[1] |
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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[2] |
No. 95-340
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1996.SCT.0000088 <http://www.versuslaw.com>
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[4] |
May 13, 1996
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UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS UNION LOCAL 751,
PETITIONER
v.
BROWN GROUP, INC., DBA BROWN SHOE
COMPANY
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[6] |
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT
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[7] |
Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth
Circuit.
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[8] |
No. 95-340.
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[9] |
Argued February 20, 1996
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[10] |
Decided May 13, 1996
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Petitioner union filed this suit, alleging that respondent company
began to lay off workers in connection with the closing of one of its
plants before giving the union the closing notice required by the Worker
Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (the WARN Act), and seeking
backpay for each of its affected members. The District Court dismissed the
complaint, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the suit was
barred because the union failed to meet the third part of the test for
determining associational standing.
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Held:
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1. The WARN Act grants a union authority to sue for damages on behalf
of its members, North Star Steel Co. v. Thomas, 515 U. S. ___, ___; the
writ of certiorari therefore was not improvidently granted. Pp.
3-6.
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[14] |
2. The union has standing to bring this action. Pp.
6-15.
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(a) Under modern associational standing doctrine, an organization may
sue to redress its members' injuries when: "(a) its members would
otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it
seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose; and (c)
neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the
participation of individual members in the lawsuit." Hunt v. Washington
State Apple Advertising Comm'n, 432 U. S. 333, 343. The requirement of
individual participation has been understood to preclude associational
standing when an organization seeks damages on behalf of its members. The
question here is whether a bar to the union's suit found in this third
prong of the test is constitutional and absolute, or prudential and
malleable by Congress. The Court of Appeals apparently concluded that the
test's third prong is of constitutional character, for it denied standing
even though the WARN Act permits the union to sue for its members'
damages. Pp. 6-10.
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[16] |
(b) The test's first prong is grounded in Article III as an element of
the constitutional case or controversy requirement. Resort to general
principles, however, leads to the conclusion that the third prong is a
prudential impediment that Congress may abrogate. Hunt's requirement that
an organization suing as representative include at least one member with
standing to present, in his or her own right, the claim pleaded by the
association is an Article III necessity for the an association's
representative suit. Hunt's second prong is complementary to the first,
because it raises an assurance that the association's litigators will
themselves have a stake in the resolution of the dispute, and thus be in a
position to serve as the defendant's natural adversary. But once an
association has satisfied Hunt's first and second prongs assuring
adversarial vigor in pursuing a claim for which member Article III
standing exists, it is difficult to see a constitutional necessity for
anything more.
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[17] |
The third prong is best seen as focusing on matters of administrative
convenience and efficiency, not on elements of a case or controversy.
Circumstantial evidence of that prong's prudential nature is seen in the
wide variety of other contexts in which a statute, federal rule, or
accepted common-law practice permits one person to sue on behalf of
another, even where damages are sought. See, e.g., 42 U. S. C. Section(s)
2000e-5(f)(1). Pp. 10-15. 50 F. 3d 1426, reversed and
remanded.
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[18] |
Souter, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
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[19] |
Justice Souter
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[20] |
On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit.
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The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (the WARN Act),
102 Stat. 890, 29 U. S. C. Section(s) 2101 et seq., obligates certain
employers to give workers or their union 60 days' notice before a plant
closing or mass layoff. If an employer fails to give the notice, the
employees may sue for backpay for each day of the violation, and, in the
alternative, the union is ostensibly authorized to sue on their behalf.
See North Star Steel Co. v. Thomas, 515 U. S. ___ (1995); Part II,
infra.
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[22] |
Permitting a union to sue under the Act on behalf of its
employee-members raises a question of standing. In Hunt v. Washington
State Apple Advertising Comm'n, 432 U. S. 333 (1977), we described a
three-prong test for an association's standing to sue based on injury to
one of its members. The third element, at issue here, would bar such a
suit when "the claim asserted [or] the relief requested requires the
participation of individual members in the lawsuit." Id., at 343. Relying
on Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490 (1975), Hunt held that "individual
participation" is not normally necessary when an association seeks
prospective or injunctive relief for its members, but indicated that such
participation would be required in an action for damages to an
association's members, thus suggesting that an association's action for
damages running solely to its members would be barred for want of the
association's standing to sue. See Hunt, supra, at 343.
