Mich. Corr. Org. v. Mich. Dep't of Corr.

774 F.3d 895

MICHIGAN CORRECTIONS ORGANIZATION, Service Employees International Union, Local 526M, et al., Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v.MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; Daniel H. Heyns, acting in his official capacity as Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 14–1028.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: Dec. 4, 2014.

Decided and Filed: Dec. 17, 2014.

Held Unconstitutional

29 U.S.C.A. § 216(b)

ARGUED:John R. Runyan, Jr., Sachs Waldman, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellants. Jeanmarie Miller, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellees. ON BRIEF:John R. Runyan, Jr., Marshall J. Widick, Sachs Waldman, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellants. Jeanmarie Miller, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellees.

Before: SILER, SUTTON, and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

Constitutional challenges to the enforcement of wage-and-hour laws are not new. By themselves, these cases could tell much of the story of the metes and bounds of federal and state power. As today's dispute shows, that history continues to unfold.

Several corrections officers sued the Michigan Department of Corrections and its Director, claiming a right to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act and state law. Two threshold defenses, the district court held, stood in the way of the federal claim: Sovereign immunity barred the corrections officers from seeking damages from an agency of the State (the Department of Corrections), and the FLSA precluded the corrections officers from seeking injunctive or declaratory relief against the Director. In the absence of a cognizable federal claim, the district court declined to exercise jurisdiction over the state law claims. We affirm.

I.

Michigan corrections officers must perform several pre-shift and post-shift activities, including “punching a mechanical time clock,” “waiting in line” for security, and “walking to assigned locations.” Appellants' Br. at 2. These activities take place off the clock. Thinking this uncompensated requirement unfair, several corrections officers (and their union) filed this lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act and state law to recover overtime payments for these activities. 29 U.S.C. §§ 206, 207; Mich. Comp. Laws §§ 408.414, .414a.

The lawsuit did not get far. As an arm of the State, the Michigan Department of Corrections moved to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction on sovereign immunity grounds. The corrections officers responded by adding a claim for declaratory relief against the Department's director, Daniel Heyns. That did not help. The district court dismissed the officers' FLSA claims anyway and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims. See28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).

II.

Does Michigan's constitutional immunity from suit prevent the officers from bringing this claim for overtime wages under the FLSA? The district court answered yes, and so do we.

Debates over governmental power to regulate the wages and working conditions of employees have taken many turns. At the beginning of the last century, the Supreme Court held that the freedom-of-contract guarantees of the United States Constitution prohibited the States from regulating the terms of employment relationships. See Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 64, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905); Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1, 26, 35 S.Ct. 240, 59 L.Ed. 441 (1915). The Supreme Court began to dismantle the Lochner era in 1917, when it upheld a state law capping working hours at ten hours per day, Bunting v. Oregon, 243 U.S. 426, 438, 37 S.Ct. 435, 61 L.Ed. 830 (1917), and formally brought the period to an end in 1937, when it upheld a state minimum-wage law, W. Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 400, 57 S.Ct. 578, 81 L.Ed. 703 (1937).

The end of one era launched another, this time over the lines between federal and state power in the area. Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, and it applied the legislation only to private-sector workers. Pub.L. No. 75–718, § 3(d), 52 Stat. 1060, 1060. The Supreme Court held that Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause permitted it to regulate the wages of private-sector workers, even workers whose employment activities and handiworks did not cross state lines. United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 122–26, 61 S.Ct. 451, 85 L.Ed. 609 (1941).

In 1966, Congress began the process of extending the FLSA's protections to city and state workers. Pub.L. No. 89–601, § 102(b), 80 Stat. 830, 831. That extension of the law led to nineteen years of litigation over a different federalism question: Did Congress violate the reserved powers of the States under the Tenth Amendment by regulating core state functions, namely the hours and wages of governmental workers? The Court first answered yes, Nat'l League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 852, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976), but reversed course and answered no nine years later, Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528, 531, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985).

