on those claims, a jury found that the co-worker’s behavior
constituted a hostile work environment, but that NCDOT was not
liable for the co-worker’s acts. The employees appeal, contending
that the district court should have remanded their state
constitutional claims to state court, and that the court gave
erroneous jury instructions regarding the employer’s liability for
the hostile work environment. We affirm.
I.
The employees work at NCDOT’s Beryl Road Equipment Unit. They
maintain that on or about February 1, 2002, the first day of Black
History Month, a fellow employee, Raymond Powell, fashioned a
hangman’s noose out of a piece of rope and hung it from a wire
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antenna over his workstation. They further contend that the rope
remained in place until March 14, and that during that time, shop
supervisors repeatedly commented on the noose and laughed. They
also maintain that at a staff meeting in March, Powell stated, “we
[white people] need to go back to the way things used to be. Fight
‘em and hang ‘em like my father did.”
The employees reported these allegations to the Civil Rights
Division of the state Office of Administrative Hearings, which is
the agency designated by the state legislature to receive EEOC
complaints. NCDOT received notice of those EEOC charges on March
14, 2002, at which point it began its own investigation of the
events. On May 7, 2002, NCDOT issued a statement, concluding that
it found no noose in the workshop, and that the only rope at
Powell’s workstation was a “special tool designed by Raymond Powell
. . . . to pull electrical wire and hydraulic hoses through tight
inaccessible pathways such as pipes, tubes, and other metal/steel
pathways.” In July 2002, the Office of Administrative Hearings
determined there was “credible evidence” that Powell had displayed
a hangman’s noose. After failed conciliation efforts between the
employees and NCDOT, EEOC issued right-to-sue letters to the
employees, who then filed the instant action.
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II.
On appeal, the employees first contend that the district court
erred by granting summary judgment against them on their state
constitutional claims instead of remanding those claims to state
court. They seem to suggest that the district court lacked
jurisdiction over the state claims. See Brief of Appellants at 22.
Because the district court had supplemental jurisdiction over
the state claims, it did not err in exercising that jurisdiction.
Federal courts may exercise supplemental jurisdiction over state
law claims if they “form part of the same case or controversy” as
claims that are properly within the jurisdiction of the federal
court. 28 U.S.C.A. § 1367 (West 1993). “The state and federal
claims must derive from a common nucleus of operative fact. But
if, considered without regard to their federal or state character,
a plaintiff’s claims are such that he would ordinarily be expected
to try them all in one judicial proceeding, then, assuming
substantiality of the federal issues, there is power in federal
courts to hear the whole.” United Mine Workers of Am. v. Gibbs,
383 U.S. 715, 725 (1966); see also Axel Johnson, Inc. v. Carroll
Carolina Oil Co., Inc., 145 F.3d 660, 662 (4th Cir. 1998) (noting
that § 1367 codified the Supreme Court’s holding in Gibbs).
There can be no doubt that the employees’ state constitutional
claims arise out of the “same core of operative facts” as their
Title VII claims. Indeed, in pleading their state claims in the
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complaint, the employees specifically incorporated by reference all
of the factual allegations supporting their federal claims. All of
the allegations in the complaint concern the alleged harassment of
the employees by co-workers and the NCDOT’s assertedly inadequate
investigation of those complaints. Therefore, § 1367 permits the
exercise of federal jurisdiction over the state claims.
Of course, even if the requirements for supplemental
jurisdiction are met, a district court has the discretion not to
exercise such jurisdiction. A federal court may decline to
exercise jurisdiction over state law claims if, inter alia, “the
claim raises a novel or complex issue of state law.” 28 U.S.C.A.
§ 1367(c). The employees apparently believe that this exception
applies here; they contend that their claims present novel
questions of state law because “the 1971 anti-discrimination clause
in question has not been interpreted by [the] North Carolina
appellate division.” Brief of Appellant at 12.
That assertion is simply false. Article I, § 19 of the North
Carolina Constitution -- on which the employees base their state
constitutional claims -- is not a new or obscure provision. On the
contrary, it is the state’s fundamental guarantee of equal
protection. North Carolina courts have repeatedly interpreted this
provision, holding that it parallels the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The principle of equal protection of the law is explicit in both
the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and
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Article I, Section 19 of the Constitution of North Carolina . . .
. Our courts use the same test as federal courts in evaluating the
constitutionality of challenged classifications under an equal
protection analysis.” Richardson v. N.C. Dep’t of Corr., 478
S.E.2d 501, 505 (N.C. 1996); see also Disher v. Weaver, 308 F.