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[23] |
The questions presented here are whether, in enacting the WARN Act,
Congress intended to abrogate this otherwise applicable standing
limitation so as to permit the union to sue for damages running to its
workers, and, if it did, whether it had the constitutional authority to do
so. We answer yes to each question.
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[24] |
I.
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[25] |
On January 17, 1992, respondent Brown Shoe Company wrote to a
representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers International
Union, stating that Brown Shoe would shut down its Dixon, Missouri, plant
and permanently lay off 277 employees beginning on March 20, 1992. App.
62-63. The complaint filed by petitioner United Food and Commercial
Workers Union Local 751 charged that Brown Shoe's representations were
false insofar as they are relevant here, and that in fact, even before
sending the letter, Brown Shoe had begun the layoffs, which continued
through February and into March. App 8-9. *fn1 The union accordingly claimed a violation of the WARN
Act and sought the statutory remedy of 60-days' backpay for each of its
affected members.
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The District Court dismissed the complaint under Fed. Rule Civ. Proc.
12(b)(6), saying that "when an organization seeks to recover monetary
relief on behalf of its members, courts have found that such claims
necessarily require participation of individual members in the suit." 820
F. Supp. 1192, 1193-1194 (ED Mo. 1993). The Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit affirmed, concluding that "[e]ach union member who wishes
to recover WARN Act damages from Brown Shoe must participate in the suit
so that his or her right to damages can be determined and the quantum of
damages can be calculated by the court on the basis of particularized
proof. Therefore, the union cannot meet the third part of the Hunt test
and is precluded from asserting associational standing." 50 F. 3d 1426,
1432 (1995). *fn2 We granted certiorari, 516 U. S. ___ (1995), and now
reverse.
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[27] |
II.
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At the outset, Brown Shoe argues that the WARN Act grants a union no
authority to sue for damages on behalf of its members. Because the
question on which we granted certiorari (whether Congress has the
constitutional authority to alter the third prong of the associational
standing enquiry) assumes that the WARN Act does grant the union such
authority, Brown Shoe urges us to declare the writ of certiorari
improvidently granted. In North Star Steel, however, we noted, contrary to
Brown Shoe's position, that "[t]he class of plaintiffs" who may sue for
backpay under the WARN Act "includes aggrieved employees (or their unions,
as representatives)." 515 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2), and on further
consideration we have no doubt that we were reading the statute
correctly.
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The key requirement of the Act is found in Section(s) 2102, which
prohibits an employer from ordering "a plant closing or mass layoff until
the end of a 60-day period" running from the date of the employer's
written notice of the closing or layoff "(1) to each representative of the
affected employees as of the time of the notice or, if there is no such
representative at that time, to each affected employee," and "(2) to the
State dislocated worker unit . . . and the chief elected official of the
unit of local government within which such closing or layoff is to occur."
29 U. S. C. Section(s) 2102(a). Congress defined the "representative" to
which Section(s) 2102(a)(1) refers as the employees' union, "an exclusive
representative of employees within the meaning of section 9(a) or 8(f) of
the National Labor Relations Act (29 U. S. C. 159(a), 158(f)) or section 2
of the Railway Labor Act (45 U. S. C. 152)." 102 Stat. 890, 29 U. S. C.
Section(s) 2101(a)(4).
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[30] |
Enforcement of the Section(s) 2102 notice requirement is addressed in
Section(s) 2104(a), the following provisions of which answer Brown Shoe's
argument. Section 2104(a)(1) makes a violating employer liable to "each
aggrieved employee" for backpay and benefits for each day of the
violation. *fn3 Section 2104(a)(5) provides that "[a] person seeking
to enforce such liability, including a representative of employees . . .
aggrieved under paragraph (1) . . . may sue either for such person or for
other persons similarly situated, or both [in an appropriate district
court]." Since the union is the "representative of employees . . .
aggrieved," it is a person who may sue on behalf of the "persons similarly
situated" in order to "enforce such liability." "[S]uch liability" must
refer to liability under Section(s) 2104, since its remedies are
exclusive. See 29 U. S. C. Section(s) 2104(b). Because the section makes
no provision for liability to the union itself, any "such liability"
sought by the union must (so far as concerns us here) be liability to its
employee-members, so long as they can be understood to be "persons
similarly situated" for the purposes of the Act. We believe they may be so
understood, since each is aggrieved by the employer's failure to give
timely notice.
