Woodard-Hall v. STP Nuclear Operating Co.

473 F.Supp.3d 740

Maudester WOODARD-HALL, Plaintiff,

v.STP NUCLEAR OPERATING COMPANY, Defendant.

No. 3:20-cv-00037

United States District Court, S.D. Texas, Galveston Division.

Signed July 20, 2020

Gordon R. Cooper, II, Attorney at Law, Houston, TX, for Plaintiff.

Kevin Lynn Koronka, Leslie C. Basque, Husch Blackwell LLP, Austin, TX, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Jeffrey Vincent Brown, United States District Judge.

Before the court is Maudester Woodard-Hall's motion to remand.¹ Having considered the parties' arguments and the applicable law, and for the reasons discussed below, the court grants Woodard-Hall's motion to remand.

I. BACKGROUND FACTS

STP Nuclear Operating Company owns and operates a nuclear power plant in Matagorda County. Woodard-Hall began working for STP in 1985 as a security coordinator.² In 2015, STP promoted Woodard-Hall to supervisor of access authorization, fitness for duty, and badging, where she was responsible for managing STP's access-authorization and fitness-for-duty programs on a day-to-day basis.³

Federal regulations require the identity of persons granted or denied unescorted access to nuclear facilities be "made available" to all such facilities and contractors. STP, like other nuclear facilities in the country, uses the Personal Access Data System ("PADS"). PADS is a computer system and central database managed by the Nuclear Energy Institution that tracks and shares information related to security restrictions associated with individuals in the nuclear industry.⁴

Nuclear facilities rely on information uploaded to PADS to make critical decisions. For example, if an individual is denied unescorted access authorization, 10 C.F.R. § 73.56(h)(3) prevents any other nuclear facility from granting that individual access, whether escorted or unescorted.⁵ Therefore, "[i]f the shared information used for determining [an] individual's trustworthiness and reliability changes or new or additional information is developed about the individual," federal law demands the nuclear facility that acquires this information "correct or augment the data and ensure it is shared with [other nuclear facilities]."⁶ Further, "[i]f the changed, additional or developed information has implications for adversely affecting an individual's trustworthiness and reliability, the [person] who discovered or obtained the new, additional or changed information" must, "on the day of the discovery," inform the nuclear facility "under which the individual is maintaining his or her unescorted access or unescorted access authorization status of the updated information."⁷

As STP's supervisor of access authorization, fitness for duty, and badging, Woodard-Hall was responsible for, among other things, (1) ensuring that individuals seeking unescorted access met certain qualifications; (2) inputting personnel data related to those individuals into PADS; and (3) ensuring that those granted unescorted access remained trustworthy, reliable, and fit for duty.⁸

In June 2018, Woodard-Hall learned of an investigation concerning "a large [backlog] of nuclear files that were reportedly found in [the office of one of her subordinates] that contained denial and administrative data that were not input into [PADS]."⁹ According to STP, an anonymous complaint by one of its employees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ("NRC") prompted the investigation.¹⁰

Ultimately, STP concluded that Woodard-Hall "failed to provide proper oversight of her staff to ensure that [a]ccess[-a]uthorization files were processed consistent with NRC regulatory requirements, and the department failed to process more than 350 files in violation of NRC regulations."¹¹ Following its investigation, STP placed Woodard-Hall on decision-making leave and removed her as supervisor of access authorization, fitness for duty, and badging.¹² Though STP is adamant it offered her "an alternative but comparable position" as supervisor of its "All Hazards Group,"¹³ Woodard-Hall views things differently; she contends STP humiliated her in front of her peers and placed her in a no-win situation—either accept a demotion or leave the company to which she had devoted over three decades of her life.¹⁴ On July 9, 2018, Woodard-Hall tendered her "forced retirement letter."¹⁵

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On October 23, 2019, Woodard-Hall sued STP in the 130th Judicial District Court of Matagorda County¹⁶ alleging STP discriminated against her on the basis of her age, race, and sex, in violation of the Texas Commission on Human Rights ("TCHRA").¹⁷ Although not expressly pleaded, Woodard-Hall also appears to claim STP retaliated against her because "she had prevented them many times from violating the NRC rules."^{18 ,19}