Another eleven years after that, the debate took another Hegelian turn. At issue was not the FLSA but a federal law regulating Indian gaming. Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996), held that Congress could not use its Article I Commerce Clause power to abrogate a State's constitutional immunity from money-damages lawsuits. Id. at 66, 116 S.Ct. 1114. Only through its Section 5 enforcement power under the Fourteenth Amendment, Seminole Tribe reasoned, could Congress overcome that immunity from suit. Id. at 65, 116 S.Ct. 1114. It fell to still another FLSA case to clarify that the States' immunity from suit arises from the Eleventh Amendment and background sovereignty principles embedded in the Constitution and thus applies to money-damages actions filed in federal and state court. Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 712–13, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999).

What we are left with is this: Congress may abrogate the States' sovereign immunity through its Section 5 power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, not through its Article I enforcement power. Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 78–80, 120 S.Ct. 631, 145 L.Ed.2d 522 (2000). Section 5 authorizes two types of legislation: laws that target actual violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151, 159, 126 S.Ct. 877, 163 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006), and laws that go beyond the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment so long as there is “a congruence and proportionality” between the statutory rights and Fourteenth Amendment violations by the State. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 520, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997). Any time Congress tries to abrogate the States' immunity from suit, the Court has added, the legislature must “unequivocally express[ ] its intent” to do so. Kimel, 528 U.S. at 78, 120 S.Ct. 631.

Seventy-six years after Congress enacted the FLSA, the Court thus has clarified these lines of federal and state power:

• The Commerce Clause empowers Congress, not just the States, to enact national wage-and-hour laws.

• The Tenth Amendment does not prevent Congress from extending those laws to state and local workers.

• The Commerce Clause does not allow Congress to abrogate the States' constitutional immunity from lawsuits by individuals.

• Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment permits Congress to abrogate the States' immunity from suit and in the process to subject them to money-damages actions to remedy actual violations of the Fourteenth Amendment or to impose extra-constitutional requirements on the States that are “congruent and proportional” to prior Fourteenth Amendment violations.

• Section 5 legislation not only must invoke an appropriate power, but it also must unmistakably impose liability on the States.

Enter the Michigan corrections workers. In 2013, they sued the Department of Corrections, an entity of the State under Michigan law, Mich. Comp. Laws § 791.201, to obtain overtime wages under the FLSA. The Tenth Amendment as shown does not bar the lawsuit, and the language of the FLSA satisfies the unequivocal-expression requirement. The law says that a suit to enforce the FLSA “may be maintained against any ... public agency,” which includes “the government of a State” and “any agency of ... a State.” 29 U.S.C. §§ 203(x), 216(b). Whether Congress invoked a permissible source of power to abrogate Michigan's constitutional immunity from suit is another matter.

The corrections workers concede that the Commerce Clause will not do the job in light of Alden and Seminole Tribe. And our court closed off another potential route several years ago, holding that the FLSA is not a proportionate and congruent use of the enforcement power under the Equal Protection Clause. Wilson–Jones v. Caviness, 99 F.3d 203, 209–11 (6th Cir.1996).

The plaintiffs try another tack. They argue that these federal statutory rights—minimum wages and overtime pay—amount to fundamental rights of national citizenship protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As they see it, a State's violations of the FLSA always amount to violations of the Fourteenth Amendment and thus always justify the FLSA's abrogation of sovereign immunity.

This argument faces two swift headwinds. In the first place, the theory makes the Court's three-quarters-of-a-century effort to strike a balance between delegated federal power and reserved state power look like a precedential waste of time. If FLSA violations invariably infringe Fourteenth Amendment rights, the Tenth Amendment debate between National League of Cities and Garcia was for naught. The same is true about the Alden debate. Why worry about power under the Commerce Clause if FLSA violations always amount to privileges-or-immunities violations?

In the second place, the Privileges or...