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[31] |
Brown Shoe's alternative construction is unconvincing. It contends
that a previous bill would have imposed civil liability on employers who
failed to notify the union of a plant closing or mass layoff, and would
have permitted the union to sue to recover a penalty where an employer
failed to provide the required notice. See S. 538, 100th Cong., 1st Sess.
(1987). In the ultimately enacted version of the legislation, Congress
eliminated this provision, with the result that the WARN Act no longer
speaks to the "rights and welfare of unions," Brief for Respondent 12.
Brown Shoe's argument is that the class of persons "similarly situated" is
the class entitled to sue for damages, so that the elimination of the
union's entitlement to a civil penalty requires the conclusion that the
union is no longer "similarly situated" to "employees . . . aggrieved
under paragraph (1)," and thus not permitted to sue under the
Act.
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[32] |
The flaw in this argument is that it would force us to conclude that
the provision for suits by unions is attributable only to congressional
inadvertence, whereas inadvertence is not the only possible, or even
plausible, explanation for the authorization. For one, the statutory
reference to persons "similarly situated" can very readily be understand
to mean the class of persons to whom notice is owed but not given. In this
respect, the union and its members are certainly persons "similarly
situated." Brown Shoe's argument also fails to explain why Congress would
necessarily have intended to eliminate the union's power to sue on behalf
of members (as Brown Shoe assumes the union could have done prior to the
amendment) just because the union was no longer entitled to a penalty in
its own right. The argument for Brown Shoe's preferred construction simply
rests on one speculative possibility in opposing a straightforward reading
of the provision that a union may bring suit on behalf of its members, who
are "employees . . . aggrieved under paragraph (1)." Speculation loses,
for the more natural reading of the statute's text, which would give
effect to all of its provisions, always prevails over a mere suggestion to
disregard or ignore duly enacted law as legislative
oversight.
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III.
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This brings us to the primary question in the case: whether the union
has standing to bring this action on behalf of its members. *fn4 Article III of the Constitution limits the federal
judicial power to "Cases" or "Controversies," thereby entailing as an
"irreducible minimum" that there be (1) an injury in fact, (2) a causal
relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct, and (3) a
likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. See,
e.g., Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. Contractors of America v.
Jacksonville, 508 U. S. 656, 663 (1993); Valley Forge Christian College v.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464,
472 (1982). Supplementing these constitutional requirements, the
prudential doctrine of standing has come to encompass "several judicially
self-imposed limits on the exercise of federal jurisdiction." See Allen v.
Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984); see also Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83,
97 (1968). The question here is whether a bar to the union's suit found in
the test for so-called associational standing is constitutional and
absolute, or prudential and malleable by Congress.
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A.
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The notion that an organization might have standing to assert its
members' injury has roots in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U. S.
449, 459 (1958), where the Court noted that for the purpose of determining
the scope of the NAACP's rights as a litigant, the association "and its
members are in every practical sense identical." The Court accordingly
permitted the NAACP to rely on violations of its members' First Amendment
associational rights in suing to bar the State of Alabama from compelling
disclosure of the association's membership lists. See also Joint
Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 183-187 (1951)
(Jackson, J., concurring); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 255-259
(1953); NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 428 (1963); National Motor Freight
Traffic Assn., Inc. v. United States, 372 U. S. 246, 247 (1963); Sierra
Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 739 (1972).
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[37] |
The modern doctrine of associational standing, under which an
organization may sue to redress its members' injuries, even without a
showing of injury to the association itself, emerges from a trilogy of
cases. We first squarely recognized an organization's standing to bring
such a suit in Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490 (1975).