STP timely removed the case based on federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1441, arguing federal law and corresponding safety regulations promulgated by the NRC preempt Woodard-Hall's state-law claims.²⁰ STP reasons that Woodard-Hall's claims fall within the "preempted zone of nuclear safety" because NRC regulations require that STP: (1) maintain a system and procedures for the secure storage and handling of STP's access-authorization files; (2) investigate any deviation from regulatory requirements involving its access-authorization department; and (3) take "prompt corrective action."²¹ Thus, STP contends it was "mandated by NRC regulations" to "take such corrective action in attempting to move [Woodard-Hall] out of her role in [a]ccess [a]uthorization in order to remedy federal regulatory requirements and ensure that it maintained a safety-conscious work environment ...."²²

III. REMOVAL JURISDICTION

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction and must presume that a suit lies outside this limited jurisdiction.²³ The removing party has the burden to present facts showing that federal subject-matter jurisdiction exists, and any doubts concerning the propriety of removal are construed against removal. Whether a case may be removed is a question of federal law to be decided by federal courts with the removal statute strictly construed.

A defendant may remove an action to federal court only if that court has original subject-matter jurisdiction over the action.²⁴ If, as here, the parties are not diverse, there must be a federal question for the federal court to have jurisdiction. The presence or absence of federal-question jurisdiction is governed by the "well-pleaded-complaint rule," which provides that federal jurisdiction exists only when a federal question appears on the face of the plaintiff's properly-pleaded complaint.²⁵ "The rule makes the plaintiff the master of the claim; he or she may avoid federal jurisdiction by exclusive reliance on state law."²⁶ Thus, a plaintiff with a choice between federal and state-law claims may opt to proceed in state court by asserting only state-law claims, thereby defeating the defendant's ability to remove.²⁷

The complete-preemption doctrine (sometimes referred to as "artful-pleading doctrine" or "artfully-pleaded-complaint exception") is an exception to the well-pleaded-complaint rule and applies when a federal statute wholly displaces a state-law cause of action through complete preemption.²⁸ "In the most general terms, the doctrine provides that a plaintiff cannot frustrate a defendant's right to remove by pleading a case without reference to any federal law when the plaintiff's claim is necessarily federal."²⁹ In other words, "what otherwise appears as merely a state law claim is converted to a claim ‘arising under’ federal law for jurisdictional purposes because the federal statute so forcibly and completely displace[s] state law that the plaintiff's cause of action is either wholly federal or nothing at all."³⁰

The central inquiry in a complete-preemption analysis is "whether Congress intended the federal cause of action to be the exclusive cause of action for the particular claims asserted under the state law."³¹

IV. ANALYSIS

In its response to the motion to remand, STP argues that "[t]here are two types of federal preemption at issue here: field preemption and conflict preemption."³² But just one paragraph later, STP brings up "complete preemption," arguing "complete preemption exists here because the federal government is responsible for the safety of nuclear technology."³³ STP's conflation of ordinary (or defensive) preemption with the doctrine of complete preemption is a microcosm of the more general confusion surrounding preemption's effect on removal jurisdiction.

Three forms of preemption are frequently discussed in judicial decisions: express preemption, conflict preemption, and field preemption.³⁴ These three, however, are forms of "ordinary preemption" that serve only as defenses to a state-law claim and do not create removal jurisdiction.³⁵

Complete preemption, on the other hand, "is not a distinct type of preemption at all , but rather a jurisdictional rule positing that all claims of a given topic arise under federal law, thereby paving the way for removal of an action to federal court...."³⁶ It applies only where Congress intended a federal law to "replace" or "supplant" a state-law cause of action with a federal cause of action which may then be removed to, and proceed in, federal court.³⁷

Unfortunately, "[t]he inclusion of the term ‘preemption’ within the [complete-preemption] doctrine's label, while not inaccurate, has enkindled a substantial amount of confusion between the complete preemption doctrine and the broader and more familiar doctrine of ordinary preemption."³⁸ And this confusion has led countless litigants (as well as some courts) to "equate[ ] the defense of field preemption, which defeats a plaintiff's state-law claim because federal law ‘occupies the field’ [in] which the state-law claim falls, with the doctrine of complete preemption, which creates federal subject-matter jurisdiction over preempted state-law claims."³⁹

Admittedly, "the defense of field preemption and...