Supp. 2d 614, 624 (M.D.N.C. 2004) (“North Carolina courts have
consistently interpreted [Art. I, § 19] to be synonymous with the
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States
Constitution, finding that equivalent rights and protections are
provided by each source.”) (citing Bacon v. Lee, 549 S.E.2d 840,
856 n.11 (N.C. 2001)).
Even if the state constitutional claims did present novel or
complex questions of state law, the district court was not required
to remand them. Section 1367(c) is permissive -- it merely allows
a district court to dispose of a state claim over which it could
exercise supplemental jurisdiction. For that reason, we review a
district court’s decision to retain jurisdiction for abuse of
discretion. See, e.g., White v. County of Newberry, S.C., 985 F.2d
168, 172 (4th Cir. 1993) (reviewing decision to retain jurisdiction
under § 1367 for abuse of discretion). In the present case, the
district court’s decision to retain discretion over state claims
based on the same core of operative facts as the employees’ § 1981
and Title VII claims constitutes no abuse of discretion.
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III.
The employees next argue that the district court erred in
defining the term “supervisor” in its instructions to the jury.
They preserved this contention by objecting to that definition at
trial; accordingly, we review the alleged error for abuse of
discretion. See United States v. Ebersole, 411 F.3d 517, 526 (4th
Cir. 2005).
The district court instructed the jury that if it determined
that a co-worker created a hostile work environment for the
employees, it could not impose liability on NCDOT unless it found
two additional facts by a preponderance of the evidence:
First, that plaintiff’s supervisor or successively
higher authority knew, that is had actual knowledge, or
should have known, that is had constructive knowledge, of
the racially hostile or abusive environment; and,
Second, that the supervisor or higher authority
permitted it to continue by failing to take remedial
action.
The employees acknowledge that this instruction was a correct
statement of the law. See Brief of Appellant at 30.
Nevertheless, they argue that the court erred when it defined
the term “supervisor” as follows:
A supervisor is a person with immediate or
successively higher authority over the employee. The
essence of supervisory status is the authority to affect
terms and conditions of employment, primarily consisting
of the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or
discipline the employee. This includes someone with the
power to provide significant input into employment
decisions, to instruct the offending employee to cease
harassing behavior, or to implement other means of taking
remedial action.
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J.A. 904. According to the employees, this instruction
impermissibly “directed the jury away from agency and negligence
law applicable to a co-employee harasser case,” and instead invited
them to consider the “relative power of [employer’s] ‘agents.’”
Brief of Appellee at 30, 35. Although their argument is not
entirely clear, apparently the employees contend on appeal that the
district court should not have defined “supervisor,” but simply
should have focused on NCDOT as an organization -- “what did the
employer or agency know? What should it have known? When did it
know about the harassment? When should it have known about the
harassment?” Brief of Appellant at 33 (emphasis in original).
The problem with this argument is that we cannot know what
NCDOT knew (or should have known) without knowing what its agents
and supervisors knew (or should have known). An organization can
only act through human beings. See United States v. W.F. Brinkley
& Son Const. Co., Inc., 783 F.3d 1157, 1159 n.5 (1986) (“Of course,
a corporation acts through its officers or agents.”); see also
United States v. One Parcel of Land Located at 7326 Highway 45
North, 965 F.3d 311, 316 (7th Cir. 1992) (“As a legal fiction, a
corporation cannot ‘know’ like an individual. . . . A corporation
acts through its agents. Similarly, a corporation ‘knows’ through
its agents.”) (citing W. Fletcher, 3 Corporations § 787 (1986)).
The employees themselves acknowledged just this in the
district court, asking the court to instruct the jury:
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Defendant, as the Plaintiffs’ employer, will be
responsible or liable for permitting such behavior only
if the Plaintiff proves by a preponderance of the
evidence that the Plaintiff’s supervisor or successively
higher authority knew, that is, had actual knowledge[,]
or should have known, that is, had constructive
knowledge, of the hostile or abusive work environment and
permitted it to continue by failing to take remedial
action.
Like the court’s instruction, the employees’ proposed instruction
imposed liability only when a “supervisor or successively higher
authority” had knowledge of the harassment. Thus, the district
court did not abuse its discretion by focusing the jury’s attention
on the knowledge of NCDOT’s supervisory employees rather than on
what NDCOT, as a nameless, faceless entity, “knew.”
IV.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid the decisional process. For all
of the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
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