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"The association must allege that its members, or any one of them, are
suffering immediate or threatened injury as a result of the challenged
action of the sort that would make out a justiciable case had the members
themselves brought suit. . . . [S]o long as the nature of the claim and of
the relief sought does not make the individual participation of each
injured party indispensable to proper resolution of the cause, the
association may be an appropriate representative of its members, entitled
to invoke the court's jurisdiction." Id., at 511.
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Warth's requirements for associational standing were elaborated in
Hunt. There we held that the Washington State Apple Advertising
Commission, a state agency whose statutory charge was to promote the
State's apple industry, had standing to bring a dormant Commerce Clause
challenge to a North Carolina statute forbidding the display of Washington
State apple grades on apple containers. Relying on Warth, the Hunt Court
stated a three-prong associational standing test:
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[40] |
"[W]e have recognized that an association has standing to bring suit
on behalf of its members when: (a) its members would otherwise have
standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect
are germane to the organization's purpose; and (c) neither the claim
asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual
members in the lawsuit." Hunt, 432 U. S., at 343.
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Finally, in Automobile Workers v. Brock, 477 U. S. 274 (1986), we held
that a union had standing to challenge an agency's construction of a
statute providing benefits to workers who lost their jobs because of
competition from imports. The union there did not allege any injury to
itself, nor was it argued that the members' associational rights were
affected. Reaffirming and applying the three-part test emerging from Warth
and Hunt, we held that the union had standing to bring the suit. Id., at
281-288. See also Pennell v. San Jose, 485 U. S. 1, 7, and n. 3
(1988).
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B.
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The Court of Appeals here concluded that the union's members would
have had standing to sue on their own (the first prong), and recognized
that the interests the union sought to protect were germane to its purpose
(the second prong). But it denied the union's claim of standing because it
found that the relief sought by the union, damages on behalf of its
members, would require the participation of individual members in the
lawsuit. 50 F. 3d, at 1431. It relied on the statement in Warth that "[i]f
in a proper case the association seeks a declaration, injunction, or some
other form of prospective relief, it can reasonably be supposed that the
remedy, if granted, will inure to the benefit of those members of the
association actually injured. Indeed, in all cases in which we have
expressly recognized standing in associations to represent their members,
the relief sought has been of this kind." 422 U. S., at 515. These and
later precedents have been understood to preclude associational standing
when an organization seeks damages on behalf of its members. See, e.g.,
Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. Allnet Communication
Services, Inc., 806 F. 2d 1093, 1094-1095 (CADC 1986) ("lower federal
courts have consistently rejected association assertions of standing to
seek monetary, as distinguished from injunctive or declaratory, relief on
behalf of the organization's members") (collecting cases). *fn5
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One court has suggested that this bar is of constitutional magnitude,
see National Assn. of Realtors v. National Real Estate Assn., Inc., 894 F.
2d 937, 941 (CA7 1990) ("associations have been held to have standing
under Article III of the Constitution to seek injunctive relief--but never
damages"). The Court of Appeals here apparently agreed with that
suggestion, and so dismissed for lack of union standing despite the WARN
Act's provision permitting the union to sue. We therefore take up the
question whether the third prong of the associational standing enquiry is
of constitutional character.
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C.
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Although Warth noted that the test's first requirement, that at least
one of the organization's members would have standing to sue on his own,
is grounded on Article III as an element of "the constitutional
requirement of a case or controversy," Warth, supra, at 511, our cases
have not otherwise clearly disentangled the constitutional from the
prudential strands of the associational standing test. Cf. Valley Forge
Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
Inc., 454 U. S., at 471 ("it has not always been clear in the opinions of
this Court whether particular features of the `standing' requirement have
been required by Art. III ex proprio vigore, or whether they are
requirements that the Court itself has erected and which were not
compelled by the language of the Constitution"); June, The Structure of
Standing Requirements for Citizen Suits and the Scope of Congressional
Power, 24 Envtl. L. 761, 793 (1994) (noting uncertainty "whether
requirements such as [associational] standing are constitutional or
prudential in nature"). Resort to general principles, however, leads us to
say that the associational standing test's third prong is a prudential
one.
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[47] |
There are two ways in which Hunt addresses the Article III
requirements of injury in fact, causal connection to the defendant's
conduct, and redressability. First and most obviously, it guarantees the
satisfaction of these elements by requiring an organization suing as
representative to include at least one member with standing to present, in
his or her own right, the claim (or the type of claim) pleaded by the
association. As Hunt's most direct address to Article III standing, this
first prong can only be seen as itself an Article III necessity for an
association's representative suit. Cf. Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare
Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 40 (1976) (the association "can
establish standing only as representatives of those of their members who
have been injured in fact, and thus could have brought suit in their own
right"). Hunt's second prong is, at the least, complementary to the first,
for its demand that an association plaintiff be organized for a purpose
germane to the subject of its member's claim raises an assurance that the
association's litigators will themselves have a stake in the resolution of
the dispute, and thus be in a position to serve as the defendant's natural
adversary. *fn6 But once an association has satisfied Hunt's first and
second prongs assuring adversarial vigor in pursuing a claim for which
member Article III standing exists, it is difficult to see a
constitutional necessity for anything more. See generally Lujan v.
Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560-561 (1992). To see Hunt's third
prong as resting on less than constitutional necessity is not, of course,
to rob it of its value. It may well promote adversarial intensity. It may
guard against the hazard of litigating a case to the damages stage only to
find the plaintiff lacking detailed records or the evidence necessary to
show the harm with sufficient specificity. And it may hedge against any
risk that the damages recovered by the association will fail to find their
way into the pockets of the members on whose behalf injury is claimed. But
these considerations are generally on point whenever one plaintiff sues
for another's injury. And although we noted in Flast that "a litigant will
ordinarily not be permitted to assert the rights of absent third parties,"
392 U. S., at 99, n. 20; see also Valley Forge, supra, at 474, we
recognized in Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S., at 751, that "the general
prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights" is a
"judicially self-imposed limi[t] on the exercise of federal jurisdiction,"
not a constitutional mandate. Indeed, the entire doctrine of
"representational standing," of which the notion of "associational
standing" is only one strand, rests on the premise that in certain
circumstances, particular relationships (recognized either by common-law
tradition *fn7 or by statute *fn8) are sufficient to rebut the background presumption
(in the statutory context, about Congress's intent) that litigants may not
assert the rights of absent third parties. Hence the third prong of the
associational standing test is best seen as focusing on these matters of
administrative convenience and efficiency, not on elements of a case or
controversy within the meaning of the Constitution.
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[48] |
Circumstantial evidence of the prudential nature of this requirement
is seen in the wide variety of other contexts in which a statute, federal
rule, or accepted common-law practice permits one person to sue on behalf
of another, even where damages are sought. "[R]epresentative damages
litigation is common-from class actions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3) to
suits by trustees representing hundreds of creditors in bankruptcy to
parens patriae actions by state governments to litigation by and against
executors of decedents' estates." In re Oil Spill by the Amoco Cadiz off
the Coast of France on Mar. 16, 1978, 954 F. 2d 1279, 1319 (CA7 1992) (per
curiam). In addition, Section(s) 706(f)(1) of Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. Section(s) 2000e-5(f)(1), expressly
authorizes the EEOC to sue for backpay on behalf of employees who are
victims of employment discrimination, General Telephone Co. of Northwest
v. EEOC, 446 U. S. 318 (1980), and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,
29 U. S. C. Section(s) 201 et. seq., contains a comparable provision
permitting the Secretary of Labor to sue for the recovery of unpaid
minimum wages and overtime compensation, 29 U. S. C. Section(s) 216(c). If
these provisions for representative actions were generally resulting in
nonadversarial actions that failed to resolve the claims of the
individuals ultimately interested, their disservice to the core Article
III requirements would be no secret. There is no reason to expect that
union actions under the WARN Act portend any greater Article III
incursions.
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D.
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[50] |
Because Congress authorized the union to sue for its members' damages,
and because the only impediment to that suit is a general limitation,
judicially fashioned and prudentially imposed, there is no question that
Congress may abrogate the impediment. As we noted in Warth, prudential
limitations are rules of "judicial self-governance" that "Congress may
remove . . . by statute." Warth, 422 U. S., at 509. It has done so without
doubt in this instance.
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[51] |
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is
remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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[52] |
It is so ordered.
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Opinion Footnotes |
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[53] |
*fn1 Because the District Court dismissed the complaint,
for the purposes of deciding this appeal we assume the truth of this
allegation. Nor do we reach the merits of, or any other issue about, the
union's further complaint that Brown Shoe's letter was defective because
it was sent to an individual who worked for the International. The
complaint alleges that United Food Local 751, not the International or its
employee, is the exclusive representative of the affected employees and is
thus statutorily entitled to notice of the closing and mass
layoff.
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*fn2 The District Court had also denied the Union's motion
to amend its complaint to add employees as plaintiffs. App. to Pet. for
Cert. 18a-19a. The Court of Appeals held that the District Court's
decision in this respect did not represent an abuse of its discretion. 50
F. 3d, at 1432. The correctness of this determination is outside the scope
of the questions presented here. See Pet. for Cert.
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*fn3 102 Stat. 893, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. Section(s)
2104(a)(1): "Any employer who orders a plant closing or mass layoff in
violation of section 2102 of this title shall be liable to each aggrieved
employee who suffers an employment loss as a result of such closing or
layoff for--
"(A) back pay for each day of violation at a rate of
compensation not less than the higher of-
"(i) the average regular
rate received by such employee during the last 3 years of the employee's
employment; or
"(ii) the final regular rate received by such
employee; and
"(B) benefits under an employee benefit plan . . .,
including the cost of medical expenses incurred during the employment loss
which would have been covered under an employee benefit plan if the
employment loss had not occurred.
"Such liability shall be
calculated for the period of the violation, up to a maximum of 60 days,
but in no event for more than one-half the number of days the employee was
employed by the employer."
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[56] |
*fn4 The union also argues that it has standing because it
suffered direct injury. The Court of Appeals held that the union lacked
standing to assert its direct injury because neither backpay to the
employees nor its "catch-all prayer for relief" would redress the union's
injury. 50 F. 3d 1426, 1431, n. 7 (CA8 1995). The union argues here that
its injury would be redressed because an award of damages to the employees
would deter future violations and would facilitate the union's role in
assisting its members. In light of our resolution of the associational
standing question, we do not have occasion today to address this
issue.
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*fn5 United Food argues that "given the simplified nature
of the monetary relief here provided," Brief for Petitioner 44, n. 17, the
third prong of the Hunt test is satisfied despite its claim for damages.
In light of our conclusion that in the WARN Act Congress has abrogated the
third prong of the associational standing test, we need not decide here
whether, absent congressional action, the third prong would bar a
"simplified" claim for damages.
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[58] |
*fn6 Because the union is statutorily entitled to receive
notice under the WARN Act, and because of the paramount role, under
federal labor law, that unions play in protecting the interests of their
members, it is clear that this test is satisfied here. We therefore need
not decide whether this prong is prudential in the sense that Congress may
definitively declare that a particular relation is sufficient.
The
germaneness of a suit to an association's purpose may, of course, satisfy
a standing requirement without necessarily rendering the association's
representation adequate to justify giving the association's suit
preclusive effect as against an individual ostensibly represented. See
generally Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797 (1985);
Matsushita Elec. Industrial Co. v. Epstein, 516 U. S. ___ (1996)
(Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (slip op., at
9-14). See also Automobile Workers v. Brock, 477 U. S. 274, 289 (1986)
("an association might prove an inadequate representative of its members'
legal interests for a number of reasons"); Note, Associational Standing
and Due Process: The Need for an Adequate Representation Scrutiny, 61 B.
U. L. Rev. 174 (1981). In this case, of course, no one disputes the
adequacy of the union, selected by the employees following procedures
governed by a detailed body of federal law and serving as the duly
authorized collective bargaining representative of the employees, as an
associational representative. See generally NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co.,
395 U. S. 575 (1969).
|
[59] |
*fn7 See, e.g., Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149 (1990)
(recognizing a next-friend's standing).
|
[60] |
*fn8 See, e.g., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. Section(s) 2000e et seq., and the
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C.
Section(s) 201 et
seq.
|